Chapter 4 #2
Then she tilts her head toward the door. “And if that brother of yours keeps bothering you, I swear I’ll chase him out of my kitchen with a frying pan next time. Forget the wooden spoon.”
The image hits, and I laugh.
Rita hums in approval like the sound is exactly what she wanted. “Good. I like hearing you happy, more than I like whatever happens after that man puts irrational thoughts in your head.”
My shoulders loosen a fraction. “Yeah,” I murmur. “I like it too.”
I finish the bread, set the glass down, and stand. “Thanks, Rita. I needed a pick-me-up,” I say.
“Oh, I know, dear.” Rita starts to shape the dough into a dome and marks the middle with an X. “Eat first, worry later. Then we decide if the problem needs solving—or a swift whack with a frying pan.”
The mixer sits in the middle of my workbench in the shed, bright yellow—almost orange—like it’s trying too hard to be cheerful.
Like Mari.
I shake off the thought and get back to work.
It doesn’t take long to find the problem. Worn gearing, a misaligned spindle—easy enough. I fix it, improve it while I’m there, hands moving faster once I fall into the rhythm.
By the time I plug it in, it hums smoother, quieter, and at a steady speed. Rita will like the improvements.
I should take it to her, but I don’t. Not yet.
Instead, I cover it with a hand towel and drift toward the far end of the work table, where a pile of salvaged parts waits. Bits and pieces most people would’ve thrown away without a second thought but have potential.
Including my small black-metal mystery box.
I pick it up for the thousandth time, turning it over in my hands. It’s plain, scratched, nothing special—until it hums faintly to life in a low vibration at the pressure of my fingers.
My brows pull together.
“What the hell are you supposed to be?” I whisper to it.
Grabbing my written plans and ideas down from the shelf, I flip through scribbles and chicken-scratch notes. Once upon a time, I thought I’d turn this box into a child’s toy. That idea fizzled out.
Then I had plans to make it a rechargeable battery of some kind. But that’s been done. I need something new. Something fresh. A unique idea but something that is meant to help people.
I don’t know why my brain is so blank with this one. It must be because I’m starting from nothing. Zero. I usually have some kind of starting point where I’m improving on something else.
I bang my pencil against the wood in thought. What could make people’s life better on Sabine? What could make my like better?
Well, besides money…
I snort. Maybe I can make this box spit out thousands of dollars. That would solve a lot of my problems, wouldn’t it?
Then I could get Derrick that ticket to the mainland he wants.
He can start his new life without me, and I can get an apartment here.
I’d never have to work as a servant again, and maybe with the extra bucks I can help Mari acquire an art studio where she can be free to work on her art and display it on her own time.
No pressures from society. No reason for her to marry a rich Alpha.
Her life on her terms. Whatever she wants it to be.
Forget making the box into a money-making machine. There’d have to be a genie living inside to make that happen.
“Stupid,” I say absently, but then freeze—
—because my voice when it hits my ears isn’t the one I’m used to hearing.
It’s deeper. Warped. Mechanical.
While my imagination ran off, I’d held the box under my chin and against my throat. Swallowing my surprise, I press it to my neck again, right under my chin.
“Hello?”
The vibration distorts my voice again, smoothing the edges, dragging it lower, turning my voice into something unrecognizable.
A grin spreads before I can stop it.
No way.
I adjust my grip, shifting the angle, pressing it differently against my throat. This time under my Adam’s apple. “Test. Test. Test.”
The pitch changes again, deeper than before, a graveled baritone.
With some tweaks, if I can remove the robotic tenor to it, this—this can work. It can absolutely provide a use.
My pulse kicks up.
I grab a small tool, prying at the casing. Inside, the mechanism is simple—too simple—but with the right adjustments…
I work faster, excitement building. Minutes blur by.
When I test it again, holding it just under my vocal cords, I take a deep breath and say, “My name is—”
The voice that comes out is in the same deep tone but much smoother. The reverberation is gone. It sounds nothing like me. I sound—
Like an Alpha.
I stare at the box. Then I start laughing.
Because this? This is something.
I’ve made a voice changer.
I don’t know what the use can be. There are already filters out there on phones to modify voices, like the Queen Bee uses for her Stitches. But this can be used in real time. And now I have something. A starting place.
This can be big. I know it can.
I turn the box over in my hands again, already thinking ahead on how to refine it, how to wear it, how to integrate it.
A collar. A choker. Something subtle.
Or—
I glance toward my scattered sketches and then the stand mixer on the other side of the bench.
Or something better.
My fingers tighten around the device, mind racing.
“Yeah,” I say to the thing. “You’re going to change everything.”