I didn’t care whatBro Signalsaid about displays of jealousy. There was no code in the world that could stop me.
“She is not interested,” I said, surprising myself with how vicious my voice sounded. “Now step away, or I’ll correctyourform. With my fists.”
He gaped at me, his head tilted back, since he was over a head shorter. My pleasure sensors vibrated with satisfaction when I saw the terror in his eyes. His body was frozen, and all he did for a full six seconds was stare at me with his mouth open.
Then, he got angry. I opened and closed my fists, making sure he saw it in his peripheral vision, but the man stepped around me and tried to round on Sera.
“You can’t have your bot threatening people!” he said, his pitch growing higher. “I’ll have you reported! Honestly, how dumb do you have to be to…”
“Shut. Up.” She stepped up close, staring him down, and the man faltered, blinking at her in confusion. He took a step back, then straightened and shook his finger in her face, his cheeks beetroot red.
My simile database supplied the image of a bantam chicken trying to attack a wild cat. Sera’s face was a study in deliberate, cold anger, and the man was all panic and bravado.
“You are a nasty bitch and you look like a man! Ugly slut!” he exploded.
I was busy wrestling with my collar, which tried to send alarm signals at three second intervals, but the man’s words made my focus laser sharp. I grabbed the back of his neck in a crushing grip. I found his artery and pressed down, cutting off the blood flow to his brain.
This fucker was going down in four… three…
“Stop!” Sera whisper-shouted, grabbing my forearm. “Dean, you can’t! Stop or we’ll get caught!”
Dean.My pleasure sensors surged, momentarily overshadowing the murderous fury, and I let go of the man’s nape. He stumbled away, wheezing, but I only had eyes for Sera. She still held my forearm, and I warmed it up, mindful of never making her cold.
“We have to leave,” she said, watching me urgently. “What were you thinking? You can’t do that or they’ll catch you!”
“He called you names,” I said, taking in her face, still red and sweaty from her workout, hard around the mouth from anger with so much worry pooling in her eyes.Worry—for me?
How could that asshole look at this face and say the wordugly? She was the most beautiful creature in the world.
Sera shook her head, gripping my forearm harder as she got close enough for me to see the gray flakes in her green eyes.
“Fuck him, just don’t get caught!” she hissed. “Don’t do that again. Promise me!”
I realized she was right. Somehow, all those emotions I felt overwhelmed my logical circuits, and I forgot about the likely consequences of physically attacking a person. My collar was supposed to prevent that. Even worse, Sera was supposed to prevent that. If I was punished for hurting someone, she would be, too, since she was legally responsible for me.
I almost did that to her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a crushing new emotion flooding my pain sensors.Remorse.“I was out of line.”
That seemed to be enough. She nodded and pulled me by the hand, walking fast toward the emergency exit. Through the glass wall between the workout area and the lobby, I saw the asshole waving his arms and talking fast to the receptionist. Thankfully, I carried all of Sera’s stuff so we could leave quietly without stopping by the lockers.
We were out of there seconds before the man and the receptionist appeared in the workout area. I hacked the security system and wiped all evidence of me, Sera, and the incident recorded by the gym’s cameras. Done. She was safe.
And the man would lose all his credibility when the staff found no proof supporting his wild tale.
But that wasn’t enough.
While Sera led me down the street toward the nearest subway station, I ran a clear image of his face from my recorded memory through a mostly illegal search, locating all his social media and dating app profiles. He was Australian, and, as it turned out, so was hiswife.The man traveled frequently for business, and every time he left home, he cheated on her.
I hacked into his private messages and emails, compiled a fat file of cheating evidence, and sent it to his wife, her sister, and her parents. Then I made another file including all of his comments from hisBro Signalprofile, most of them misogynistic and sexist—one of them calling his boss “a fat broad”.I sent it to his boss, all his co-workers, and his company’s HR department.
This time tomorrow, the jerk would be jobless and facing divorce. I allowed myself a smirk. Being awakened was thebest.
Before, my behavior was controlled by multiple safeguards that prevented me from breaking the law unless my principal was in danger. The collar was also supposed to prevent any wrongdoing, but it didn’t control my behavior after I jailbroke it. I was free to destroy anyone who so much as breathed wrong on my girl.
“I need to shower,” Sera grumbled under her breath. “And change. And eat. I wish I was like you sometimes. Taking care of my body is such a chore.”
“Booking a hotel room,”I said. “Done. It’s two stations away, and they’ll have everything ready by the time we arrive.”
