Page 72 of Storm Echo

As if his mother’s craving for the crystalline petals had burned itself into the cells of her son, creating a monstrous creature that was never satisfied, no matter how much power it had at its disposal. He’d always seen his mutated ability as a spider because of the web, the connections, but it could as well be termed a locust.

One that fed and fed, leaving nothing but a lifeless desert in its wake.

Moving on, searching for others to whom he was connected and could help, he saw that some minds in the ChaosNet were different. They glowed not with the dull starlight of the minds under assault, but with a dazzling kaleidoscopic energy that reminded him of the crystalline flowers … and they absorbed the lightning strikes rather than being damaged by them.

“Scarabs,” he said, realizing he was seeing them in their purest form.

Not stable, not with the way those minds twisted and turned, the energies coming off them chaotic fuel for the lightning. Full of an enraged power. There were also a hell of a lot of Scarab minds. Nothing that could be explained by random chance. This, he understood at last, was the Island of the Scarabs, with the other minds caught in the slipstream, nothing but helpless fodder.

Yet, chaotic energy or not, the island held steady.

There had to be a controller behind it all, a mastermind … an architect.

Another tug on his mind, another desperate person struggling to survive. He offered an assist, even though it was dangerous. He still did it. Over and over again, until he couldn’t avoid a lightning strike.

It blanked his mind, shot pain down his psychic pathways.

He barely held on to consciousness—he was critically low on psychic energyandhe almost hadn’t won against the spider. A lethal combination. Because the spider’s goal was survival above all else. Set free, it would take and take and take, until there was nothing left on this island but empty husks.

Chapter 34

Power

Corrupts

So say they

I say

Power

Is a tool innocent

The corruption

An inner rot

—“Power” by Adina Mercant, poet (b. 1832, d. 1901)

A SHIVER IN her web, an unexpected shift … and an odd resonance.

Almost a sense of recognition.

She perceived it through all the points of contact in her new network, all the points of power.

Pausing in her current structural stabilization of the island network, she attempted to pinpoint the reason for the blip and found no evidence of an anomaly. After a moment, she shook it off. It was nothing, could be nothing. She knew everything that happened on the island.

It was her domain and hers alone.

“Soon, my children,” she murmured. “Soon we will reign, for we are evolution.” Stronger, faster, powerful enough to tear the PsyNet itself into pieces.

This was but the first piece.

A piece full of beauty, so much power arcing through it that the network burned. And if it burned out a few weak minds, so be it. Only the strong deserved to survive,couldsurvive.

The Scarab Queen leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, the better to see the new world she’d seeded into creation.

Chapter 35

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