Whoops. Probably shouldn’t be airing out my dirty laundry likethat.
“It’s a long story,” I said tohim.
He smirked. “I’m sure. What do you think of this loft?” He handed me the phone and I took itgratefully.
Note to Ronnie: don’t talk about me sleeping with other guys in front of my newman.
“This is amazing.” I swiped through the pictures. It had an extended master with four king-size beds for large party co-sleeping, an open second floor workspace for Jeremy, and Damien to tinker with their stuff, and a homegym.
“Perfect. I’ll have my agent fly out there tonight and video call us to make sure it’s going to workout.”
I nodded. “Can I ask you something?” My brain was gnawing on something, and I needed to get itout.
He put down his phone and met my gaze. Damien was great about giving undivided attention. Something else I liked abouthim.
“Okay. I’m not super smart, so bear with me,” Iprefaced.
He smiled. “You’re plenty smart, Kit. What do you want toknow?”
I tried not to blush at his compliment. “The cuffs. They do the plasma shield thingy to create a physical barrier but… the data dump. Tell me more aboutthat.”
I didn’t fully understand how it hurt them, or if we could make it hurt themmore.
Understanding shone in his gaze. “Yes, okay. This is more of Jeremy’s field of expertise, but studies have shown that the ghouls communicate by sending mental files. Files with coding in them, similar to our computer files. So when we hit them with a random data dump file, it basically overwhelms their senses, like a sound weapon would cause you to plug your ears and feel disoriented. It all comes too fast and too loud for you to focus, and it’s the same withthem.”
Holy shit.I didn’t know that. I mean, I knew it hurt them, but hearing how it worked was kind of fascinating. “Could we hurt them more, I don’t know, like send a file that made their brainexplode?”
Damien chuckled. “Maybe. That’s a one-in-a-million chance we would find the right code that spoke to that organ and caused it to shut down orwhatever.”
I shrugged. “Might be worthtrying.”
There’s nothing in life that would bring me more satisfaction than watching the ghouls’ brains explode beforeme.
He nodded. “I can ask Jeremy what he thinks after he’s done with theremotes.”
Jeremy had been hard at work designing some universal remote controllers that could switch the plasma bricks on and off from far away. We were slowly setting up plasma protection domes throughout the Dream Wars, meaning we entered with the plasma copies the ghouls made when they scanned and replicated us, then left them back in the Dream Wars, as they didn’t seem to disappear when we woke up like our bodies did. Almost as if our physical earth bodies called our souls home and the nonorganic things like weapons got leftbehind.
It was both good and bad. Good that we now had hundreds of plasma bricks in the Dream Wars to hide in, but bad because we left behind so many weapons for the ghouls tosteal.
The bricks could run for weeks without repowering the batteries, but we couldn’t get through the shields to get back inside. They were continuous, keepingallthings out: human, ghoul, and even Galadria. With Jeremy’s new remotes, we could turn them off to let humans inside and then turn them back onquickly.
Damien ran a hand through his hair. He looked stressed out, staring off into the mountains that surroundedBisbee.
“What’s wrong?” I askedhim.
He sighed. “I’ve done my best to give Jeremy as much structure and dependability as possible in this crazy life, and now…. We need to find out how we can stop them from separating us. I fear one day he won’t call and I’ll never find him again. He’ll run off, someone will hurt him, or takeadvantage—”
“Shhh.” I slipped onto his lap and he wrapped his arms around me. I never felt close enough to Damien, even when our bodies were pressed together. I had no idea what we were, but as long as I was always welcome on his lap, I didn’t needlabels.
My heart ripped open then. Jeremy was Damien’s blood brother, but he was like a son and a brother to all of us. To not be able to protect him was soul-crushing.
“The dream bands tie our consciousnesses together when we go in, right? We just need to find a way to tie our bodies together when we come out. I’msure—”
Damien leapt up, bringing both of us to our feet, and with two hands on each of my shoulders, he shook me. “Woman, you’rebrilliant!”
Then he slammed a hard kiss on my mouth and took offrunning.
Dating a brilliant scientist isinteresting.
