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off Colonel Metting’s throat and out of his fucking mind, or I’ll drop you. Last warning.”
    Sarah flinched.
    Trembled.
    Her hate-filled gaze held Richard’s, then dimmed to a resigned emptiness that devastated him. Her hands slid from his neck. Her rage faded from their connection. As one, they fell to her bunk. Richard cradled her to his body, too weak to do more as she began to seize.
    “Get the recovery meds over here,” he ordered over the shock of feeling her mind slipping away.

C HAPTER E IGHT
     
    “We’re getting closer with every projection,” the raspy voice said over the scrambled connection. “Her mind is becoming even more unstable. That’s worth whatever risks today’s episode presented.”
    “Not if the Temples self-destruct before you get what you want,” he said.
    “They won’t. Keep reporting on schedule, and we’ll take care of the rest from our end.”
    “Metting’s been absorbed into the dream,” he said. “The Brotherhood’s on alert because of the leaks.” Developments that he had no doubt were connected.
    “Degrading Alpha’s condition to allow the dream to take control is the only matter you need be concerned with,” the voice said. “Dr. Metting’s interference is a variable we’ve already anticipated. His involvement tonight preserved Alpha for the next simulation. One more ocean projection will be all we need. Your job is to make sure that next dream happens, and then give us the details to control it.”
    “The elders know she’s capable of projection beyond Metting’s control. You won’t get another chance.”
    “Of course we will,” the voice insisted. “The dreampatterns are in place. Her psychic strength is growing. Metting will champion her legacy. The council will be greedy enough to want more power at their command. Alpha is primed to reach for Trinity without Madeline to stabilize her. Once she does, the direction of the Temple Legacy will return to the center for good.”
    “Control will return to the child, you mean.”
    A circumstance he couldn’t allow to happen. Nor could he permit the Temples’ abilities to grow any further beyond Watcher safeguards.
    “The child’s actions are under our guidance,” the voice assured him. “Her devotion to the work she’s begun is unshakable. Her motivation is strong, if a bit immature. She’ll handle Alpha’s impending psychic break as skillfully as she’s caused it. Trinity will be ready to take advantage when Sarah herself initiates their next dream contact.”
    “ ‘The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world . . . ,’ ” he quoted.
    He swallowed his disgust at his own part in using a six-year-old girl to wage psychic battle.
    But Metting had lost his perspective. He’d left the Brotherhood irreparably vulnerable. If that meant staging a center victory in order to draw the Brotherhood into a battle they’d already have won if Metting had allowed the twins to be terminated along with Tad Ruebens—then so be it.
    “We’re making the world a safer place for all children,” insisted his center contact.
    This was the same shortsighted idiot who’d believed a Watcher could be lured into betraying his brothers with promises of fortune and a position of power withinthe government’s psychic testing program. For now, he’d play along. But he had his own agenda, no matter the sacrifice.
    “Realigning the twins with Trinity’s maturing abilities,” his contact said, “creates the capacity to protect all the world’s innocents from whatever evil strikes. The Temple Legacy’s promise can’t be allowed to languish because your council is too timid to take advantage of their potential.”
    The Temple Legacy had foretold of the arrival of psychic twins whose gifts would preclude the arrival of an even more powerful mind—Trinity’s. Augmenting the twins’ psychic abilities with Trinity’s mastery of Dream Weaver technology would allow the center to implant lucid