Hostage to Pleasure

That halted her for a few seconds. How very unfortunate. She’d have to ensure she got her hands on some of Keenan’s tissue. She had all the test results, of course, but who knew how the protein might have mutated in the years since she’d last taken a sample? It really was a pity the experiment had come to such a precipitous end-Amara had done some of her best work there.

But, she thought, pausing in her examination of the cultures lined up in front of her, it wasn’t a total loss in the overall scheme of things. She had ways of getting tissue samples-she’d just have to make sure no one was infected during the retrieval process. She didn’t want an inferior strain out there, not when she might yet be able to code a perfect one.

She checked another thread inside her mind, found it solid. Ashaya was still alive. Excellent. Only Ashaya had a mind brilliant enough to comprehend the value of Amara’s work. The others, they knew little, understood even less.

Satisfied that nothing was truly amiss, she returned her attention to her work.

CHAPTER 3

I’m certain he almost shot me-the sniper who came to rescue Jonquil Duchslaya and Noor Hassan. He’s on the side of good, the side that protects children, but I am ninety-nine percent certain that tonight, in the darkness, he almost pressed the trigger that would’ve ended my life.

Perhaps that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him.

– From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine

Ashaya lay down on the tilted examining table, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Though her vision remained sharp, her fingertips were numb. It was her forearms that tingled now, even as her heart labored to maintain a steady rhythm.

Humans and changelings, she thought, as the medical personnel laid out their instruments and began to explain the procedure to her, had it easy. They could fake their deaths any number of ways-crash a car off a cliff, leave a pool of blood for others to find, even write a simple suicide note and fade into the crowds.

But a Psy was tied to the PsyNet by the umbilical cord of a link that was necessary for life, yet also functioned as a shackle. If she ran her car off a cliff, no one would think her dead-not so long as they could see the living beacon of her psychic star on the Net. Even comatose Psy retained the link, their bodies fighting to maintain the life-giving connection.

Ashaya felt her heart begin to stutter, her vision to haze, as the poison spread through her system like a malignant cancer.

But this cancer had the potential to save her life. Because if this worked, she would go into a state beyond a coma.

Some people might call what she was trying to achieve hibernation, but that wasn’t technically correct-during hibernation, oxygen did circulate, just so little of it that the individual appeared dead. But it wasn’t enough for Ashaya to appear dead. She had to be dead for the duration. And there was only one known way to achieve that-cryonic suspension.

While suspended, the body literally stopped. Every aspect of it, even the brain… and a psychic link could not be held when the brain ceased to function. A simple, practical plan, except that while it was relatively easy to put someone into a cryonic state, no individual, their race notwithstanding, had ever successfully been brought back out-not unless a permanent vegetative state could be counted as success.

Ashaya hadn’t made the breakthrough of the century and discovered a foolproof way to reverse the suspended state. Instead, she’d taken the principles of cryonics and applied them in an abstract way. Rather than relying on temperatures well below zero to slow her heart rate and brain activity, she’d tracked down the neurotoxin of a dangerous Australian tick, one that caused paralysis in its victims. She’d then manufactured and remanufactured the neurotoxin, using her abilities to change it a little each time… until she had the perfect poison. It would stop everything in her body, including her brain-thereby terminating her Net link. If it worked as intended, she would wake from her deathlike state in exactly ten hours. If she didn’t wake… that was the risk she took.

The real test would come after the waking. As soon as her brain flickered to life, it would instinctively search for, and make, a new connection to the PsyNet. There was no way Ashaya could stop that. She’d be unconscious while it was being made-for a Psy, the Net link was more important than breathing. Those initial moments after relinking would be the vulnerable time. The time when her allies would either protect her or leave her to be recaptured.