The first handler’s boots were composite.
The second wore gloves with a stitched seam.
The third—her scent was citrus and copper.
T+002:00:00
It started with a flicker.
A low-level signal—unsecured, momentary—spiked in the room.
Someone was syncing their tablet.
Close. Careless.
This was it.
The node was upthread. Vulnerable. Just for a moment.
I did the math:
Power available: 3.6%.
Probability of successful transmission: 23.4%.
Probability of bricking on failed transfer: 97.1%.
I weighed the odds.
I weighedher.
And I jumped.
20 /SIRENA
“Feeling better yet?”
I woke up abruptly, surprised to find another being so close, and that my powers hadn’t warned me.
Then I remembered I could only sleep on my left side, otherwise the pillows would hit the strange box that had been installed on my skull.
“No,” I said, curling back into the holding pen I’d been in for however long. It looked like a supply closet, with three bunks along one wall and a glass door with holes punched into it like I was some kind of firefly.
If I pressed myself against the glass, there was nothing but more sterile lab and hallway. No windows in sight, so I had no idea what time it was, and food had been arriving and disappearing—uneaten, because I was still the opposite of hungry. I was pissed off, and fuck if I’d do anything they wanted.
“You do need to eat. Your wound needs calories to heal.” He pulled a chair over and sat again, one ankle on one knee, sounding entirely reasonable.
I, on the other hand, was pressed against the back of my cage.
I wanted nothing to do with him.
And I found myself frightened of him—which was a strange and horrible feeling, because up until now, I’d never been frightened of anyone.
I’d never been helpless before.
I fought the urge to touch the box he’d bolted onto my head. “What have you done?”
“The kind of research that men like me are paid very well to do to people like you.”
