The Council thought the populace didn’t know, and perhaps they didn’t. But to Sophia, a J who’d spent her life steeped in the miasma of evil, the new shadows in the PsyNet had a texture she could almost feel—thick, oily, and beginning to riddle the fabric of the sprawling neural network with insidious efficiency.

“And you?” Max asked, watching her with a piercing focus that made her feel as if that quicksilver mind might uncover secrets she’d kept concealed for over two decades. “What about you?”

The otherness in her stirred, wanting to give him the unvarnished, deadly truth, but that was something she couldn’t ever share with a man who’d made Justice his life. “I’ll do my job.” Then she said something a perfect Psy never would have said. “We’ll bring them home. No one should have to spend eternity in the cold dark.”

Max watched Sophia Russo walk away with the civilian observers, unable to take his attention off her. It had been the eyes that had first slammed into him. River’s eyes, he’d thought as she walked in, she had River’s eyes. But he’d been wrong. Sophia’s eyes were darker, more dramatically blue-violet, so vivid he’d almost missed the lush softness of her mouth. Except he hadn’t.

And that was one hell of a kick to the teeth.

Because for all her curves and the tracery of scars that spoke of a violent past, she was Psy. Ice-cold and tied to a Council that had far more blood on its hands than Gerard Bonner ever would. Except . . . Her final words circled in his mind.

We’ll bring them home.

It had held the weight of a vow. Or maybe that’s what he’d wanted to hear.