Chapter 28 Mattie #3
"These same four soldiers pulled Tarik off me in the bar because they were afraid of consequences.
Nothing had fundamentally changed between then and the harbor, so why did they suddenly decide to ambush us in broad daylight and in front of witnesses?
" He held her gaze. "Petrov thinks they didn't decide that. He thinks Dave compelled them."
The air left her lungs.
"Dave made them attack us?"
"Dave needed a justification to eliminate them.
Those four were a threat to you because they were Tarik's friends, and Dave killed Tarik the day before because he posed a clear threat to you.
I don't doubt that they figured out the connection between his execution and what he did to you and almost did to me. They might’ve not touched me for the same reason they'd pulled Tarik off me, but you were fair game, and they might have sought vengeance for the death of their friend.
As long as they were alive, they were dangerous.
But Dave couldn't kill them unprovoked."
"So, he made them create the provocation first."
"That's Petrov's theory. And it would explain why the Eight were close enough to respond within seconds. They were already in position, either following us or following the four, waiting for the attack Dave knew was coming because Dave had engineered it."
Mattie looked down at her bandaged hand.
If Petrov was right, her crushed and broken hand was collateral damage in Dave's chess game. He'd engineered a scenario that put her directly in the path of four enraged immortals so that the Eight would have an excuse to execute them. He'd used her and Dimitri as bait, and she'd paid the price.
The anger came hot and sudden, flushing through her chest.
"He let this happen to me." She raised her bandaged hand slightly. "He set up the whole thing, knowing I could get hurt, and this is what it cost."
"I know." Dimitri's jaw was tight. "Believe me, I've been thinking about that all night."
"He gave me that phone. Told me to call if I needed help. And then he arranged for me to need it."
"We don't know for certain. It's Petrov's theory—"
"But the logic is sound. You said so yourself."
Dimitri didn't deny it.
Mattie let the anger burn through her for a moment, then forced herself to think past it. Anger was a luxury she couldn't afford. Not here, not on this island where every decision was a calculation and every misstep could be fatal.
Because underneath the fury, there was a harder truth that she couldn't ignore.
Dave had eliminated every single immortal who posed a threat to her.
Tarik was dead. His heart ripped from his chest. The monster who had attacked her in the bar, and had bitten Dimitri and nearly killed him, was dead.
Tarik's four friends were also dead.
The ones who had surrounded her at the harbor, the ones who had stomped on her hand with all the weight of an immortal body, who had come with violence in their eyes and murder on their minds.
They were all dead, while she and Dimitri were alive.
Dave was brutal and ruthless and manipulative, but she owed her life to them.
"The question is why Dave did that," Dimitri said. "Petrov thinks they are in love with you."
She frowned. "In love with me?"
"His words, not mine."
"Dave. The eight-bodied merged consciousness that shows no individual emotions is in love with me."
"I told you that's what Petrov suggested."
"Petrov needs to lay off the vodka."
Dimitri huffed a laugh. "That's essentially what I told him."
She shook her head, but her mind was picking the idea apart. "He or they are not in love with me, Dimitri. They are not protecting me because they love me. They are protecting me because of you."
Dimitri nodded. "I agree."
"Without you, the Eight don't get the drugs they need to keep their sanity. They need you and Petrov to calibrate their doses, monitor their chemistry, and adjust the compounds when something shifts. If the Eight lose you or Petrov, they lose their lifeline."
He didn't interrupt. He just watched her with that quiet intensity that meant she had his full attention.
"And if you lose me," she continued, "what happens to you?
Dave must have concluded that you would sink into depression and stop caring about the work, maybe stop functioning altogether.
Dave is smart enough to understand that your emotional stability depends on me being alive and safe.
" She met his eyes. "I'm not the asset. I'm the asset's infrastructure. Dave is protecting his supply chain."
"That's exactly what I told Petrov," he said.
"Then we agree."
"We do." He paused. "Mostly."
"Mostly?"
He was quiet for a moment, his gaze drifting toward the stairwell at the end of the hall, then back to her. "Your reasoning is sound. It's probably the primary explanation. But I have a feeling there's more to it."
"Like what?"
"I can't put my finger on it." He shook his head.
"Dave is something that has never existed before.
A consciousness born from the merging of eight separate minds, running on drugs that we designed to stabilize the merge, but that may have had effects we never anticipated.
Applying human labels like love is probably wrong, but assuming that his behavior can be fully explained by cold calculation is probably wrong, too.
He's evolving, Mattie. Every day, I see something in the Eight that wasn't there the day before.
What if the merged consciousness has developed something that we don't have a word for?
Something that's not love and not calculation, but some third thing that we can't understand because nothing like Dave has ever existed before? "
She didn't have an answer for that, and the question unsettled her.
Dave was their protector. Dave was also, possibly, their puppeteer. And somewhere in the gap between those two roles lay something none of them understood.
"Whatever Dave's reasons are," she said, "we need him. And he needs you. That's the equation we work with."
"I agree."
He took her good hand, and the warmth of the simple touch was soothing, pulling her back from the murky territory of Dave's unknowable mind to the solid, immediate reality of Dimitri beside her.
She leaned toward him, intending to kiss him, when the sound of the intercom announced Dave.
Petrov buzzed them in, and as the reinforced door opened, eight pairs of footsteps followed, perfectly synchronized, like a single heartbeat distributed across sixteen boots. The sound filled the stairwell and drifted up through the hallway.
Dave had arrived for his shots.
Dimitri's hand tightened on hers for just a moment. Then he let go of her and stood.
"They are early," he said. "I need to go."
"I know." She looked up at him, searching his face, and found calm determination where she'd expected to see dread. "Be careful. If Petrov is right about what happened at the harbor, Dave already knows more than we think. He'll know if you're lying."
Dimitri leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I'll be downstairs. If you need anything, call me."
"Go." She gave him a small push with her good hand. "Go take care of our eight-bodied protector. And try not to say anything that gets us killed."
He managed a smile at that, but it didn't reach his eyes.