Chapter 38 Sirena
I woke up sore-in-a-good-way, as opposed to the sore-from-sleeping-on-a-floor way I had the prior nights.
But the second I came to full awareness, I realized something was wrong.
The ship was still.
We’d anchored—or docked.
I lunged upright and ran to the glass to look outside. The rest of the laboratory was empty. Nex had made it sound like we had another day—where was he? Was he all right? Surely he knew we were still, too.
I waited three minutes—which was two minutes and forty-five seconds too long—before pulling the tablet Nex had given me out, attempting to shield it from the cameras overhead with my body.
True to his word, my looking at it opened it up, and he’d simplified the user interface for me, giving the screen only two buttons: Open and Off.
Open could wait. I needed Off more.
I braced, and then I tapped it.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, some visceral shock or maybe a click, but instead what I got was a slow return to normal, for me.
With the box off, it was like someone was turning up the volume of a TV show in the next room, a wave of noise that got louder and louder, until the sound was in the room with me, and then I had to throw up walls to keep it from taking me under.
“I miss her hands. God, her hands—”
“Quartermaster’s out of protein packs again. Gonna hear about it later.”
“This one’s awake. Pretty one. Looks like the others but different.”
“Bet I could sneak a vid. Just for me. Just once.”
“I hate this job. I hate this job. I hate this job—”
I hated my job too—sorting through all their noise and filth, trying to find the one mind that mattered to me, while everyone else’s thoughts kept forcing their way in.
I got glimpses through other people’s eyes, sometimes not what they really saw, but what they wanted to see.
A woman fantasizing about strangling her boss.
A man halfway to orgasm with no one watching.
Another cursing the cheap fit of the gloves in the OR.
It felt like being attacked by flies.
Buzzing. Unrelenting.
An endless swarm of thoughts with teeth, and I needed to let them all in, because I didn’t know what I was looking for, until I found him.
“Nex—Nex!” I called out through our connection. I was sure it was him—because he was dreaming of me. “Nex!” I shouted—and felt him pass from sleep to waking, where he promptly disappeared.
Then I remembered the cameras from above were still on me.
Surely he’d be able to delete them? I tried not to flash them a guilty look as the lab’s outer door hissed open.
I flung myself at the glass, then bounced back when I saw not Marek’s puppeted body, but a different scientist, a woman with short dark hair I hadn’t seen before, accompanied by two Hollows.
She was holding a stack of clothing—and a tablet of her own, which she tapped on, before snapping her fingers for the Hollows to present themselves.
The glass door began to open, and I couldn’t help but ask, “What’s happening? ” as I crowded to the back of my cage.
She glanced at her tablet. “We’re making progress,” she said loudly, then added a dour, “Apparently,” under her breath before spotting me.
And the tablet I was holding.
She was inhaling and opening her mouth to scream, when I pushed her.
Shut it! I thought at her, at full velocity. You saw nothing! I propelled in her direction, and saw her shoulders drop and her eyes go slack.
Then Nex ran in. He was wearing the clothes he had on yesterday, and he grabbed a lab stool as he passed it, prepared to club the woman.
I waved a frantic hand at him. “I’ve got things—if you’ve got things?” I said, pointing up at the cameras.
“Yes,” he said, putting the stool down cautiously.
“What happened?” I demanded, edging out from around the Hollows, who’d gone just as slack as the woman commanding them.
“I downloaded everything I could to Xen. Then I falsified data until . . .” His voice drifted, and surprise crossed his face. “I think I fell asleep.”
I shook my head. “I warned you.”
“You did.”
At least he already knew I was always right. Mostly. “Okay. More importantly—why have we stopped?”
Nex looked around, and I saw him feel it for the first time—he’d been moving too fast to realize it prior. His eyes glazed over, and his gaze darted off.
“Oh no,” he said softly, as I walked over to the woman.
She was still holding the clothing, clearly meant for me—and I’d rather wear almost anything than the hospital gown I’d been trapped in for days. “What?” I asked him over my shoulder, pulling the cleanly pressed shirt on.
“The ETA we had was tied to the final bidding. We’re already at Vermeil.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking quickly. “What’s that change?”
“There are four other yachts, comparable in size to this one, in the harbor. Several contain armed helicopters, two submersibles, one with a visible drone bay, and another with a signal-masked skiff.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. They came armed—and ready to play. There’s a . . . a . . . test later.”
I tugged the leggings that matched the shirt up. “That sounds like a euphemism.”
“It is. He’s . . . showing you off.”
That made me pause. “How much data did you give him?”
“Enough for him to think his experiment worked.”
I finished pulling on the leggings much more slowly, as Nex’s attention waxed and waned, while he went through data.
“But, it didn’t—did it?” I pressed.
He returned to me and shook his head. “No. I deleted everything I could and created a recursive virus to slowly degrade the rest.”
“Then why do you look so nervous?”
“Because you’re supposed to be compliant now.” He picked up the tablet from the woman’s hands. “That’s what she was trying to dial up. Your behavioral quotient.”
I triple-blinked. “Define that?”
“This woman was supposed to collect you and take you to the hair salon on board here. They’re going to clean you up, and then show you off to the bidders this afternoon.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “So why are you making that face?”
“Because compliant is the one thing you are definitely not,” he said, looking at me with a mixture of love and concern.
I stepped up to him and caught his head in my hands. “I’m a woman. I can fake it,” I promised him.
“Are . . . you . . . sure?” he asked me—and I let my face go as slack as the woman whose bearing I’d just hijacked.
Every time I’d waited at the DMV for hours without explanation.
Every time I’d smiled through a dentist cleaning while they scolded me for not flossing.
Every time a man explained blockchain, Nietzsche, or the importance of his fantasy football draft—
I channeled all of it.
And I went still.
Nex clocked the change. “All right. I’m feeling better about this plan now.”
“What I need from you is for you to tell me what Voss expects, since I won’t be controlled by this thing. Will you be able to intercept his commands, and then hold them clearly in your mind? So that I can pretend to follow them?”
“Of course—but does that mean you can read me? Right now?”
I lifted my hand and waggled it. “I could . . . but I’m trying not to.”
“Why?”
“Because it feels rude.”
“Is it?” he asked, and I laughed.
“I don’t know, Nex—I’ve never really done this before,” I said, drawing an imaginary line between me and him.
“Well, I don’t care if it’s rude or not. I only want whatever keeps you safe.” He put out his hand. “And I always want to know what you’re thinking—so it would be unfair to deny you the same.”
I gave him a soft smile as I took his hand. “Just keep thinking louder than the rest of them, okay?”
“How do I do that?” he asked, looking panicked.
“Just keep being in love with me,” I said, rising up on my toes to kiss his cheek. “Now,” I said, surveying the woman I’d stopped. “Should you be here when I wake her up, or not?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay, then. I’m good for a bit. There’s tangles in my hair that’ll take hours to get out.
Go take a shower and do some Marek things—and eat, please?
Believe me, the person who’s worn flesh her whole life, on the frailties of the human body?
” I said with a tease. “I need you at your best condition for this to work.”
“Having to sleep for a third of the day is incredibly inefficient.”
“So is love, yet here we both still are,” I said, shooing him away. “You fix the cameras; I’ll fix this.” I tilted my head at the woman.
He stepped back to do as he was told, and then hesitated. “I do love you. One hundred percent,” he said with a room-illuminating smile.
“You should be more worried about you giving something away, from you looking at me like that,” I said, laughing. “But I love you, one hundred percent, too.”