Page 123 of Primal Mirror

“Well, their ability to keep secrets is legendary.”

“As for anyone else, no, I won’t tell.” The NetMind could make that call, decide who needed to know. “The child will be safe with the alpha I met.” Clawed hands that even if they bled, wouldn’t stop protecting.

Sahara’s eyes glowed with a pulse of blue. “Kaleb, your eyes…”

“The web just pulsed,” he said. “An overwhelming surge of energy in the network.” Frowning, he looked in the PsyNet again, but could find nothing to explain it.

* * *

• • •

PAX felt his Scarabs slip out of his grasp one after the other. Terrified for them, he emerged into the Net…and saw the blue spiderweb that had entangled his broken people. He was afraid they were dead, but no, they lived.

Their chaotic energy was contained…and yet part of the system.

Flowers in his mind. Wilted and bruised, but held in cupped hands of radiant steel-gray alongside fresh blooms that were perfect.

Pax frowned, hands at the sides of his head. What was happening? Was he going mad?

The same image again. No. It was different this time. A glowing blue flower nestled deep inside the bouquet that was both fresh and decaying. Its light touched the edges of two of the twisted and bruised ones…and those blooms grew…not better, but less limp, more firm.

Pax stared at the glowing blue network as far as the eye could see. The tendril that had come to him just waited, floating in space. And he thought of what Kaleb Krychek had blasted out across the Net, his words carried in echoes created by thousands of minds.

No force. True choice.

Pax didn’t trust anyone but his twin.

He shook his head, stepping back from the tendril.

* * *

• • •

ZAIRA had become entangled in the spidersilk at emergence, her mind having been the one that held the shield over Auden. Within minutes, she knew her shield was no longer necessary, Auden’s mind engulfed by violent blue energy.

The spidersilk that had tangled her up fell away the instant she stepped back.

Aden’s mind appeared beside her at the same time.

“What is this?” she asked.

“A much more powerful version of the same ability that allows Ivan to hold the Island.” Aden touched a thread of spidersilk. “Young. Incredibly young. The infant.”

“I don’t believe in luck.” Zaira folded her arms on the physical plane.

A bloated black spider, hovering over a glowing blue egg. It scratched at the egg with its legs, creating a crack, an opening…that sealed up with luminous steel before the spider could insert its face inside.

“What the hell in creepy fuck was that?” Zaira sent the stream of eerie images to the man who was her love and her soul.

“I think that’s the NetMind telling us this has nothing to do with luck.” Aden’s voice held a taut satisfaction. “Whatever Shoshanna did to engineer Liberty, she gave the NetMind the perfect soil in which to plant a seed.”

“It’s using the baby?” Zaira would kill the damn neosentience.

“No, I think this is exactly what the child was designed to do—to supercharge Shoshanna’s abilities to harvest energy from others. We all know it had to be her in that initial island where she was sucking the inhabitants dry, even if no one has proof.”

Zaira had heard Ivan Mercant’s description of the spider he’d encountered, and she’d read the reports on the genetic connection between Ivan and Shoshanna. That particular ability seemed to exist in only a single familial line. “Agreed.”

Her lover’s mind pulsed as he considered things in that calm way of his that fascinated her. “I don’t think the NetMind did anything to either mother or child except help them win the battle against Shoshanna.

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