Chapter 43
What is taking her so long?
A sound reverberates through the corridor. He stops pacing to stare down the dark hallway. Was that his name or his imagination? Probably his lovesick mind replaying an echo of her crying out his name in pleasure.
Still, his nerves fire. He marches down the hallway toward the locker rooms, pausing before the door to listen. It’s quiet on the other side of the door. “Electra?”
He bangs on the door, impatiently pushing it open. He can apologize to anyone he bursts in on later. “Electra?” he calls, poking his head around the stalls and showers.
She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone.
With every step, the words ricochet in his mind.
She left you. You told her you love her and she left.
She probably thinks you’re love bombing her like Jerme did to 3Zeez, and placated you long enough to get away.
There’s something wrong with you. There was something wrong with Jerme. You’re not enough—
He pauses his frantic search, throwing open the steam room door. A cloud of hot steam hits him in the face, cutting his downward spiral short.
She said she loved him back, right? He replays the last hour over in his mind. Move, she said. Oh God, and Res6. But never I love you too. His back hits the slick tile wall, the steam saturating his already damp shirt. Gravity suddenly doubles, dragging him down. She never said it back.
She doesn’t love him. Maybe he was too desperate for her. Not a swoon-worthy enough hero for Dear Electra, giving himself over to her the way he did.
But would she really have slipped out of the back exit to avoid him? That didn’t seem like her, especially after what they shared. Even if she doesn’t return his love, she wouldn’t do that. She said she would come home. That everything would be fine.
He races to the front desk. Zorg, is he being paranoid?
The neatly dressed woman behind the counter takes in his wet shirt and otherwise disheveled appearance and grimaces in distaste. “Can I help you?”
He plants his hands on the countertop. “The woman I came in with—did you see her leave?”
She tucks thick strands of her light blue hair behind her ears and glances uninterestedly at the sliding glass doors. “It’s not my job to track people as they leave.”
He fights his rising irritation. “Do you have access to the security footage?” She stares, blinking as if his presence is equally irritating. “Can you tell if the emergency exit alarm was disabled? Or if anyone left through a back exit?”
Her stare tracks to the hallway to her right. “There’s an employee exit. Look, is this some type of game? People ask for all sorts of weird scenarios, and I’d rather not get involved.”
“What? A game? No, I think there’s been an abduction.
” The claim sounds crazy as he makes it.
But it feels right. Electra didn’t leave him.
She may not have said she loved him, but she said she would never abandon him like that again since she knew his history.
She’s too good of a person, and he has to trust her.
That means only one thing. Someone has taken her.
Intrigued, the attendant leans forward. “There’s security footage.” She motions her hand over the palm scanner at the simulation chamber’s system control station. Her gaze darts back and forth across the screens, as colorful lights illuminate her pale skin with a rainbow of blues and greens.
“You might want to come around to look at this,” she says.
He moves around the counter to stand beside her.
“The one with the freckles. That’s her, right?” she asks, pausing on a video of them coming in over an hour ago.
He nods.
“We don’t video inside for obvious reasons, but there is surveillance at every exit point.
” She pulls up another window, playing a time-lapse of the video.
Two men in jumpsuits and ID Scramble-Tech visors stand outside an emergency exit in a nondescript service hallway.
The taller of the two scans the hall. Then he looks directly into the camera.
There’s no sound, but he clearly mouths, Shit.
He turns away from the camera, takes the visor off, and presses a few buttons on the side.
He appears to put the visor back on like a headband—it must not be working—and plucks his device out of his pocket.
Since the man’s back is still facing the camera, Res6 can’t see what he’s doing, but the camera goes dark a second later.
“How did he do that?” the attendant asks.
“A scrambler app. I assume those men don’t work here.”
She shakes her head.
“Send me that video. Quickly.” His brisk tone makes her jump.
Thankfully, she doesn’t argue. On the screen, a series of commands play out. When the file is packaged, he holds out his device to make the connection. A second later, his phone pings.
She frowns. “Wait, isn’t scrambling a surveillance stream illegal?”
His eyes narrow as he stares at her. “Obviously. Now lead me to that exit.”
“Shouldn’t we call the authorities?”
“You cannot call the authorities.” Those men must have come for Electra knowing she’s a reincarnate.
He’s sure of it. They know she’s connected to him and must have been tracking them—those men in the hallway after the IdenTECH meeting.
He had a clear image of one of them. Could he get the footage from that day, too?
There isn’t time. Electra could be halfway across MSP by now.
He’s ready to grab the woman’s arm and force her down the hallway. Damn the consequences. She steps out of reach, eyeing his hand. “Fine.” Then they’re marching down the dark hallway.
He thinks the command: Time Check. 16:42 sounds in his ear. Electra said she needed ten minutes in the locker room. At twelve minutes, he went to check on her.
Panic seizes his chest. That means at ten minutes he heard her cry out for him. He didn’t imagine it. Zorg, if he’d been paying closer attention, could he have stopped them from taking her?
They push through the emergency exit that leads to a service corridor.
The woman lingers behind as he bursts out into the hallway. “I should get back to my station.”
He turns, towering over her. Hoping he exudes enough authority that the woman doesn’t balk, he says, “Tell no one of this.”
Her eyes widen, and her knuckles turn white as she grips the door handle. “I won’t. I swear.”
The door clicks behind her. He doesn’t glance back as he races down the hall in search of Electra.
A fruitless hour of searching goes by, then another. Who does one report a missing person to—who isn’t supposed to exist? Inspector Wanda will only lock Electra up in one of NHOS’s holding cells, and he can’t let that happen. He needs to get away from his crowded tower so he can think.
The thirty-minute ride to the CHOICElover headquarters drags on like a never-ending nightmare.
Electra’s beautiful face smiling up at him as their bodies’ equilibrium returned to baseline plays in a loop in his mind.
She didn’t say she loves you, but she didn’t leave you either.
He has to cling to that and do whatever it takes to get her back.
She matters. The world needs her. He needs her.
He’s in too deep to lose her. Now she’s in trouble, and she needs him.
His device pings as he steps into the elevator.
Could it be the woman from the simulation chamber sending him something she found?
He opens the message: It’s an image of a woman bound and gagged, huddled in the corner of a sterile white room.
He would know the shape of her from even the briefest glimpses.
It’s Electra. His stomach clenches violently.
He zooms in. Dried tears make vertical tracks down her freckled cheeks, and her dark eyes flash as she stares at the camera. If she’s afraid, she has it well masked with anger.
There’s a metal cabinet almost off camera.
He zooms in. On top of it sits a BioLume Gene Scanner.
They’re analyzing her DNA? That fits with the stolen organic materials and his hypothesis that someone is trying to bring more reincarnates back.
The shiny metal door reflects something orange opposite her.
The jumpsuits the men were wearing from the other day?
He rushes to his office, debating between responding and waiting for their demands.
Because that’s clearly what this is—some plot to extort him using Electra.
Her gene scan is probably a bonus. He sends the image to his system and runs it through an enhancer program.
He zooms in on the reflection expecting to see fabric, but—it’s hair.
It’s a man with dark skin and curly orange hair.
Lextr?
But why would Lextr take Electra? He’s had access to her DNA this whole time.
The pieces of the story he concocted move around in his mind.
He thought for certain that whoever took Electra is also behind the robbery.
Does that mean Lextr is behind the robbery, too?
He was the first to speak to the authorities that day. To cover something up?
But that doesn’t make sense. Unless he was lying about what had been in those silver cases.
Res6 shakes his head. Electra was his first and only successful experiment, a fact reinforced with each subsequent Jerme failure.
Unless Lextr’s been sabotaging them to shield himself from suspicion.
Was she a fluke, or is his own employee—the man he trusted for over fifty years—the one behind the reincarnates?
But their DNA is all from GROW’s stores.
He confirmed that. For Lextr to be involved, he’d have to be working with someone employed by GROW then.
But why, when he had access to all the same materials?
Maybe this GROW person knew the key factor they were missing, and again, Electra was a fluke. He isn’t getting anywhere.
“Fuck!” He buries his head in his hands. The longer he takes to figure this out, the longer Electra is at risk. He needs help.