Chapter 54 Nex
Luckily, everyone who knew Marek was scared of him—so when someone else tried to join me in Kelly’s lab and I shouted, they scurried away like rats.
I’d swept the lab’s cluttered countertop clean with one arm and laid out my stolen parts like I was prepping for surgery: disassembled sensors from the command deck, a pressure-reactive implant shell from the medbay, the shattered husk of a receiver from the detainment wing.
Voss’s transmitter hadn’t just been mechanical—it had biological redundancies, authentication loops tied to his heartbeat and sweat pH, a quantum salt handshake from the leash to the implant core.
And none of that was standardized. All of it was locked behind proprietary garbage.
Which meant I had to rebuild it. From memory. From inference. From scratch.
I didn’t have blueprints, and I didn’t have time—but I had motive.
I rerouted the lab’s power grid into a closed circuit to prevent remote interference. Boosted the table’s ventilation fans. Rewrote the firmware on the desk’s diagnostic pad so I could use it to run simultaneous voltage and biofeedback tests.
Each component I cannibalized sparked like a confession.
There were no backups and there would be no retries.
If I got this wrong, Sirena would die.
If I got it right, I was giving control of her leash to a disembodied head with a superiority complex and a porn addiction.
Some days there were no good choices.
I modified the core with a sublingual contact plate, embedding the power node behind an osmotic membrane, then force-bonded the receiver array with a synthetic polymer I’d invented five seconds ago and hoped would work.
I was sweating now—not from heat, but from processor load. I could feel my body staggering to keep up with my thoughts, my hands three steps behind my mind. Diagnostics ran as I worked. Code scrolled across the screen behind me.
I didn’t have time to breathe. Only time to build.
I was almost done.
If it worked, if I could match the transmission frequency from the leash protocol, and if Kelly could maintain physiological continuity, then Voss could try to transfer Sirena to anyone he wanted.
I’d be ready to steal her back.
“You feel that?” Kelly asked, from his spot beside my work table, where I’d placed him on a stack of laptops. He’d been smart enough not to mouth off when I was concentrating, and I knew in his own odd way, he loved Sirena too.
“What?” I asked—then I noticed that the ship’s engines had stopped running.
Not idling. Not stalled. Dead.
I checked power relays and routing commands, and—nothing. Then I flicked to camera feeds—engine-room level—and found her.
Sirena.
She was standing barefoot on a slick metal walkway, surrounded by stunned engineering staff, her eyes alight with that terrible, beautiful clarity, and singing.
I assessed the damage quickly: manual disconnects thrown. Fuel lines were clamped. Valves were shut.
I should’ve been angry. She should’ve been hiding. Waiting. Staying protected.
My chest went tight—but not from fear.
Because of her.
Because she was brave. And terrifying.
And more unstoppable than anyone was ready for.
I braced my hands on the edge of the table. My mouth parted like I needed oxygen.
“I love you,” I whispered—no one there to hear it but Kelly.
“You’re welcome,” he muttered anyway. “How’s it going?”
I didn’t look up. “Power cell’s stable. Thermal output within range. Frequency sync holding at ninety-nine point eight percent.”
Kelly made an impressed noise. “So we’re doing this?”
“This part should work,” I said, and ran another check on the receiver stack. “The plate stays in contact, the gel transmits, and you stay technically alive—it’s just the transfer over that’s indeterminate.”
Kelly waggled his eyebrows. “Sounds hot.”
I ignored him and tabbed over to the bid ledger, putting the ones that had come in on the screen behind me.
Four of the five contenders had already submitted preliminary access grants—private asset flags, escrow lockouts, rapid-deploy payment tunnels.
Bidder One had just liquidated a chunk of a mineral rights conglomerate in Antarctica.
Bidder Two uploaded a signed contract for full control of a private orbital defense satellite.
Bidder Three had just liquidated their stake in a helium-3 refinery off the Mare Marginis.
Bidder Four offered control codes to a private weather modification array—still active and currently cloud-seeding North Africa.
And Bidder Five just sent a picture of a cocktail napkin with the letters IOU written on it by hand.
I blinked once. Then twice.
“Jesus,” Kelly said. “I’ve seen black-market organ deals that felt more aboveboard.”
I had not. Regardless, the wealthy men were on their way back in their boats and helicopters, to see who’d won.
“We ready?” Kelly asked, as I activated the microthermal sealant field and watched the polymer casing fuse shut around the modified receiver.
The bio-reactive gel shimmered once, confirming synaptic continuity.
A low chime followed as the handshake protocol initialized—contact plate active, vitals nominal.
I used a precision weld to close the housing seam. No margin for error. No access point for failure.
Then I tapped in the final lockout sequence—triple-encrypted, bio-bound, non-reversible.
I held the device aloft for a final diagnostic sweep—everything green. No vibration. No heat bleed. No latency spikes.
“Yes,” I said, straightening up.
I held the device steady as Kelly opened his mouth, tongue out like a child demanding communion. I placed the capsule beneath it—carefully, precisely—letting it settle into the cradle of his mouth, nestled against vascular tissue, where the bio-reactive gel could maintain constant contact.
The capsule shimmered faintly. Sync: light green. No spark, no flare. Just quiet confirmation: connection achieved.
Kelly smirked around it, tongue flexing slightly. “Tastes like victory.”
“Keep it there,” I told him, already turning back to my console. “It’s keyed to you now.”
Then the phone in my pocket buzzed—but I already knew what the message was.
Get on deck with the girl. Now. From Voss’s executive assistant.
“It’s time,” I told Kelly, standing and winding my fingers into his hair.