Page 175 of Interion

“Continue.”

“So... I got curious about her case. You know how I am—I love secrets.” I rolled my eyes. Of course he did; gossip was his specialty. “Yes, and thanks to my gossip, your little friend is alive—if we can even call her a friend. She has conflicting thoughts about you, but I understand.”

“What? Adele? What happened, Serguei? For the love of the gods, someone tell me what happened. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

I paced back and forth across the room. Kiara walked alongside me.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you. I don’t have much time either. We’re about to start the hunt,” he said, his tone hard and unyielding.

I shuddered at that new tone, then sat down and fidgeted with a cushion.

“You were thinking about Adele, about the signs of violence. So I searched for her mind’s frequency, but guess what? I found nothing!”

“What do you mean? What frequency?” I asked, surprised.

“Every mind without a barrier emits a frequency. Thoughts and emotions create their own vibration, almost like a mental fingerprint. That’s how I locate people. But when I searched for the white girl, I couldn’t find her vibration. I had to push my power harder, filtering through everything just to find traces of her mind. When I finally found her, I realized she had a mental barrier—one made by a skilled psychic. I entered her head while she was on her way home. She was terrified, thinking about grabbing her sister and fleeing Interion. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess, so I dug deeper and discovered blocked memories. Memories of violence. Whoever committed the crimes had erased all the events and left only the fear.”

My brain short-circuited. I couldn’t even form a single thought.

“From the memory fragments, I discovered she has an uncle. A level 700 psychic who works in the criminal division—the abuse, rape, and torture section.”

I frowned. The uncle worked in the criminal division, so he could help Adele. He knew what was happening. He certainly... no...

It couldn’t be.

“Cruel, isn’t it?” This time, he sounded disturbed. “Ivanov’s job is to read the minds of victims and criminals. But reading minds is dangerous. When you absorb other people’s memories, they become yours too. It’s a double-edged sword. A psychic already prone to violence can develop a taste for violent acts themselves. It’s called Thacker syndrome.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but it seems the violence started when she was sixteen. It got worse a year ago, when her sister came to live here too. It’s hard to piece together because I couldn’t unblock Adele’s memories. Every time he committed an act, he immediately manipulated her mind so she’d forget everything. Tampering with those memories is extremely dangerous—I could cause irreversible damage.”

“But...” My gods, I was in shock. “Why didn’t she tell someone? Why didn’t she ask for help?”

“She did. She tried to tell her mother, but the woman called her a liar—Ivanov is her brother, and he already knew how to manipulate her mind. She couldn’t go to the police because the man was the department chief. She even asked a teacher named Selene for help, but Ivanov erased the teacher’s memories. So when her sister arrived, she gave up fighting. Either she stayed quiet, or he’d start doing the same to the little one.”

By the gods.

I felt like my mind was crumbling. What I’d suspected was already bad enough, but this? I was floored. What Adele had suffered... I couldn’t even imagine. Nausea hit me. It only got worse when I remembered the day we got into trouble, how she’d looked at Ivanov with fear. What she’d said when I suggested she could end up behind bars: “Seems like a good place to me.” Gods! She would have preferred prison to being with him. I remembered how she’d asked for Serguei to be the psychic who would investigate us, how her eyes had been desperate for it not to be Ivanov. That was a cry for help, and no one saw it. The smell of blood, the dark circles under her eyes... It was all there, but no one noticed. Actually, I had noticed, but I hadn’t cared enough to understand. No one approached, no one questioned, and no one cared. I didn’t care. The bitter taste of guilt flooded my mouth.

“Don’t blame yourself, girl. He controlled everything in her life—monitored every thought she had, every word that left her mouth. Ivanov was so twisted that he put mental shields in her mind so no one could see her, so she’d be practically invisible to any psychic. His plans were flawless. There was no way to help someone who was a ghost.”

“So what happened? Why is she in the hospital?”

“When she got home, he was waiting for her with an iron rod. I won’t tell you what happened—I can sense your mind is unstable. Just know that I protected her mind, and for the first time, she was able to fight back. Her nails tore up Ivanov’s face so badly that not even you could fix it. But in the end, he managed to retaliate and break some of her bones. I intervened a few minutes into the fight. I broke through his mental barrier, and if I’d been close enough, I could have stopped him. But distance weakens my gift, and since he’s a psychic, he managed to keep control. I only scared him enough to make him flee. Right now, we’re preparing a squad to go into the sewers after him.”

“And Zion’s going with them,” I concluded, thinking about how quickly he’d rushed out of the house. “But can’t Zion just materialize near Ivanov and get him out of there?”

“He could, if he knew the sewers, but he doesn’t. Zion can only materialize in places he’s already been, so he’ll have to search just like anyone else.”

I sighed.

“Why don’t you kill him yourself?” Normally, it was psychics who dealt with other psychics.

“Blood pact. I don’t have authorization to kill.”

I frowned, even more confused. What about the 5% massacre? That wasn’t a myth. When Serguei killed Ravena, he’d emerged from the tunnels and started the slaughter. He’d actually done it—there were books and reports about the killings.

“That’s exactly why: Elitium placed a killing restriction on me.”