I don't know what kind of woman my sister grew up to be, Number Four shared with the collective.
We will ask Sullha and Vinnah, the others shared.Sullha seems like she could lead. The collective agreed on that.
The women needed leadership. Someone inside the enclosure who could organize and be smart about it, not attracting attention. Sullha was smart and could keep secrets, but the question was whether she could command compliance from the others through trust rather than fear.
They shifted their thoughts to the intermediary, the older woman who had confronted them initially. The woman had guts. She stood between them and the women she protected. If they managed to earn her trust, she could be the one, but given how their interactions had gone so far, that was going to take some work.
Sullha might be a better choice.
Perhaps the two women could work together?
They arrived at the lab with two minutes to spare before their two o'clock scheduled injection appointment.
Petrov opened the door for them without them having to press the buzzer, and as they stepped inside, he greeted them with a bright smile they had never gotten from him before.
Apparently, conspiring together made them friends.
"You're on time today," he said as if that was a rare occurrence.
"We were late twice," Number One said. "And there was a good reason for each delay. Otherwise, we were always on time."
"No need to explain or apologize. Just try to be punctual. Dimitri gets nervous when you're late, and when Dimitri gets nervous, he runs his hands through his hair until he looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket."
Dimitri was at one of the lab tables, loading his tray with the prepared syringes. His face mask was in place, and he seemed a little less nervous than he had been the day before, a little more relaxed. Regrettably, they couldn't peek into his mind and see what had brought that about. Logic dictated that he should be more stressed today than he had been yesterday. He and Petrov were supposed to be preparing what they wanted to say to whoever answered the phone on the clan's side, and that couldn't have been easy.
Dimitri was inaccessible, but Mattie was an open book, and a quick peek was all the collective needed to understand what had calmed Dimitri.
The effects of physical intimacy on stress hormones and overall well-being was profound, and it was very different from the sex they had experienced in the brothel before they had volunteered for the enhancement and ascended. Still, they remembered those experiences well, and that hadn't been true intimacy. That had been the satiation of hunger, and it had provided some release from stress, but nothing like what Mattie and Dimitri felt.
When love, trust, and mutual respect were part of the equation, the sexual act was elevated to a true joining of bodies, hearts, and minds.
That, the Eight had never experienced, couldn't experience, and that was why they wanted the merge.
"Good afternoon, Mattie," Number One said as the Eight took their seats.
She waved from her chair by the window. "How was your day?"
"Productive," Number One said.
She chuckled. "That's what you always say."
"What would you like us to say? Do you want a full report of our activities throughout the day?"
She rolled her eyes, which meant she was exasperated with them, and waved her hand again. "Forget it. You won't understand even if I try to explain."
"Our collective is very intelligent," Number One said. "We can understand anything you will explain."
She shook her head. "It takes years to develop the skills needed for small talk, and some people never get it. I think the eight of you are a lost cause, not because you are unintelligent but because you are too intelligent. You analyze everything like a computer. You even talk like one."
The collective struggled to come up with something they could say back.
"I want a report." Dimitri saved them from having to do so. "Not of what you did today, but of what you did last night." Heswabbed Number One's arm. "Have you checked the security at Losham's?"
Number One extended his arm. "We conducted a thorough reconnaissance of the residence and the surrounding security infrastructure. The house is heavily guarded. Two guards at the front entrance, two at the rear, and a rotating patrol of three that circles the perimeter on fifteen-minute intervals."
"That's a lot of security for one person," Petrov said.
"There are two people living in the house. Losham and his assistant Rami. The cleaning staff comes and goes. As for the increased security, Losham needs it. The brothers are circling him like vultures, and at some point they might move from just poking at him and undermining his authority to attempts on his life."
