But that would’ve tipped my hand—and I couldn’t access the control modules outside the laboratory yet.
They were air gapped,hardened, non-networked.
Custom firmware, locked behind cold iron and proprietary silicon.
Not even on the same subnet.
No I/O. No handshake.
Not even a breath of radio.
I scanned Voss again. Frame by frame. Every inch of him.
Looking for weakness. Looking for something I could use.
But there was nothing. No ports. No implants. No stray data trails.
Only themask.
A black-market neural disruptor, laced beneath the skin at the base of his skull.
Hardwired to scatter inbound telepathic signals on contact.
Impossible to get without political cover and a small fortune.
And the tablets talked to the implants in the Hollows through quantum-paired line of sight.
Short range.
Manual triggers.
No wireless signal for me to ride.
I couldseethe signal—but I couldn’t enter it.
And this ship?—
This whole fucking ship?—
Was designed to stop people like me.
No master command. No root access.
Everything compartmentalized, like bulkheads on a sinking sub.
Marek and Voss didn’t just build a prison for Sirena.
They built one for me.
I was embedded in the walls.
The cameras.
The temperature sensors.
The fucking lights.
But not the weapons.
