I caught the command in midair.Walk up to him,I thought loudly for her.Put your hand on his arm.
Her smile didn’t change as she obeyed. She padded forward, bare toes silent on teak, and leaned lightly against Voss.
One of the buyers came nearer. “How do we know you’re not using drugs? Or magic?”
“That’s why I kept the command box externalized,” Voss said, pointing at the metal box bolted to Sirena’s skull. “We’ll internalize them when we ship them, of course.”
“What do you mean?” asked Takamatsu.
“She’s just the prototype. And she’s still inside there—while this controls her, it also produces a dampening field,” he said, stroking the box like it was a lock of her hair. “She’s far too dangerous to send home with any of you. But we’ve had long enough to study her—we feel confident we can put her powers into one of my super-servants for you.” He smiled, long and slow, like a shark. “Hell, we could even put theminyou—if you trusted my people enough for the surgery.”
Sergei guffawed.
“Watch,” Voss said, giving him a nod, before typing in a new command. I caught it in midair too.
Make Alonzo tell a truth,I passed along, with as little latency as possible.
Sirena’s eyes glazed for a fraction. The peeved mask fell from Alonzo’s face, and words tumbled out—too fast, wrong, and impossibly private.
“We burned them in the north pit,” he said, voice small. “They took the trucks and we set the fires. I paid for silence.”
Conversation stopped as if someone had pressed a hand on the world. Faces went white. Alonzo tried to shove the words back in; his throat closed on them like a trap.
“Too scared of surgery to get a neural mask?” Voss asked, his eyebrows high, before turning to the others. “Not drugs,” he said softly. “Not magic. Just sheer talent, for the connoisseurs. Truth extraction, and control of up to twenty people,” Voss said, typing again, as he fluidly lied—I’d never specified anything like that in my imaginary data.
I caught the next bit of data he sent.
Make Alonzo’s men jump overboard.
I flashed the thought in my mind, brightly. She continued to smile vacantly, blinked, and then five men near the railing turned around and started climbing. The people nearby were surprised by their movement, and started restraining them—butnot before two got over. There was a three-second lag before we all heard the splashes of them landing in the water below.
Voss whistled, and sent several of his men after them—meanwhile the ones Sirena hadpushedkept trying to escape the clutches of the others.
This...surprised Voss. His next command on the tablet was to tell her to stop. I shared it, and she did.
“You are playing a dangerous game,” said Al-Najjar. He gravely shook his head, but he still stepped forward, to consider her more personally.
“And you could, too,” Voss said with a grin. “I’ve got three of them ready to go tonight. I expect your bids before dawn.”
“How do we know she’s not in on it with you?” Arnaud said. Only seventy percent of his factories were legitimate—ofcoursethe idea of entirely servile workers intrigued him.
Voss’s eyebrows rose. “An excellent question. Let me see,” he said, his fingers hovering above the touch screen.
I stepped closer, instinctively—too close, too fast, afraid of what he’d command her to do.
And Sirena saw me.
Her eyes narrowed in irritation. She flinched, just barely—almost imperceptibly—but enough. Enough for Voss to clock it. Enough for him to see what he wanted to see.
He smiled like a snake. “Ah,” he said softly. “Perfect. You’ll do,” he announced, then began typing. “You see, gentlemen—Dr. Marek here was not only my lead scientist on this project, but also her lead torturer,” Voss said. “And apparently she still has strong feelings where he’s concerned.” He continued to type, then hit enter with a final flourish. “But of course, the women you’re bidding on will be wiped—just as blank of slates as the ones you’ve purchased prior.”
I caught the string of data as it flew across the signal.
He,I began, trying to hold the thought away from her—but she caught it in my mind, just as I’d caught it from the Wi-Fi.Wants you to crawl to me. And suck me off.
Sirena read it—and nothing else in her demeanor changed. She dropped to her knees on the deck’s polished wood and began crawling toward me, the slits in her dress parting like curtains with each movement.
The rest of the men went completely silent, and so did I.
