"I disagree. Faith NightStar has a mind as powerful as Enrique's and she's been giving us highly accurate predictions since she was three years old. No other foreseer has been as productive or as accurate. During her entire lifespan, she's shown no symptoms of mental deterioration and as an F-designation cardinal, she's been under extremely close observation."

"Ming makes a good point," Marshall broke in. "It may be that Faith is the safest choice after Enrique. At least we know she's not psychotic at this stage, and the monitoring she'll continue to need while doing forecasts as a Councilor will ensure any changes are immediately picked up."

"Whoever we choose, we need to confirm a successor soon." Ming's psychic voice was resolute. "I've prepared a comprehensive report on Faith NightStar." He showed them the mental storage shelf within the Council chambers.

"Does anyone else want to suggest a candidate?"

"Another possibility is Kaleb Krychek," Shoshanna responded. "He's a cardinal Tk and part of the Council ranks. I'm placing the files on him beside the ones on Faith. You'll note that his control over his telekenetic abilities is reputed to be superb."

"Kaleb is younger than I am," Tatiana pointed out, "and he's already nearly at the top. I'd say that makes him a better choice than Faith - aside from being incredibly young even compared to Kaleb and myself, she's been isolated. She won't have the capacity to survive being Council."

"I disagree." Nikita wasn't convinced of Faith's suitability either, but she was certain of the threat presented by Krychek. "Kaleb's risen to the top despite his youth. That displays a single-minded determination that might make him susceptible to the same kind of sociopathy as Enrique."

"We're all power hungry to some extent," Tatiana retorted.

"However, you may be correct in this instance - we may need a less aggressive Councilor to soothe the populace."

"The chosen candidate also needs to have the power to last." Shoshanna again. "If we go through two Councilors in a short time frame, it may undermine everything."

"Shoshanna's correct." There was no longer anything in Marshall's tone that hinted of partisanship. "Look over the files. We'll meet tomorrow and set up a timetable for evaluation meetings with both candidates. Unless any of you have a third suggestion?"

"Not so much a suggestion as something we need to keep in mind." Shoshanna's mind blazed with power. "There have been no M-Psy on the Council for the last two generations. Perhaps we need to remedy that. It might serve to keep us from unknowingly taking another Enrique into our midst."

For once, Nikita agreed with the rival Councilor. "The other option is to mandate M-Psy checkups for the entire Council."

"It would be much more confidential if the medic were one of us." Henry.

"But it would also give that Councilor too much power in comparison to the rest of us." Nikita didn't like the idea of any of her fellow Councilors being privy to her body or her mind.

"I concur." Tatiana Rika-Smythe. "An M-Psy should be considered for inclusion, but as a representative of that designation, not our caretaker."

"What about the NetMind? F and Tk are the two specialties that control it best," Henry pointed out.

"That's something we can consider in the final stages of evaluation." Ming, the most Silent of the six and the one Nikita knew the least about. "Does anyone else have a suggestion?"

It was Marshall who answered, but not directly on topic. "It's a pity we lost Sienna Lauren. She showed great potential."

"That was unfortunate," Ming agreed. "I had my eye on her as a possible protegee."

Which could only mean, Nikita surmised, that Sienna Lauren had been born with the mental combat abilities that made Ming so deadly. "Given the Lauren family's tendency to break conditioning, rehabilitation was the logical response. They would still be alive if they hadn't attempted to circumvent our judgment."

"Of course," Ming said.

"In terms of M-Psy," Nikita continued, "Gia Khan on the Indian subcontinent has proven very useful in undertaking Council matters."

A small pause as the others scanned the basic files on Khan.

"She looks like a possibility. Let's add her to the candidate list along with Kaleb and Faith." Marshall.

"What about the aspirants? Anyone we need to take seriously?" Shoshanna.

"No. There are a few who think they're powerful enough, but if they were, one of us would be dead by now." Tatiana knew what she was talking about - she'd ascended to the Council when the Councilor who'd held her place, Michael Bonneau, had had an unfortunate "accident" while alone in his home with his most senior aide, Tatiana.

"Then we're agreed. Kaleb Krychek, Gia Khan, or Faith NightStar."

Chapter 3

Faith had never left the compound on her own. They'd put her inside twenty-one years ago, telling her that her mind couldn't survive in the outside world, that the visions would come too thick and fast if she lived closely with others. She'd had no reason to disbelieve them and over the years, her home had become her chosen prison, a place she rarely left.

But today, she was going to go out into the unknown. Her conscious mind had finally understood what it was that her subconscious had spent months preparing her for - a search for answers. It was clear to her that to find those answers, she had to speak to someone who had nothing to do with either the Psy Council or NightStar. Both her PsyClan and the Council had vested interests. They wouldn't tell her what she most needed to know - whether these dark visions were the first stirrings of an inevitable madness, or whether they indicated something far more treacherous: the awakening of a facet of her ability she had no desire to face.

Though she lived in almost complete isolation, she knew everything she needed to know for this journey. There was no way to block the highways of the PsyNet from flowing with information that buzzed in the real world. Gossip had a way of infiltrating even the strongest defenses. That gossip had brought her news of a Psy who'd dropped out of the Net.

Sascha Duncan.

The Council had made it known that Sascha was a fundamentally flawed cardinal too weak to hold the Net link, a link that provided biofeedback no Psy could live without. And yet Sascha had survived.

The renegade Psy was the only person Faith could come up with who'd have nothing to gain by lying, nothing to lose by telling the complete truth. Everyone else was linked to the PsyNet. Therefore everyone else could betray her, whether it was by choice or by accident. Sascha was the one. It was logical.

She preferred not to remember the dream she'd had a few weeks ago in which she'd seen the face of a leopard staring back at her with feral hunger, preferred not to try to understand what her ability was attempting to tell her. Because sometimes, too much foreknowledge was a curse.

Leaving the compound was going to be difficult, but not impossible. The PsyClan guards were interested in keeping people out. No one had ever thought that Faith would attempt an escape. Taking a deep breath, she slung on the small backpack then calmly opened her back door and walked out into the night.

She knew precisely where she was going. There was a very small section of the outer fence that fell into a blind spot of the motion sensors and wasn't quite covered by the sweeping cameras. It had probably not even seemed like a weakness to NightStar Security. No criminal would ever be able to work out the exact location, and the live guards ensured that that part was under near constant surveillance, especially since many of the guards also had the ability to tele-pathically scan the area.

Faith had figured out how to deflect the scanners years ago, boredom and isolation proving fertile ground for invention. More importantly, she was certain she could climb the fence in the short window of time after one guard went around the corner and before the other started to turn. She knew that because two months ago, she'd suddenly started coming out here at night and doing exactly that, going over the fence and then back into the compound without alerting anyone.

She'd thought she was doing it because she needed a challenge. Of course, with an F-Psy of her capabilities, nothing was ever that easy. Tonight, it took her ten minutes to walk the distance from the back door to the part of the outer fence she was aiming for - the inner fence had never presented her with any real problems. Her eyes picked up the form of a guard turning the corner on her right. A second guard would appear ten seconds later with Psy precision. She started climbing, silent and careful.

Vaughn crouched on a large branch overhanging the compound that continued to fascinate him. He'd intended to infiltrate it tonight and find out what lay behind the compu-tronic and Psy security. But that was no longer necessary -  his prey was coming to him.

Her hair was a red flame despite the darkness and part of him wanted to growl at her for being stupid enough not to cover or contain the waist-length mass, but another part of him was impressed by the quick, almost catlike way she scaled the fence. She didn't hesitate, didn't look around. It was as if she'd done it a hundred times.

Landing on the forest side, she walked in a straight line from the fence and into the surrounding trees until she was hidden from the sight of the guard now turning the corner. Vaughn padded along the treetops and came to rest almost on top of her as she paused to pull something from her pack.

A small light from her watch soon illuminated what appeared to be a computer printout of the surrounding area - a crude map that showed nothing of changeling routes or territorial markers. After a minute, she folded it up and put it back in her pack. Then she started walking. If he'd been in human form, he would've frowned. She was heading deeper into DarkRiver territory rather than toward Tahoe.

She wouldn't get very far on foot, but there was something about her that made the fur on the back of his neck rise. As a sentinel, he was used to trusting his instincts and this time they said that this woman had to be watched. Carefully. Very, very carefully.