I waited three minutes—which was two minutes and forty-five seconds too long—before pulling the tablet Nex had given me out, attempting to shield it from the cameras overhead with my body.
True to his word, my looking at it opened it up, and he’d simplified the user interface for me, giving the screen only two buttons: Open and Off.
Open could wait. I needed Off more.
I braced, and then I tapped it.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, some visceral shock or maybe a click, but instead what I got was a slow returnto normal, for me. With the box off, it was like someone was turning up the volume of a TV show in the next room, a wave of noise that got louder and louder, until the sound was in the room with me, and then I had to throw up walls to keep it from taking me under.
“I miss her hands. God, her hands?—”
“Quartermaster’s out of protein packs again. Gonna hear about it later.”
“This one’s awake. Pretty one. Looks like the others but different.”
“Bet I could sneak a vid. Just for me. Just once.”
“I hate this job. I hate this job. I hate this job?—”
I hated my job too—sorting through all their noise and filth, trying to find the one mind that mattered to me, while everyone else’s thoughts kept forcing their way in.
I got glimpses through other people’s eyes, sometimes not what they really saw, but what they wanted to see.
A woman fantasizing about strangling her boss.
A man halfway to orgasm with no one watching.
Another cursing the cheap fit of the gloves in the OR.
It felt like being attacked by flies.
Buzzing. Unrelenting.
An endless swarm of thoughts with teeth, and I needed to let them all in, because I didn’t know what I was looking for, until I found him.
“Nex—Nex!” I called out through our connection. I was sure it was him—because he was dreaming of me. “Nex!” I shouted—and felt him pass from sleep to waking, where he promptly disappeared.
Then I remembered the cameras from above were still on me.
Surely he’d be able to delete them? I tried not to flash them a guilty look as the lab’s outer door hissed open. I flung myself at the glass, then bounced back when I saw not Marek’spuppeted body, but a different scientist, a woman with short dark hair I hadn’t seen before, accompanied by two Hollows. She was holding a stack of clothing—and a tablet of her own, which she tapped on, before snapping her fingers for the Hollows to present themselves. The glass door began to open, and I couldn’t help but ask, “What’s happening?” as I crowded to the back of my cage.
She glanced at her tablet. “We’re making progress,” she said loudly, then added a dour, “Apparently,” under her breath before spotting me.
And the tabletIwas holding.
She was inhaling and opening her mouth to scream, when Ipushedher.
Shut it!I thought at her, at full velocity.You saw nothing!I propelled in her direction, and saw her shoulders drop and her eyes go slack.
Then Nex ran in. He was wearing the clothes he had on yesterday, and he grabbed a lab stool as he passed it, prepared to club the woman.
I waved a frantic hand at him. “I’ve got things—if you’ve got things?” I said, pointing up at the cameras.
“Yes,” he said, putting the stool down cautiously.
“What happened?” I demanded, edging out from around the Hollows, who’d gone just as slack as the woman commanding them.
“I downloaded everything I could to Xen. Then I falsified data until...” His voice drifted, and surprise crossed his face. “I think I fell asleep.”
