Page 76 of Storm Echo

It had been one of his mother’s friends who’d answered him, a thin man with dark skin and lots of marks on his face. “No one’s allowed to just disappear from the PsyNet. The death guard come to make sure no one murdered us. Not that the Council cares about us riffraff, but it’s about power, see?” The man had tapped his temple. “Can’t let the humans or changelings think they’re stronger than Psy.”

Ivan hadn’t understood most of that, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Hours passed, and no one came. He wasn’t surprised. He wondered if they had his mother’s name on a list somewhere, of people who weren’t important at all. Even when they were dead.

He was still wide-awake and staring at the door when the handle turned. If it was the death people, the manager would probably have given them a key. It was the first time in a long while that he and his mother’d had a room with a door that wasn’t broken.

When Mama dressed up and played her instrument, no one knew she was Psy. The humans and changelings thought she was human, and they gave her money as they did to other humans. Ivan thought it would be nice to be human. They were allowed to love music and to dance.

Two men walked into the room, both of them dressed in black.

“… a Jax user,” one of them was saying as he entered. “Shouldn’t—” He cut himself off when he realized it wasn’t only a woman’s body on the floor.

Turning to the man who’d entered behind him, he said, “Did she have a child listed on her record?”

His partner pulled up the information on a small datapad, said, “Yes, but the child was meant to have died at birth. Her record is sketchy at best, but it does say she worked in computronic security once—must’ve had the skills to hide him. No one’s going to notice one extra mind in the Net if they don’t know he exists.”

They were talking about his mother as if she were a thing, not a person. But Ivan still wasn’t angry or sad or anything. His mind remained white. He just stared at these men, wondering if he would be killed. His mother had always been afraid that they would come for her.

“I’m a rebel, sweetie,” she’d say. “I don’t follow their stupid Silence rules.”

Maybe, a long time ago, he’d thought that was interesting and exciting. That was before he saw his first dead body, before he began to understand that what she was doing to herself wasn’t rebellion but the opposite: even at eight years of age, he understood that his mother had given up. She’d chosen her medicine over fighting. And now she’d chosen to leave Ivan.

“The child is listed as being born in an approved birthing facility,” the second man said, “and as dying at home. No investigation listed. Then she drops off the grid.”

“At least he’s still young enough to be molded into a useful citizen.” Striding toward him, the man looked down on him from his tall height. “What is your name, child?”

He thought about what to say, and something in the whiteness of his mind, the blankness of it, gave him a razor-sharp focus. And even though his mother had only said the name of her family once or twice, he remembered it. “Ivan Mercant,” he said.

The man stared at him. “That’s a very unusual family name.”

Ivan stayed silent, not sure what the man wanted him to say.

“Where did you hear it?” the man demanded, then waved it off. “Ridiculous, to think that a Mercant child would be in a place like this. That family looks after its own.” He bent to run a scanner over Ivan’s mother’s body. “Dead,” he pronounced. “Has been for quite some time.”

“DNA matches profile on record. No Mercant link,” his partner said.

“That answers that question.”

“Are you sure we should dismiss the child’s claim?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that he might be a Mercant?”

“I’m just saying that I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the person who found a lost Mercant child and didn’t inform that family. It’s a simple administrative act to send through a data packet with the details of the child and a sample of his DNA.”

The man kept on talking, while the other, older one stared at Ivan with cold eyes. “As I said, the female’s record is thin at best—it could be total fiction, but we have no Mercant DNA on file, so we can’t do the comparison ourselves.”

The man with the cold eyes hesitated, then gave a short nod.

Living on the street, Ivan had long ago learned to understand power. Today he understood that the Mercants had power. They had made this man do something, change his decision, without ever being in the room.

Ivan hoped his mother hadn’t lied about being a Mercant. But he wasn’t afraid. The white blank remained. Until the man told him to get up onto his feet, that the body disposal team was on its way. That was when the white began to crack, cold blue flames burning their way to the center.

Ivan knew that if he allowed it to burn all the way through, he might go mad, might rage. So he fought the crumbling edges—but he didn’t fight his urge to reach for his mother’s hand and remove the ring she wore on her right ring finger.

“What are you doing?” the older man snapped.

Ivan put the ring into his pocket. “It’s mine.” His mother had told him it was his, that it was a family ring and it would pass on to him.

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