“Okay.” She cut a glance to Goldie’s collar and back. “It’s got a name. What’s it do?”
“It’s complicated,” Tanin told her, coming close. Not so much that he was into her personal space, but just on the edge of her hackles being raised.
They’d been truthful thus far, but she still didn’t trust him.
“Allow me.” Alred walked over. “Vletch Rings are extremely illegal devices. They are a collar specially fitted around your skin, designed to fuse with your spinal cord in order to take control of your mind and body and force you to do whatever the collar’s master demands.”
“It’s a-…” Shock cut her off and she tried to grab it. But then stopped herself because did he just say it wasfused with her spine!“This is a mind control collar!?”
“Mind and body,” Tanin said. “If it was turned on, you’d be completely at the mercy of whoever commands the collar. You wouldn’t be able to fight back. The part of your brain that controls thoughts and free will would be completely shut down by the machine. You’d be little more than a vaguely conscious puppet.”
“What the-Get it off!”
“Calm yourself,” Alred reassured her quickly. “Neither collar is active. Moreover, the range on such collars is incredibly low. The remote would need to be, bare minimum, within the same room as you in order to turn them on. Even if they weren’t, the one who put those collars on you is many, many light years from here. He could press the remote all he wanted, it won’t turn on the collars. You’re safe. And I think I can remove them.”
“You think or you know!?”
It was amazing how completely done a faceless entity could look. “Ugh, you too. I don’tknowanything. I have no experience with a Vletch Ring. It took me forever even just to recognize what code was in them. IthinkI can work in conjunction with the collar’s programming to disarm and detach them without causing any harm to you.”
“Can’t you just break them!?”
“I could try. But I don’t want to risk it. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. There’s a chance it could cause spinal injury and since we don’t have human scans in our mediring, we wouldn’t be able to fix it if I did.”
Garnet growled, wanting so badly to pull on this ring, but now terrified to even turn her head in case she moved too fast and tweaked her own spinal cord or something. “Well, what about the keeper guys? Would they have our scans? Would they be able to help?”
“Garnet.” Tanin stepped through Alred, breaking up his light temporarily. “Wecannotallow the peacekeepers to know that those rings even exist, much less that they were on my ship. It is an automatic death sentence to be caught with those. I can’t even guarantee you two would be spared and you’re the ones wearing them. These rings aredangerous. The amount of damage someone has managed to do because they had those rings is unfathomable. The authorities do not play about those rings, and they do not care how you got one.”
Garnet frowned. “That’s… I mean…”
“Let us remove them, destroy them, and then forget you ever even heard of them. Alred, that goes for you too. Once they’re off, delete the memories you have of the code.”
“Yes, captain.”
“Even just remembering the code is illegal?” Garnet asked, her belly twisting with unease.
“Knowing any part of how to design or create these is another death sentence.” Tanin’s expression was serious. His eyes burned as he stared at her, trying to make her understand. “There are active attempts from authorities to remove mentions of them from histories at all. Let Alred take them off of you. Then forget you ever saw them.”
Garnet was frowning. There was too much going on right now. It was getting to be overwhelming. They couldn’t have been awake longer than a few hours, and it was just hit after hit after hit of crazy things coming their way. She needed some time to process this shit storm, but it just kept coming, one after the other.
Goldie’s hand covered hers between them. Garnet turned, frowning. Goldie gave her a tired smile.
“It’s okay.”
Garnet laughed once, but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “Is it? Because this does not feel like it’s okay.”
“I think we can trust them.”
“You can,” Alred assured them quickly. “I promise, we intend you no harm. And this should be the last of the surprises for the night.”
“I ordered Rok to prepare the guest room for the two of you,” Tanin said. “When we’re done here, you two can go there and rest.”
Rest sounded really good right then. Garnet knew they had just been woken up, but she didn’t think they had been sleeping. At least, not in the way she needed right now. Whatever happened to them, it wasn’t restful at all. Then running, being terrified by a bunch of monsters – that she was quickly coming to realize were just aliens minding their own business – and now the fact that she had a mind control collar around the neck fused into her spine…
Too much for one day. Too much for a week, really.
But she had Goldie there, still holding her hand. Her sister was her strength. Even if she looked like she was just barely holding on too.
“Okay,” Garnet nodded, her eyes lowered. “Get the collars off us, please.”
