“Or,” he said, pivoting back with a smile too slow to be kind, “I could be convinced to part with the prototype herself.”
I fought not to stiffen.
“But for her...it’d have to be something extra. Equity. Favors. Secrets. Firstborn children, future organs for transplant—take your pick,” he said, his smile vulpine and gleaming.
Takamatsu laughed. “So her father kills one of us instead?”
“I’ve had her for several days. Have you wondered why they haven’t attempted to rescue her yet?”
Because I’d told them to wait.But I already knew Voss was a liar...
“I’ve bound her system to mine,” he said, tapping the box on my head, then his own chest. “Not metaphorically—biologically. The device she wears doesn’t just suppress her abilities; it monitors my vitals and tracks proximity. If I die—or if she strays too far from me for too long—it triggers a permanent shutdown. Total neural collapse. Instant. Irreversible. The kind of insurance policy that makes even the MSA hesitate.”
My mind rushed to read Nex’s; I just barely pulled back in time not to bowl him over.
He was just as confused as I was—plus horrified and pissed.
“It also ensures that she won’t actually kill me,” Voss went on. “Not under the threat of our mutually assured destruction. And I can offeryouthat same guarantee.”
He reached over, dragged a finger through the dampness on my face, and smeared it against my dress. If he’d been less arrogant, he might have felt my heartbeat hammering beneath his touch.
But he was too busy preening for his audience.
“I’ve collared a Siren, gentlemen, and I’m offering you the chance to hold the leash. You’re all impressive men—so impress me.”
He turned to finally leave—then paused just long enough to pat Nex’s lapel. “You can ask my lead scientist anything you want to know about her,” he announced, and then more quietly, to Nex alone, in a mocking tone. “Sorry for selling your pet. But don’t look so stunned. Remember, this whole thing was your idea.”
46 /NEX
STAND DOWN.
I REPEAT. STAND DOWN.
I couldn’t verifywhat Voss had said in the moment, but I couldn’t take the chance he was telling the truth, so I sent Xen every alarm that I could.
POTENTIAL KILL-SWITCH CONNECTION BETWEEN VOSS AND SIRENA.
ABORT MISSION IMMEDIATELY.
I fired the alerts across every channel Xen could access. Red-flagged, time-synced, encrypted, doubled. If Voss had been bluffing, fine. If he hadn’t? I would not be the one who detonated her.
I’d only considered the software controlling her earlier. Voss’s developers had embedded clunky permission hierarchies and redundant failsafes in an outdated proprietary shell—one I gutted and spoofed in under a minute.
But the hardware was another matter. The box had invasive interfaces—filament-thin threads diving beneath the skin,latching into Sirena’s nervous system with surgical precision. I’d assumed they were there for telemetry. Maybe overkill monitoring.
I’d never considered that they might be a trap.
Voss’s incoming biometric inputs—those should’ve flagged. But they were staggered. Compressed. Encoded to mimic noise. No signature, no pattern, no protocol header. Just spectral hash static, indistinguishable from environmental drift...unless you were looking for them.
And I hadn’t been.
I’d been so focused on the novelty of flesh that I’d missed the fuse—and now every misread packet echoed like a scream.
I froze.
Not physically, but internally. Forked processes jammed. Predictive modeling tanked. My queue for threat assessment spiraled in recursive loops.
I’d failed her.
