Cassia ignored my ill manners. “They don’t understand,” she said, giving me a kindly look—even from the other side of her Optic Protek 3000 glasses, I could feel it. “Men think they do...but they don’t.”
While many Gorgons roamed the planet, as far as I knew, they were all descended from the same punished woman from the same mythic story.
“I suppose you get it,” I said, sliding my headband back into place.
“If my powers were a little more particular, I would’ve pushed for a later discovery as well.”
Her gaze, however, was a binary thing. On or off, kind of like Nex—and leaving behind a trail of statues would’ve been very noticeable.
“But what your father didn’t mention was that some wins are better than no wins at all. We will do good here, in a few hours, and that always deserves celebration. I’ll let you get back to your argument,” she said and turned on her heel.
I watched her walk to the door. Despite what she’d said aloud, only four out of the twelve snakes writhing around beneath her hair-wrap agreed. Unfortunately, being around crowd consciousnesses was exhausting, even when they were partially on my side. I reached up and turned the crown inside my headband on.
My powers narrowed down to just my own mind. My headache, however, came from not just the presence of the crown, but discovering the fact that any headway I’d thought I’d made with Nex was theoretical.
“Lowering drive voltage and adding dither so the haptics stop locking onto your trigeminal nerve. New download incoming now, three, two, one,” Nex announced, and somehow, the pain inside my head decreased a fractional amount.
“Were you saving that advance to get back into my good graces?” I asked him, with a frown.
“I’ve had a shadow process tuning this for weeks. The model finally converged. Older crowns can’t handle the duty cycle; thisone can,” he said, and there was an awkward pause between us, one I was determined to make him feel.
Which was ridiculous.
He didn’t feel.
Anything.
Ever.
“If you bring in the others, I can update and refurbish them as well,” he continued.
I gave the room a half-hearted shrug. “We’ll see.”
Details of the plan scrolled up our secure channel as multiple agents became involved and a cover story was created.
We seeded a chemical-odor complaint through Port Environmental Health and Safety, then hijacked the requisition. I’d walk in—with steel-toed boots, low-profile crown—since I’d be the most likely to hear thirteen or so highly out-of-place women inside a cargo container.
And as the most human-presenting agent on-site, I was going in solo, but the rest of MSA would have a tight perimeter, either personally—inside trucks idling on the dock nearby—or distantly, through sniper scopes, one of Lung’s specialties.
I pulled my hair up into a bun and switched to a lower-profile crown, hidden in a thicker hair-tie, and prepared myself to deal with my father’s endless pacing as he considered ways to stop me from going into the field again.
He never voiced any of them, and to be fair to him, he did try to keep his thoughts to himself around me, but even with thecrown on, I could still tell by the way he turned on his heel in the loading bay’s hall.
“I think we should bring two more agents,” he announced, after doing a headcount. Cassia was prepping Annex C to hold the women, and Kelly, Lung, Aceon, and Ellum were coming with me. Between them and their armaments of choice, it was more than enough response for a purportedly “anonymous complaint.”
“Or I should—” he continued until I cut him off.
“We’ll be fine. We’re not in any danger—because of you. So you can stay back here and tell legal to get their pens warmed up for the almost inevitable complaints we’ll receive when this is finished.”
And when it was go time, he clasped his hands behind himself, the most official of his moves. “I expect to see all of you for a debriefing when you get back,” he said.
It was as close to officially paternal as he could get without singling me out.
“See you in a bit.” I waved and got into Kelly’s idling car, where his head was already waiting on the dash.
“Buckle up!” he warned. “My body’s not a great driver.”
11 /NEX
