Dimitri's eyes softened, and he leaned over to kiss her cheek. "Not everyone is like you, Mattie. You were raised right. These people are raised on hate and sacrifice. That's what they are taught from birth, and they don't have access to the outside world to learn anything different. It's very easy to brainwash people that way."
"I guess." Mattie sighed. "So, Dave has never seen love, they have never experienced it, and never even witnessed it. That's so sad."
"Not until us." Dimitri took her good hand. "He said that watching us together is the most fascinating thing the collective consciousness has ever encountered. He called it a phenomenon. He seems to think that knowing love is the only reason for living."
That was so incredibly touching that tears prickled the back of her eyes. "They are right, you know. Love is the engine that moves the world."
Dimitri arched a brow. "Not money?"
"Money, or rather the resources it represents, is critical for survival for most people and the means to accumulate power and prestige for some, but it's not a good enough reason for living. We live to love and be loved. Dave observed and cataloged our love, analyzed it in his hive mind, and reached the right conclusion. Is that why they protected me?"
"That's a big part of it. If something happened to me or you, they'd lose access to the only example of love they've ever had the chance to study. They said that we were the window into something they couldn't experience themselves."
The way Dave had phrased it meant that they never expected to experience it without an intermediary.
"That's sad," she said.
"It is." Dimitri took a breath. "It gets more complicated. Dave wants to leave the island."
Mattie sat up straighter, ignoring the protest from her elbows and knees. "He wants to escape?"
"The Eight have the capabilities to pull this off. He can compel the guards, manipulate the monitoring systems, arrangetransportation, and whatever else is needed, and they are offering to take us with them, you, me, and Petrov."
The words sent a flutter of excitement through her chest.
Escape. Real escape, not Dimitri's half-baked paraglider scheme with nearly nonexistent chances of success, but something that was practically guaranteed to succeed. Dave could make it happen. If anyone could get them off this rock, it was the Eight.
"That's incredible," she breathed. "When? How soon can?—"
"There's a catch."
Of course there was. There was always a catch.
"In exchange for helping us escape, Dave wants to merge minds with me."
Mattie stared at him, uncomprehending. "What do you mean? How can he merge minds with you?"
"He wants to temporarily extend his collective consciousness to include me. Connect to my mind the way his eight bodies are connected to each other. So he can feel what I feel. Experience my emotions from the inside."
"He wants to feel love?"
"Yes."
"How?" she asked. "How is that even going to work? You can't do the mind manipulation thing that the other immortals can do, so you don't have the existing pathways to accommodate a merge." She wasn't a scientist, but even she knew that immortals having those capabilities was how Dave's mind merge was possible. "How would Dave create a mental link with you?"
Dimitri blinked. "I don't know."
"Did you ask them?"
Dimitri shook his head.
"How could you not ask the most basic question? You are a scientist, Dimitri."
"I was a little overwhelmed by the proposal. I figured I needed to decide whether I was willing to do it before getting into the mechanics of how."
"The how matters, Dimitri." She shifted on the bed, tucking her legs under her and leaning forward. "The how might be the most important part. Dave probably doesn't even know how his eight minds merged in the first place. It's not like Zhao left them a manual. The merge happened as a side effect of the enhancement process, right? It wasn't planned."
"That's correct."
