He feels lower than pond scum.Lower than the toads.
The kid is crying, hissing curses under his breath, promising revenge.When all that fails and there’s only tears left, Lachlan lets go of him.
‘I’ll find a way to get rid of you, I swear to God I will, you psycho, you fucking… I hate you.Ihate you!’
Lachlan doesn’t respond, but he takes it seriously, and he stores his personal gun in a lockbox from then on.
?
It’s been a month.
A gruelling, non-stop month of Julian Penhalyx doing everything in his limited power to getridof Lachlan Tanner, including train his baby sister to hate and fear Lachlan.
Meanwhile, the most basic upgrades of the East Wing are underway.
Lachlan oversees each element personally to ensure localised control.Blaire is friendly, practical and extremely helpful.She seems to have been waiting for someone like him to take the job because when he explains his ideas, she wholeheartedly agrees.They thoroughly discuss the hiring process for upgrade installation, which requires all kinds of specialists, and between them, they craft a clever implementation plan where multiple teams will contribute but no one group ever has control over the installation or understanding of access.She anticipates his needs in terms of staff rotation too.
Thatall goes swimmingly.
Lachlan upgrades the tracking devices for Julian and Mimi, and because Julian obviously has some affinity with technology, Lachlan has to innovate outside of what already exists.
He often hasideasfor things that he can’t buy, but two years ago, he met a woman named Jolene Mercer who changed all of that.She’s his tech person, his go-to.One of several people he’s helped out in the past who remained in his circle.No one can create like she does.
They do favours for each other sometimes, but this time, he can pay her.
It’s his design, her application.
Whispernet Microthreading;micro-trackers woven directly into fabrics using conductive thread, charged by body heat.Lachlan has to be very careful when he adds these pieces to the laundry cycle.He employs Blaire in choosing the clothes to use, makes sure to select favourites and of course all shoes and jackets.The threads monitor pulse and location.In a pinch, he could use them to transmit sound,but it might short out the rice-grain-sized deviceorfry one of the conductors.He implements these over two weeks and loudly still insists Julian wear his tracker, even upgrades it to throw Julian off.
He completely gutsthe old CCTV and refurbishes the Control Room, updating an archaic system with fibre-optics in the lawns, flowerbeds, gravel paths and hedges as well as state of the art technology for monitoring and communication.All newly installed cameras now employ 3D lidar with shadow-tracking and environmental-response capability.He enormously tightens security for access to the hidden road leading into the driveable tunnel, creates a choke point.
There’s one additional measure he ultimately decides against even though he thought it up.Jolene says it’s anAcoustic Perimeter Field,but Lachlan names it theHush Linewhen he explains his idea to Jolene after Julian was an absolute brat all fucking night, tripping window alarms and lying about it.
The Hush Line is an ultrasonic salt circle he would theoretically have put around the Estate grounds.Approaching the boundary would hit the person with a sudden spike of vertigo and sharp inner-ear pain that would create a nauseating pressure behind the eyes, debilitating balance.
It would force the body to recoil and retreat.
His restraint comes from a murky place inside himself that Lachlan Tanner rarely visits.The grim knowledge that, once informed about the existence of such a deterrent, Mr Penhalyx may take it to extremes in subduing and controlling his son.
It sits unused, never even brought to the Estate.
Lachlan, despite being given free rein, decides against using physical force with Julian in anything less than extreme circumstances and thisHush Line, no matter how impermanent the effects are, would be a step too far.Whatever else, Julian should feel safe, not shackled and the use of this against him would hardly help ease his searing hatred of Lachlan which is the underlying cause of everything that hasnotgone swimmingly this past month.
At every possible turn, Julian makes it his life’s mission to undermine Lachlan and, true to his father’s warning, he is exceptionally creative.Overall, he mounts a general effort to get Lachlan fired, so he stages failure whenever he can.Standout times include the three hours he crammed himself into a fucking laundry chuteand got stuck on purpose claiming he was “hiding” from Lachlan’s violence, and the time he tried to short out the bracelet by diving to the bottom of the lake on the grounds and almost drowning himself.
Perhaps the best attempt so far, one that did result in Lachlan being reprimanded,was thecrawl.
Ever since that first week, Julian has been methodicallycry-wolfingLachlan and Lachlan has been fully aware of it, will not allow the attempts to stack towards learned disbelief.He takes each fake threat seriously.He never lets himself become jaded.There was, however, an angle he didn’t anticipate to this.He’s lost count of the number of times Julian has faked being attacked, faked intruders, faked injury,triggering the window alarms frequently.
But he didn’t realise Julian wastiminghis responses.
Suffice to say that Julian anticipated almost everything about the trick he pulled, including how long it takes for Lachlan to reach his room after adanger pingfrom the bracelet.He used that window of time Lachlan was in transit to try anewjourney.
The ventilation shafts.
Lachlan had not only created additional secure elements to keep both children inside the East Wing, but also in the event of a home invasion, a way out.Julian wasn’t supposed to know anything about this, but that seemed to be Lachlan’s first mistake.He installed Directional Vent Protection, orDVP, which uses a series of articulated micro-teeth embedded in the lower panels of the ventilation shaft, lying flat under outward movement but rising sharply against any inward force, creating a one-way passage that permits escape but physically rejects entry.
These “teeth” are made of tungsten and they’re designed to shred.
