A laugh bubbled up on Cassie’s lips, but she hid it behind her hand. S’samph stared down at the giradey female, frill rippling.
“You can take an extra lap if you want.”
“No thanks.” Wreeta grabbed Cassie’s arm. “Let’s go before he makes us run into next week.” She hummed softly to herself as she set the pace. Sunshine beat down on them as Cassie tried to keep up. Her breath came out in short, painful spurts after a single lap around the track.
“S’samph is going to give you extra drills to run later if you don’t finish this one.” Wreeta trilled softly next to her as she struggled to find a rhythm beside the lithe giradey female.
“That is a violation of my protocols.” Cassie’s lungs felt like they were on fire as she tried to keep pace. She’d never exercised in the Aviary beyond gentle movement to keep them flexible and to raise endorphins. This type of heart-pounding, sweat-dripping training was almost enough to make her pass out. She made it all the way around once before leaning over to gasp for air. S’samph was behind her like a ghost with an outstretched palm of hydropods.
“Water, Cassie.” She glared at him as she accepted one of the pods and burst it between her lips.
“Take more,” he said. Cassie had no idea how Eleri put up with this pushy, dry male as her mate, but she accepted the second hydropod all the same. Once she had caught her breath again, she stubbornly regrouped with Wreeta, who had already made another lap while she was struggling to keep her heart inside her chest. The last thing she wanted was to give the latil’e the satisfaction of her skulking away. She would finish his insane drills.
When they finally finished, she was the last one to drag herself over to the awning where everyone else had gathered. Even once everyone else had started to leave, S’samph waited for her, holding out a handful of hydropods. “You are poorlysuited for our security forces. Your body is small and weak, and your stamina is worse than Eleri’s. But I encourage you to come practice with us anyway if you don’t have anything else to do.”
Cassie eyed him. “Would you like to try again?” Her voice was chipper around the hydropod in her cheek.
“Eleri told me your words are not to be taken literally, but I do not know how to interpret them if they are not meant to be taken literally. Have another hydropod. I will see you tomorrow.” His tail curled upward at the end in a gesture she couldn’t interpret, and he stalked off back toward the home he shared with Eleri.
Cassie tried not to laugh as she popped the final hydropod between her teeth. Not that she’d ever admit it, but even though her body felt wrung out, her mind was a lot clearer after spending the morning exercising. She still wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do about the reading lessons, but if it meant swallowing her pride and going back to the classroom, she was willing to do it.
CHAPTER 6
Örim
He had to find her. The human with the voicelock. Aside from a mild sense of concern about why she’d fled his classroom, he had a keen professional interest in her. This was the key to getting him back to Teös with more merit than he could ever use. Forget about his other research. If he could figure out how to deprogram a voicelock without harming the subject, it would be galaxy-shaking. They would be begging him to return to the research academy. Even the colleagues who had backstabbed him would be desperate to throw themselves at the mercy of his towering merit.
Staying in Laurus long term had never been his intention. He’d finish out his contract here, remove the probationary status on his visa that prevented him from applying for the tier I job pool, and go somewhere with a real research facility. Pyo would have his educator, and he would get his bottled lightning. Now he just had to figure out how to approach the voicelocked human and convince her to join his experiments without scaring her off. But human motivation was a second-tier priority.
Instead, he researched voicelocks in earnest, diving straight into the darkwave message boards. He slipped into the forums under the alias of Haröt, a nod to one of the original excavators.
Most of the posters were asking questions about standard things.
Looking for tech to mod my bangbot.
How to route around IA firewalls.
Fake ID chip? Cost? Supplier?
Low-level criminal activity. Nothing he needed to concern himself with. Örim rubbed at the node on his wrist as he prepared to write his own post.
Voicelocks were highly illegal across all consortium and non-consortium planets. Asking about them would be setting himself up for all brands of potential trouble, so he needed to be clever about the wording. It was a tech forum, so he decided to go for the technical approach first. If it failed, he would switch to a different account and try a different post. It was likely his first query would yield no results. He would start with one under this alias and then post a second under a different name in a few days if no one responded.
Örim triple checked the security of his connection and then input the words into his holoscreen.
[Haröt]: Legacy voice modulator showing unusual authentication errors. Pattern suggests deliberate modification rather than natural degradation. Diagnostic protocols for non-standard voice restrictors?
It should be ambiguous enough for any casual viewer to ignore it as an overly technical question. Only someone with true expertise in voicelock technology would have any idea what he was talking about. Örim had little confidence that anyone would respond, but it didn’t hurt to test the atmosphere. For now,the better way to proceed would be to get closer to Cassie and examine the tech firsthand.
Caught up in a flurry of excitement, he exited the darkwave forum and returned to his main device interface where he started to sketch the device from memory.Sökt,he needed a better view of it. All he could remember was the square silver chip, but there was more to it. An ultrasound would give him an even better view of the parameters, but he didn’t think starting there would be wise.
Örim finally rose from his workspace. He’d been in the same position, hunched behind his interfaces for nearly five standard hours. The time had slipped away somehow. He needed to reseed and prepare for the next day of classes. It was the darkest hour of the night, but Laurus never truly got dark. Örim adjusted the blinds over his windows to achieve the closest equivalent to true blackness before removing his eyestones and refilling his seeding pool.
Once the water levels were high enough, he added the packet of regenerative solution and stepped inside. The water was cool around him as he sat and contemplated his next moves.
He didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes he’d made on Teös, even though he still contended he’d been unfairly ousted. And then, his work hadn’t been on a living organic being. He’d simply pushed the ethics of the simulator too far. But he hadn’t been the only one. He’d just been the only one to get punished. Called out for work they were all doing. No one was harmed. But the Quorum of Imperial Sciences had decided his disregard for hypothetical ethics was an indicator of his willingness to cross lines when dealing with real research subjects.
It was outrageous. He’d simply been trying to create a better way to generate magnetic fields by tapping into a teösian energy core. He was also speculating the same could be done with the electrical field of organic, sentient beings, but he’d never hadthe chance to simulate the protocol. Sini and Brem had been right at his side through all the tests, but when Brem decided it was too much and self-reported, only Örim had been implicated. Infuriating. The memory sent a cascade of sparks through his energy core.
