Terminal Point (41 page)

“If it happens again, we won't be around to see it.”

But they were seeing the political fallout and it wasn't going to be easy to navigate a world where fear of psions might never fade.

“Oh, before I forget.” Jason pulled a small fruit out of his jacket pocket and set it on Jael's desk. “That's for you. Courtesy of Matron. Carried it with me when I brought in the latest shipment of seedlings.”

Jael looked up from the datapad in her hand and eyed the orange fruit as if it were something dangerous. “You sure she didn't poison it?”

“That woman barely lets people near her garden. You think she'd knowingly allow poison?” Jason shook his head. “Try it. She said it's called a kumquat.”

Jael stared at the tiny, bite-size fruit before her with the healthy hesitation that a lifetime of wariness had gifted her. Eventually, she picked up the fruit and popped it in her mouth. The skin was sweet; biting into it was a different story. The taste shifted from sweet to sour on her tongue, the flavor shocking her taste buds.

She made a face and swallowed the pulp as fast as she could, spitting out the seed. “I don't know about that one. You sure you didn't mess up the seed growth somehow?”

Jason scratched the back of his neck, shrugging. “Maybe? Thought I had this tree down. I guess Matron will have to wait on her pears.”

“What in the world is a pear?”

“It's another fruit. I think.”

Jael set aside her work, wishing she had a glass of water to wash away the taste. “Where is she putting that bush?”

“Tree. Pears grow on trees, and she's thinking of putting some greenery into Kensington Gardens.”

“Kensington Gardens is full of transients. What's she going to do? Order them to move?”

“If she wants us to clear it out, we'll clear it out.” Jason slouched a little in his seat. “She's just taking what's owed to her. I'm willing to let her experiment, but winter's coming soon and nothing grows in the cold.”

“Maybe wait until spring.”

“Maybe,” Jason echoed, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling.

The silence in the office was heavy, but neither of them felt the need to break it. Nearly two and a half months since the world almost ended again, and things were still changing. There was an orchard in St. James's Park that people visited, or talked about visiting. It was overseen by Matron and her scavengers, the group having appropriated a building abandoned during the riots. No one in London fought her on her claim that she owned that bit of land, not even the drug cartels. Matron was only human, but she had psions on her side, and that was enough to make anyone pause these days.

Jael ran a fingertip over the line of her teeth, the tartness from the fruit still stinging her tongue. The amount of new food that was growing in Toronto's SkyFarms and others across the world was heartening, even if their stomachs couldn't handle it yet. A lifetime of bland GMO food had prepared no one for the shock that came with taste. Adjusting to the new diet was going to take time. Her people had enough of it for now.

“Does it ever feel weird?” Jason said, his voice jerking Jael from her thoughts. “Sitting in this office?”

“Always,” Jael replied, trying not to hunch her shoulders. Leadership was always so much easier when someone else was doing it.

The door to Jael's office slid open, causing Jason to twist around in his chair to see who it was. He stood up as Samantha's thin figure stepped inside. The young woman crossed the office with measured strides, holding herself rigidly, as if she were afraid she would take one wrong step and break.

Samantha wore the soft, comfortable clothes those in recovery were given, though she no longer had a room in the medical level to call her own. Jael had upgraded her physical condition weeks ago to discharge, though Samantha's mental state was still in doubt—she was still at risk for suicide. Jael thought a change of scenery would be helpful; better than being sequestered in a white medical room with machines that constantly showed what she was missing, even if her new room came with twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Psions didn't mutate postnatal. Their Classification, however, could change. Samantha's telepathy was, for the most part, nonexistent now. The merge and Jael's psionic interference had broken her mind down to a Class IX, more human than psion, her telepathic reach no stronger than the softest whisper within her own thoughts. Samantha never used her power anymore, too aware and too prideful of what she had once been to accept what she had become.

Maybe it would have been better, more merciful, if she had died like Kristen. Jael hadn't been able to save Samantha's sister. If she was honest with herself, she hadn't tried very hard. Kristen's mind had torn itself apart during the merge, pain finally overcoming the empath's power. There hadn't been much left for Jael to save, and she didn't regret letting the teenager die. Keeping Samantha from doing the same was a full-time job on some days.

Samantha flicked Jason a wary look. Jason, for his part, made sure his shields were locked down tight. “If you need to speak with Jael in private, I can leave.”

“No,” Samantha said, her voice raspy. The weeks she'd spent screaming in the medical level during her recovery had permanently ruined her once-pretty soprano voice. “I need the latest report on survivors. There's a press conference tomorrow and I'm better at writing speeches than the people you've assigned to public relations.”

Jael picked up a datapad from the pile on her desk and pushed it toward the edge. “It's right here.”

Jason took a careful step back, giving Samantha room to take the datapad and not feel as if he was invading her personal space. She took it and hugged it to her chest.

“Latest world population count puts us at over a million by about fifty thousand,” Jael said quietly. “Give or take a few hundred. The Registry only told us who was going into space, not who was left behind, and we lost tens of thousands in the riots. The census will take maybe another year or so to complete, but you can report on the rough findings. I think that will satisfy the public.”

“And the count for psions?” Samantha said, sounding as if the question was difficult to ask.

“Around six hundred or so, if we're being generous. There's talk of a child or two in the Americas that show signs of being psions.” Jael hesitated before saying, “Telepaths, according to the bioscanners. I'm sending out a team for retrieval.”

Samantha's entire body flinched. She bit her lip, looking away from Jael and out at the view of Toronto instead. “We need those. There are so few telepaths and telekinetics left.”

“I know.”

This is all we've got,
Jael thought as she watched Samantha turn around and head for the door.
Just the remains and nothing more. We've got to make it worth something.

Keiko and Aidan were dead, as were nearly 85 percent of the Strykers' telepaths and 50 percent of their telekinetics. The worldwide merge Lucas had led in the assault on Paris had decimated the Strykers Syndicate's ranks. Empaths, pyrokinetics, electrokinetics, and psychometrists outnumbered the other two kinds of psions now, those that survived the riots at least. Prior to that, they had lost roughly 250 psions through the World Court's mass termination. Whoever was brought back from the retrieval mission would never know the feel of a neurotracker in his or her head.

It was a start.

The door slid shut behind Samantha. Jason was kind enough to wait until she was gone before tipping his head in Jael's direction as a silent good-bye and teleporting out. Jael sighed and leaned back in her chair, rubbing wearily at one shoulder. She ached in a way she never had before, body running through the last dregs of life in her cells. Jael knew the signs better than most; she just didn't know how long she had left. Maybe a year, maybe less, maybe more.

“So much to do, so little time,” Jael murmured to herself as she got to her feet.

She was never much good at leading beyond the confines of the medical level. Whoever succeeded her would have to be. The Strykers Syndicate couldn't show weakness to the world, but neither could it show the same rigidity the old government had ruled with. It was a delicate balancing act, and she thought only one family could actually pull it all off. Pity the one they all needed wasn't even born yet.

Jael left the office, nodding at the handful of aides working in the area beyond her doors. “I'll be on the medical level if anyone needs me.”

She headed for the lift, rubbing at her temple, wishing the headache she had would go away.

 

FORTY-NINE

NOVEMBER 2379
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Jason crossed two continents and an ocean, arriving in London after two days' worth of work back west. His feet hit the floor of the small arrival room with a dull thump. Toronto was five hours behind and still working through its late afternoon. It was evening here. Sighing, Jason stepped off the wooden arrival platform. The room was painted white, but even the paint job couldn't hide how worn-out the place looked.

The door opened manually and he left the room behind, heading for the faint sound of people on the ground level. Matron and some of her scavengers were finishing their evening meal when Jason walked into the communal kitchen. The rest of her crew were still down in the southern hemisphere, cataloguing the seed bank on Antarctica. The shift change wouldn't happen for another week.

Matron looked up from the conversation she was having with Zahara in between bites of stir-fry. “You're back early. Jael like the fruit?”

“No,” Jason said.

“She just don't know what tastes good.” Matron jerked her thumb in the direction of the tenement's entrance. “If you're looking for Quinton, he's outside.”

Matron only meant one place when she said outside. Jason nodded and headed out into the chilly, late-autumn night. He was glad for the warmth of his coat, but the wind still found places to blow through, making him shiver. He crossed the cracked street for the dry expanse of St. James's Park, ducking his head against the wind. The park was a fallow patch of earth that once provided homes for transients, but not anymore. The squalor had forcibly been removed, leaving behind swathes of hard dirt and a barren lake bottom.

Jason cut west across the area. He didn't join the crowd that always gathered around the motley growth of trees and bushes that hugged one small, raised plot of dirt within the perimeter of the lake bed. Glancing over his shoulder, Jason could see the light that played across the tree branches with their brittle red-gold leaves. People were more interested in what Matron was growing with his help than the news streams that slid over the hologrids surrounding the park area, lighting up the night with neon.

Jason wasn't interested in anything except the person sitting on the worn-out cement steps surrounding a cement pillar at the other end of the park. A statue had sat on top of it once, according to records, but it was lost to history now. Jason climbed the steps at an angle, moving around the people gathered there. Everyone ignored him, which Jason appreciated as he went to sit beside Quinton. The older man nodded faintly, the only greeting Quinton gave. Jason got comfortable, watching the crowds pass them by on the street, quads mingling to try to keep the peace on the Strykers Syndicate's orders.

They didn't speak right away. They didn't need to. The bond that linked them had been cut even deeper into their minds during the fight in Paris, a casualty of the merge. It had strengthened the psi link to such a degree that not even a Class I telepath would be able to sever it now. Jason's power hummed down the length of the bond when he used his microtelekinesis, needing Quinton's mind as a stabilizing anchor.

It wasn't going to be enough in the long run; they both knew it. The stronger the psion, the shorter the psion's life, and Jason knew he had only a couple years left if he was lucky. It was the trade-off for what he could do—reconstruct everyone else's life at the cost of his own.

Despite the bond, the two couldn't read each other's mind or emotions, but they understood each other better now because of it. The antagonism that had been there months ago upon joining up for that fateful mission in the Slums of the Angels was gone, buried beneath shared experiences and shared grief.

“You have a headache,” Quinton said after a while, staring at the low skyline of London beyond the razed area where a palace once stood. It got turned into a night market over a century ago, and the cacophony of people coming out for an evening of street entertainment reached their ears.

“Same one from this morning,” Jason said. “I don't know how to block you from getting feedback.”

“It's fine.”

Gas hissed as it was released from the biotubes in Quinton's arms. He snapped his fingers, lighting it, letting the ball of fire grow to a decent size as it hovered in the air between them above their knees. The heat made the chill bearable, even if it made everyone else around them draw away out of fear, giving them space. Jason pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and pried one out, lighting it off Quinton's fire.

People around them weren't discreet in the way they gave ground to the pair of psions sitting on the steps. Without uniforms anymore to distinguish psions from the rest of the population, everyone looked human. It was hard to see the differences now that the old laws no longer applied.

Quinton tilted his head back, staring up at the cloudy sky. Jason followed his gaze, blowing smoke up into the air. “Think any of them made it?”

“I don't know,” Quinton said, mouth thinning into a flat line. “I hope not.”

In the weeks since the nuclear destruction in Paris, the Strykers Syndicate had been focused on Earth, not the stars. If any of the space shuttles made it to the
Ark,
if the
Ark
made it out of cold-dock, maybe the people who fled had survived and were headed to Mars Colony. Maybe not. The Strykers Syndicate only had access to a few working satellites, and even those could only tell them so much. Most of the government's codes and knowledge had been lost when The Hague was half-destroyed and the Peace Palace burned to the ground.