Because while the Forgotten had once been as Psy as those who looked to the Council for leadership, time and intermarriage with the other races had changed things in their genetic structure. Strange new abilities had begun to appear . . . but so had strange new diseases.

But that wasn’t the threat he had to assess today.

If they were right, the unknown woman in the hospital bed in front of him was linked to the PsyNet itself. That made her beyond dangerous—a Trojan horse, her mind used as a conduit through which to siphon data or implement deadly strategies.

The last spy stupid enough to try to infiltrate Shine had discovered the lethal truth far too late—that Devraj Santos had never left his military background behind. Now, as he looked down into the woman’s bruised, scratched, and emaciated face, he considered whether he’d be able to snap her neck with cold-blooded precision should the time come.

He was afraid the answer might just be an icily practical yes.

Chilled, he was about to leave the room when he noticed her eyes moving rapidly beneath her lids. “Psy,” he murmured, “aren’t supposed to dream.”

“Tell me.”

She swallowed the blood on her tongue. “I’ve told you everything. You’ve taken everything.”

Eyes as black as night with a bare few flecks of white stared down at her as mental fingers spread in her mind, thrusting, clawing, destroying. She swallowed a scream, bit another line in her tongue.

“Yes,” her torturer said. “It does seem as if I’ve stripped you of all your secrets.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t relax. He’d done this before. So many times. But the next minute, the questions would begin again. She didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t know what he searched for. All she knew was that she’d broken. There was nothing left in her now. She was cracked, shattered, gone.