Tachyon, who had also been on the scene, made a fine little speech about how things should be handled in strict accordance with the law. Tachyon, of course, got his way since he backed up his speech by mind-controlling Brennan. Worchester, had later turned himself in to the police and copped a pea bargain that kept him out of prison. Chrysalis was dead, and Worchester had a suspended sentence. True, equitable justice.

Still, Brennan couldn't let himself brood on the past. He had another life to worry about now. Jennifer's.

For the first time, Tachyon looked down from Brennan to the gurney. "What happened?" he asked.

"Three men hit our home this morning," Brennan said shortly.

Tachyon leaned over and peeled the layers of blankets away from Jennifer. She was translucently pale, the only color about her the crimson-soaked bandage that Brennan had wrapped around her forehead.

As the ace known as Wraith, Jennifer Maloy could turn insubstantial to the physical world. She could walk through walls, sink through floors, and pass through locked doors as quietly as a ghost. But now, wounded and unconscious, her mind adrift in the uncharted depths of a black coma, there was nothing to anchor her body to the physical world. She would fade until nothing was left.

Tachyon looked up at Brennan. "We'll take her to a security room on the top floor," Tachyon said in a low voice. "I'll examine her thoroughly there."

They went down the corridor, up an elevator to the top floor, then down another corridor that was dark and obviously rarely used. The room they took Jennifer to had a steelreinforced door and thick wire mesh on the windows. Once inside, Brennan carefully lifted her onto the bed and watched anxiously as Tachyon examined her.

"Will she be all right?" Brennan finally asked after Tachyon straightened up, a distant, worried expression on his face." Her wounds," Tachyon said, "are not life-threatening. You did a good job of field-dressing them, and I can carry on from there. She should be in no danger from them." Brennan detected a hesitancy in Tachyon's voice. "She will be all right?"