After all this time, no matter what the situation or his mood, I’ve only seen Hideo in control—in his office, in the arena, in his home. Even in despair, with his heart torn open, he never looked the way he does now. Helpless. His creation wrenched out of his control.
In spite of everything I’ve seen him do, I can’t help but feel afraid now that he’s no longer running the NeuroLink and the algorithm. It means that someone much, much worse is now in command.
Zero stands in front of the gurney. If he feels anything at the sight of his brother, he doesn’t show it as he lifts a steel hand and grips Hideo’s chin.
I suck in my breath sharply.
I’d thought Zero was walking around in here as a virtual simulation. But no, he’s in the armored suit that I’d seen him testing with Taylor on the night that Tremaine had been shot. The robot that had moved its arm in sync with Zero’s.
Zero’s mind is operating from within arealmetal suit, an artificial being that seems alive in every technical sense.
He forces Hideo to turn his face up to meet his. One brother versus another. Zero studies him curiously, like a specimen, before he releases Hideo again. He folds his hands behind his back and flexes his steel fingers in a smooth wave, stalking a slow circle around his bound brother.
I clench my teeth, the white-hot heat of anger rising in me in a wave. “Leave him alone,” I growl.
Zero pauses to look at me. “You still care deeply for him,” he says quietly.
“You think?” I snap.
“Tell me, Emika, what that’s like?” Now he sounds fascinated.“He’s done terrible things. And yet I can still sense your connection to him.”
I realize with a start that it’s because Sasuke was never old enough to understand what love really means. Not even the early, innocent feelings he had for Jax could possibly compare to how complicated love actually is. He’d lost his humanity before he was ever able to experience that. My anger wavers as my heart breaks for him.
“Whatever it was that you did, Emika,” Zero says, addressing me as he turns back to Hideo, “it seems you affected the lenses of those you’ve Linked with before, too. And that means his.” He finishes a full circle around Hideo and leans close to him. “But don’t worry. We’ll fix that easily enough.”
His words, mockingly soothing, bear an echo of Taylor’s thought process. Even though she’s dead, her influence over him must have been so complete and so extreme that it still lingers underneath those smooth plates of steel.
“But first,” Zero continues, finally turning away from Hideo and heading back toward me. Every muscle in me tenses as he approaches. “Let’s fix you.”
I glare at him, wishing I could see some sign of Sasuke trapped inside, but the only thing staring back at me through his opaque mask is my own reflection.
By the sink, Jax has ripped open the box with the lenses and pulled out a set. I glance at her again. She still has that blankness on her face, going about her motions like she’s not entirely here.
Then... her eyes flicker to me. I realize that Zero doesn’t know I’ve Linked with her before. Her flint-gray irises gleam under the fluorescent light. In that instant, I see her familiar wit, her mind alert behind a carefully controlled expression. She’s not under Zero’s influence, no—but merely pretending to be.
She shakes her head once at me, then her eyes look toward the door. A red light illuminates it from above, suggesting that it’s locked—but beside the door is the emergency box I remember from the first night I’d been in the institute. I look back at Jax, who goes back to preparing my new lenses at a counter closer to the door.
Hope cuts through my dread. Maybe Jax is still my ally, after all. If I can stall for more time, maybe she can help us get out of here before Zero forces the new lenses on me.
“You can’t be real,” I manage to choke out as I stare up at him. “I don’t believe you. You’re nothing but a simulation.”
“Then see for yourself.” Zero reaches over and presses a flat button near the top of my gurney. The metal cuff restraining my left wrist snaps open with aclang, freeing my hand.
I pull it immediately out of the binding, flexing my wrist in relief. My eyes return to him. Hesitantly, I reach out toward him. He doesn’t move.
My hand touches his upper arm. I almost flinch. Cold, hard metal. There’s nothing human about the steel plate my fingers brush against, nothing that suggests a soul might exist inside. And yet... here he is, moving and functional, alive in every technical sense.
“Can you... feel that?” I find myself asking.
“I’m aware that you’re touching me,” he replies. “I canfeelit, logically, if you can call it that.”
“Can you sense pain?”
“No. I don’t understand my limbs in the same way you do.”
“Do you remember what that was like?”
“Yes. I remember everything.”
