TRIGGER: "Good Girl"
EFFECT: Total System Override.
She capped the pen with a decisive click and dropped it.
"I need water," she said, her voice just a threadbare whisper. "And… five minutes. Nobody talk."
"Copy," I breathed.
I forced my legs to turn, to move away. Alfie looked up at me, his eyes pure, dilated black holes of secondhand shock. He mouthed one word at me.
Bastard.
But he was smiling. It was a terrified, awestruck, holy-fucking-shit kind of smile.
I stumbled toward the kitchenette alcove. My hands, finally released from their prison behind my back, were trembling so hard I nearly dropped the kettle.
I had just talked the woman I was undeniably, irrevocably falling for into complete oblivion without lifting a single finger. For a split second, I felt like the most powerful man in the world.
And I needed a cold shower immediately, or I was going to spontaneously combust.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Zia
The air in the back lounge was heavy, saturated with the scent of Kit’s dark espresso arousal and the lingering, sharp static of my own climax. The shower running in the mid-bus bathroom sounded like a distant waterfall, the only noise besides the hum of the engine and Alfie’s ragged breathing from the corner.
Alfie was looking at me like I’d just performed a magic trick that involved sawing someone in half. He was huddled in his pink coat, eyes wide, flicking between me and the empty space where Kit had stood.
"You broke him," Alfie whispered, a delight bordering on hysteria in his voice. "Z, you absolutely broke him. He’s going to be speaking in binary for a week."
"I didn't break him," I said, my voice swerving between raspy and authoritative. I reached for my water bottle, my hand trembling slightly. "I calibrated him."
I looked at the whiteboard. The jagged letters of my handwriting stared back.TRIGGER: "Good Girl."
It was a vulnerability. A back door into my operating system. But knowing it existed meant I could patch it, or better yet, assign authorized users.
I turned my head. Euan was still standing by the doorframe.
He hadn't moved a millimeter during the entire session involving Kit. His posture was rigid, his hands clasped behind his back, imitating Kit’s stance but with a different energy. Kit had been a wall; Euan was a server rack. Humming with data, processing at light speed, but waiting for an input command.
His scent, toasted hojicha tea and the snap of sesame brittle, was crisp, almost burning. He was aroused. Desperately so. But unlike Alfie, who wore his hunger like a neon sign, Euan had routed his through a series of complex logic gates.
"You're analyzing," I said.
Euan blinked. The movement was slow, deliberate. "I am logging the efficacy of the voice modulation protocol. The results were... significant."
"Significant," I repeated, swinging my legs over the edge of the bunk. "That’s one word for it."
I stood up. My knees felt loose, liquid. I walked over to him.
He tracked me with his eyes, slate-grey and burning with a quiet, terrifying intensity. I stopped right in front of him, invading his personal space, breaking the physical barriers we’d respected for weeks.
"Kit took the lead," I said softly, looking up at him. "He controlled the output. He managed the session."
"Affirmative." Euan’s voice was tight, the Scottish vowels clipping short.
"That's his frequency," I said, reaching out to touch the lapel of his black jacket. "Structure. Stability. Command."
