Mack 'n' Me, page 24
“Except me,” I said, but I had my doubts.
“Delight stood over you, and kept her team moving past. If she hadn’t...” he hesitated, again. “I think they’re just so used to making sure that it’s become second nature for them to put an extra round into the head of any corpse they see.”
“Standing over me?” I asked, my voice sounding faint. If she’d been standing over me, there’d have been plenty of head for her team to see, and shoot at. What wasn’t Mack telling me?
He refused to be drawn, deliberately misunderstanding what I had asked.
“She kept you alive,” he said. “She could have been rid of you, right then, and everyone would have put it down to the hazards of the game, but she made sure you came out of there in one piece.”
“Did she know what I was doing with the data?” I asked, thinking that would be the only logical explanation for her going to the trouble. I mean, a blaster to the head, could just as easily be a blaster to the implant, and then where would they have been for the data?
Mack shook his head.
“No. Not until later, which is why I’m puzzled.”
I got the impression that not many things puzzled Mack, so I paid attention. Delight had kept me alive, and, as far as I could tell, she very much wanted me dead, and could have let it happen as an accident. Yet she hadn’t. I wondered if Mack wanted to know why as badly as I did, and figured that was impossible, too.
I shrugged it away, pushing aside the questions of why, and for what reason, Delight had saved me. Those could all wait for later.
“So, I said. “Apart from looking over the security footage, for very obvious reasons, what else does Odyssey want me to do?”
“This,” he said, his hands moving over the keyboard, and I saw a spreadsheet that appeared to be populating itself. “Ghoul was a researcher. He had patents pending on almost a hundred legal products, and then there were the patents pending on legal products for which the research would have had to have been illegal, and the projects he had under way. You get a percentage of the profit of each and every one.”
I did, huh? Well, that was something.
“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked, making an attempt at indifference. “I mean, beyond a pretty good pay day.”
And Mack grinned. It was an evil grin, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming.
“You,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself, “get to help sort the files into completely legal from the research base through to the end product, the illegal, and therefore unusable, and the only-with-a-good-lawyer legal, so Odyssey knows what it can own up to having.”
Which didn’t tell me why he was so pleased with the idea. Given I knew he wouldn’t tell me in an office full of Odyssey folk, I didn’t bother asking, figured I could leave that question until later. In the meantime, I had a different one.
“And what do they do with ones they can’t own up to?”
“They’ll delete it,” Mack said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.
I looked at him, because I was darn sure he no more believed that than I did. In fact, I’d go so far as putting money on the idea that Odyssey would keep every idea, and use what was done, finish what could be finished without using immoral methods—and, boy, did I want to believe that—and store the rest for reference.
Yeah. Sure they will, came Mack’s voice in my head, but they don’t need to realize you’re thinking that.
I took the hint. He was right. Odyssey definitely didn’t need to know what I was thinking. I decided Mack needed an answer, if only for all the little Odyssey ears that had come back into the ops centre.
“So, I don’t need to go back down into the complex?”
“Not unless you can think of a reason why you need to?” he replied, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nope. Not a one...” and then it hit me. Of course, I’d have to go back into the complex. Of course, there was a reason. Why in all the stars had I thought it would be otherwise? “Fuck.”
Again, the room stilled around us. Mack restarted activity by surveying the surrounding agents with a disapproving stare, which had the effect of reminding them they should be focused on their consoles.
“You going to tell me why?”
But I’d followed his gaze, and the thought had occurred to me that Odyssey was a big organisation and, Agent Delight aside, not immune to infiltration.
“Not here,” I said, then added, “It’s just a theory, but I don’t want to float it in public.”
Mack gave me what passed as a smile, and pushed away from his desk.
“Girl can be taught,” he said, leading the way to the door.
27—Not Quite as it Seems
I was never so glad to leave a room in my life... except for maybe leaving the lab where they wanted to use me to test the Canton 82, or the cell Bastien the Ghoul... Okay, so maybe I’d been happier about other rooms I’d left. Whatever. I was just glad to get out of the ops centre, too.
Mack didn’t say a word until he’d taken me out of Bastien’s complex to the shuttle he and Tens had come down in, and, boy, was I glad to see that thing, too. I followed him on board, and settled into a flight couch across from him. I didn’t expect the shuttle door to close, or the thrum of its engines coming on-line.
If it hadn’t been Mack sitting across from me, or the fact I knew this new craft was his shuttle, I might have panicked. As it was, I still felt a curling of unease.
“What’s going on?”
Mack stared at me, and I held my breath. This was where his face melted to reveal the Bastien beneath. Right?
“Mack?”
“We get you out of here,” he said, and relief washed through me, although I was still afraid.
I think he caught the emotion, because he leant forward.
“What is it, Cutter?”
But I couldn’t answer him. I glanced past him toward the cockpit, but the doors were closed, had been closed since we boarded.
“Cutter?”
My eyes snapped back to Mack’s face, and I felt Tens slide into my head, even though it was Rohan who answered.
“She’s scared you’re not you.”
I looked up, then looked around the cabin, but there wasn’t a single Rohan in sight. The next words he said had just a touch of sadness to them.
“... and she’s scared I’m not me.”
“Cutter!”
And well Mack might shout, because I was out of my seat, and heading for the cargo-hold door, trying to put as much distance between me and Mack and the cockpit as I could manage. There might even be weapons in the hold, if push came to shove...
Mack was out of his seat and on me, even as my back hit the wall. I yelped as he grabbed me and pulled me into his arms—and he was in my head just as fast.
“We’re real.”
I might have tried to break free of his grip, to kick him and Tens and Rohan out of my head—again, but it was pointless. Mack’s grip was too tight, and Tens outmatched me tech-wise on his own. With Rohan helping him... In the end, I did the only thing I could think to do, and the one thing I should have done the first time I woke.
I poked all their implants.
“Hey!”
“Quitit”
“Whatthefuck!”
“I’m here.”
They all came out as a chorus, and only Rohan sounded anywhere near calm about it, which was when I realized I’d poked four implants, and not the three I was expecting. Tens caught on first.
“Delight?” he asked, and then, quick as lightning, he did something with the code that made Delight’s link become visible. As soon as he had, he turned to me, “Do it again.”
So I did, and this time, it was fun.
While I poked around for more connections, Rohan ran a diagnostic inside the implant, picking out the other links I had, and I noted I now had my link to Mack’s ship back. I laid a lock over that one, before Delight could move toward it, and then I explored the others.
No wonder I’d been feeling like the world I was in wasn’t quite real. It was real, but there was a section of my head that just wasn’t in it.
“Bastien the Bastard,” I muttered, and I didn’t mean the Ghoul.
Delight crossed over to see what I had found, partly because she was that bull-headed, but mostly because Tens wanted to see, too, and he had a firm grip on her ability to leave.
“He’s still alive?”
Mack said something that echoed my comment, and Rohan settled himself quietly in a corner of my implant and started to tinker. I just stared at the link I’d found and wondered how Bendigo-Bastien had managed to get himself off the gurney, and into the situation he was in... or rather, how Bastien the Ghoul had managed to get Bendigo-Bastien off the gurney and into the situation they were in. Also, why Bendigo-Bastien had chosen now to let the link go live.
“Rohan, can you trace this?” I asked, and felt him focus on me for a flicker of time, before going back to whatever it was he was working on.
We had Delight’s attention, and Tens’s as well, although he was none too pleased with me.
“Leave the boy out of this.”
“I can trust the boy,” I said, making it clear I wasn’t so sure I could say the same for him, or anyone else.
Delight laughed, but Mack was still in the dark.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said, and then snapped at Tens. “Shuttle won’t dock itself.”
Tens stuck around, but the shuttle docked without any problems. Mack’s response was typical.
“Who’s flying this thing?”
“Case. She’s been on the remote since just before I stuck my head in here.”
I could feel Mack glowering. He wasn’t happy, but Case was his main pilot, so I didn’t see how he could argue.
“Well, that’s just mean,” Rohan said, and we all turned toward his corner.
“What?” I asked.
“Bendigo’s warping your reality,” he said. “It’s just a little bit, but it’s enough to make you feel that nothing around you is real.”
“What do you mean?” Mack.
“He’s got part of her conscious linked to where he is.” Rohan looked at me. “I bet you feel like one of us is going to turn into the Ghoul any second, right?”
I nodded. Inside my head, but outside my head, as well. It was the weirdest feeling.
“Well, that’s because Bendigo’s surrounded by Ghouls, and they all want to know what data you took.”
“I took it all.”
“Yeah, and now they’re just figuring that out... or they were.”
“What do you mean?” Mack, impatient and fuming.
“I’ve put a temporary shunt on the link. Now they’re only getting pictures of Delight’s face.”
“That’s Agent Delight to you, child.”
Rohan should have been scared witless to have her looking at him like that. Instead, he returned her gaze, and there wasn’t a skerrick of fear in sight.
“Cutter calls you Delight,” he said, “and that’s good enough for me.”
I felt Delight’s attention rest on me, and did my best to mimic Rohan’s nonchalance. Tens and Mack straightened, Tens dragging Delight a few steps further away from me. I waited to see what happened next, was surprised when Mack left the implant, even though he kept a tight grip on me in the real.
“Time you left,” Tens said, looking at Delight, and I was surprised to see her vanish, more surprised when Tens looked over at Rohan.
“Is she gone?”
Rohan stilled, and then raised his head, with a very satisfied smile on his face.
“She is now,” and then he left, too, with Tens following in his wake.
“We’ve landed,” Tens reminded me, just before he vanished from my head, “and Mack’s gonna want to talk.”
I didn’t say anything in reply, just stood in the silence of my now empty head, and carefully locked down every link I’d found. The only one I had trouble with was the one Rohan had identified as belonging to Bendigo. That one, I stared at for a good long moment, wondering what to do about it.
Rohan had rerouted it to a file that scrolled through different images of Agent Delight, but he hadn’t been able to undo it, or kick Bendigo completely out of my mind. Taking a closer look, I saw that what he’d done wouldn’t last very long once Bendigo realized he’d been re-routed, but that I’d be alerted to any changes that occurred. And Tens hadn’t tried to improve on it, which meant I really did have to come out of my head and talk to them.
Damn.
All I really wanted to do was leave.
Everything.
A very long way behind me.
For good.
But I couldn’t tell them that, any of them. Not even Rohan. The boy was too young to be saddled with that kind of responsibility, and I don’t think a single one of the adults gave two shakes of a shit. Tucking that thought carefully away, in a direction that might even have meant it was stored in my grey matter, instead of inside the implant, I sank back into my body, and opened my eyes.
Mack’s shirt blocked my vision, and he smelt—‘good’ was not a word I wanted intruding, nor was ‘manly’, ‘comforting’ or the phrase ‘like home’; there was just no freaking way!—‘like Mack’, that seemed to be a good fit. Mack smelt like Mack, and that would just have to do.
“Green just isn’t your color,” I said, even though I couldn’t see enough of him to make that call, “and you stink.”
Completely unfair, because he smelt no worse than any other man who worked in an office, but it had the desired effect, and he let me go.
“You shouldn’t go around sniffing your male colleagues,” he said, and Tens sputtered.
I couldn’t resist.
“You’d prefer it if I went around sniffing my female colleagues?” I demanded, and Tens grabbed Rohan, and pulled the boy to the main hatch, so he could open it, and they could both leave.
Mack ignored them.
“Whatever turns you on, kiddo,” he said, and turned to follow Tens and the boy. “Whatever turns you on.”
I stopped him with a single question.
“What about freedom?”
Mack turned back around.
“Not until your internship is over,” he said, “and then not until your contract with Odyssey is up.”
“Contract?”
It was news to me. I didn’t recall signing a contract. Mack frowned.
“You did sign a contract, didn’t you?”
I felt the anger I’d held for Odyssey’s high-handedness return, and grabbed it tight.
“I’m sure there’s a contract with my name on it, somewhere.”
“Hmmm. Be that as it may, we have to discuss what to do next.”
I followed him out through the hatch and into the docking bay. My world still didn’t feel quite real, but there was nothing I could do about that. There was a piece of my head being held hostage by an asshole, and I was probably going to have to go and get it back.
With that firmly in mind, I followed Mack away from the shuttle, and into the ship proper. Tens was waiting by the door, but Rohan was nowhere in sight. Tens caught me looking around, and answered the question I wasn’t going to ask.
“He’s hiding in the engine room,” he said. “I’ll have to go dig him out, later.”
Rohan used his limited swear vocabulary, and vanished out of my implant, and I realized, with a jolt, that I hadn’t even know the little beggar had been there. Tens gave me a grin, but he didn’t seem too happy.
“I’ll give him a lecture on cyber-etiquette, while I’m at it.”
I glared at him.
“Don’t bother,” I said, sliding past him through the door. “With the role models he has, it would be wasted.”
And I sincerely hoped Rohan wasn’t around to hear that. The boy was going to be just fine in the world of Mack and Miss Delight, and that was good. It was also sad to see him stepping away from his sense of right, so fast. The Rohan I’d met on Bendigo’s ship, would never have hidden a link in my head—and he’d certainly never have ridden my mind in secret the way he just had.
I sighed. The Rohan I’d met on Bendigo’s ship wouldn’t have lasted long in the world he was in. This Rohan? He’d do just fine. It was cold comfort, and I turned through another door after Mack, with Tens following close behind. I was surprised to find we’d entered the ship’s cafeteria.
“I need a kaff,” Mack said, “and breakfast.”
Breakfast? I’d thought it was later than that.
“I try to keep to ship’s time rather than shift with the day cycle of every planet we visit,” and I couldn’t be sure if Mack had read the confusion on my face, or if he, too, had stayed in the implant—and since he didn’t clarify, I had no way of being sure.
“You can eat, too.”
Domineering bastard—although I was hungry, and I had forgotten when I last ate.
“You were out overnight.”
Fantastic. Man was reading my mind.
We passed through the canteen to a small room set alongside the kitchen. Mack introduced it with an economy of words, as he took a seat at the end farthest from the door.
“Officer’s Mess.”
He had officers?
If he was in my implant, Mack didn’t respond, but he waved me in, indicating I should take a seat to his right, which would put me in a corner, across the table and diagonal to the nearest door. Can’t say that was appealing. I took the seat at the foot of the table, as far away from him as I could get.
Mack sighed.
“I’d rather not have to shout across the table,” he said, and I shrugged.
“Too bad.”
“Fine,” he said, speaking directly in the implant, and opening a link for Tens. “We’ll just have to do it this way, then.”
Tens stepped into the implant, and made himself comfortable, and I rested my forehead on the back of my knuckles, and sighed.
“Fine,” I said, my heart sinking, and I got up and walked to sit by Mack.
They didn’t say a word, but they did get the hell out of my head, and that was all I wanted. Mack turned to me, not a trace of smugness about him. Tens shut the door, and took a seat opposite me. At first I was surprised that he hadn’t chosen a seat on the other side of me, and then I realized that where he’d chosen would put him closer to the door. I guess they still didn’t trust me not to make a break for it.
“Delight stood over you, and kept her team moving past. If she hadn’t...” he hesitated, again. “I think they’re just so used to making sure that it’s become second nature for them to put an extra round into the head of any corpse they see.”
“Standing over me?” I asked, my voice sounding faint. If she’d been standing over me, there’d have been plenty of head for her team to see, and shoot at. What wasn’t Mack telling me?
He refused to be drawn, deliberately misunderstanding what I had asked.
“She kept you alive,” he said. “She could have been rid of you, right then, and everyone would have put it down to the hazards of the game, but she made sure you came out of there in one piece.”
“Did she know what I was doing with the data?” I asked, thinking that would be the only logical explanation for her going to the trouble. I mean, a blaster to the head, could just as easily be a blaster to the implant, and then where would they have been for the data?
Mack shook his head.
“No. Not until later, which is why I’m puzzled.”
I got the impression that not many things puzzled Mack, so I paid attention. Delight had kept me alive, and, as far as I could tell, she very much wanted me dead, and could have let it happen as an accident. Yet she hadn’t. I wondered if Mack wanted to know why as badly as I did, and figured that was impossible, too.
I shrugged it away, pushing aside the questions of why, and for what reason, Delight had saved me. Those could all wait for later.
“So, I said. “Apart from looking over the security footage, for very obvious reasons, what else does Odyssey want me to do?”
“This,” he said, his hands moving over the keyboard, and I saw a spreadsheet that appeared to be populating itself. “Ghoul was a researcher. He had patents pending on almost a hundred legal products, and then there were the patents pending on legal products for which the research would have had to have been illegal, and the projects he had under way. You get a percentage of the profit of each and every one.”
I did, huh? Well, that was something.
“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked, making an attempt at indifference. “I mean, beyond a pretty good pay day.”
And Mack grinned. It was an evil grin, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what was coming.
“You,” he said, sounding very pleased with himself, “get to help sort the files into completely legal from the research base through to the end product, the illegal, and therefore unusable, and the only-with-a-good-lawyer legal, so Odyssey knows what it can own up to having.”
Which didn’t tell me why he was so pleased with the idea. Given I knew he wouldn’t tell me in an office full of Odyssey folk, I didn’t bother asking, figured I could leave that question until later. In the meantime, I had a different one.
“And what do they do with ones they can’t own up to?”
“They’ll delete it,” Mack said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.
I looked at him, because I was darn sure he no more believed that than I did. In fact, I’d go so far as putting money on the idea that Odyssey would keep every idea, and use what was done, finish what could be finished without using immoral methods—and, boy, did I want to believe that—and store the rest for reference.
Yeah. Sure they will, came Mack’s voice in my head, but they don’t need to realize you’re thinking that.
I took the hint. He was right. Odyssey definitely didn’t need to know what I was thinking. I decided Mack needed an answer, if only for all the little Odyssey ears that had come back into the ops centre.
“So, I don’t need to go back down into the complex?”
“Not unless you can think of a reason why you need to?” he replied, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nope. Not a one...” and then it hit me. Of course, I’d have to go back into the complex. Of course, there was a reason. Why in all the stars had I thought it would be otherwise? “Fuck.”
Again, the room stilled around us. Mack restarted activity by surveying the surrounding agents with a disapproving stare, which had the effect of reminding them they should be focused on their consoles.
“You going to tell me why?”
But I’d followed his gaze, and the thought had occurred to me that Odyssey was a big organisation and, Agent Delight aside, not immune to infiltration.
“Not here,” I said, then added, “It’s just a theory, but I don’t want to float it in public.”
Mack gave me what passed as a smile, and pushed away from his desk.
“Girl can be taught,” he said, leading the way to the door.
27—Not Quite as it Seems
I was never so glad to leave a room in my life... except for maybe leaving the lab where they wanted to use me to test the Canton 82, or the cell Bastien the Ghoul... Okay, so maybe I’d been happier about other rooms I’d left. Whatever. I was just glad to get out of the ops centre, too.
Mack didn’t say a word until he’d taken me out of Bastien’s complex to the shuttle he and Tens had come down in, and, boy, was I glad to see that thing, too. I followed him on board, and settled into a flight couch across from him. I didn’t expect the shuttle door to close, or the thrum of its engines coming on-line.
If it hadn’t been Mack sitting across from me, or the fact I knew this new craft was his shuttle, I might have panicked. As it was, I still felt a curling of unease.
“What’s going on?”
Mack stared at me, and I held my breath. This was where his face melted to reveal the Bastien beneath. Right?
“Mack?”
“We get you out of here,” he said, and relief washed through me, although I was still afraid.
I think he caught the emotion, because he leant forward.
“What is it, Cutter?”
But I couldn’t answer him. I glanced past him toward the cockpit, but the doors were closed, had been closed since we boarded.
“Cutter?”
My eyes snapped back to Mack’s face, and I felt Tens slide into my head, even though it was Rohan who answered.
“She’s scared you’re not you.”
I looked up, then looked around the cabin, but there wasn’t a single Rohan in sight. The next words he said had just a touch of sadness to them.
“... and she’s scared I’m not me.”
“Cutter!”
And well Mack might shout, because I was out of my seat, and heading for the cargo-hold door, trying to put as much distance between me and Mack and the cockpit as I could manage. There might even be weapons in the hold, if push came to shove...
Mack was out of his seat and on me, even as my back hit the wall. I yelped as he grabbed me and pulled me into his arms—and he was in my head just as fast.
“We’re real.”
I might have tried to break free of his grip, to kick him and Tens and Rohan out of my head—again, but it was pointless. Mack’s grip was too tight, and Tens outmatched me tech-wise on his own. With Rohan helping him... In the end, I did the only thing I could think to do, and the one thing I should have done the first time I woke.
I poked all their implants.
“Hey!”
“Quitit”
“Whatthefuck!”
“I’m here.”
They all came out as a chorus, and only Rohan sounded anywhere near calm about it, which was when I realized I’d poked four implants, and not the three I was expecting. Tens caught on first.
“Delight?” he asked, and then, quick as lightning, he did something with the code that made Delight’s link become visible. As soon as he had, he turned to me, “Do it again.”
So I did, and this time, it was fun.
While I poked around for more connections, Rohan ran a diagnostic inside the implant, picking out the other links I had, and I noted I now had my link to Mack’s ship back. I laid a lock over that one, before Delight could move toward it, and then I explored the others.
No wonder I’d been feeling like the world I was in wasn’t quite real. It was real, but there was a section of my head that just wasn’t in it.
“Bastien the Bastard,” I muttered, and I didn’t mean the Ghoul.
Delight crossed over to see what I had found, partly because she was that bull-headed, but mostly because Tens wanted to see, too, and he had a firm grip on her ability to leave.
“He’s still alive?”
Mack said something that echoed my comment, and Rohan settled himself quietly in a corner of my implant and started to tinker. I just stared at the link I’d found and wondered how Bendigo-Bastien had managed to get himself off the gurney, and into the situation he was in... or rather, how Bastien the Ghoul had managed to get Bendigo-Bastien off the gurney and into the situation they were in. Also, why Bendigo-Bastien had chosen now to let the link go live.
“Rohan, can you trace this?” I asked, and felt him focus on me for a flicker of time, before going back to whatever it was he was working on.
We had Delight’s attention, and Tens’s as well, although he was none too pleased with me.
“Leave the boy out of this.”
“I can trust the boy,” I said, making it clear I wasn’t so sure I could say the same for him, or anyone else.
Delight laughed, but Mack was still in the dark.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said, and then snapped at Tens. “Shuttle won’t dock itself.”
Tens stuck around, but the shuttle docked without any problems. Mack’s response was typical.
“Who’s flying this thing?”
“Case. She’s been on the remote since just before I stuck my head in here.”
I could feel Mack glowering. He wasn’t happy, but Case was his main pilot, so I didn’t see how he could argue.
“Well, that’s just mean,” Rohan said, and we all turned toward his corner.
“What?” I asked.
“Bendigo’s warping your reality,” he said. “It’s just a little bit, but it’s enough to make you feel that nothing around you is real.”
“What do you mean?” Mack.
“He’s got part of her conscious linked to where he is.” Rohan looked at me. “I bet you feel like one of us is going to turn into the Ghoul any second, right?”
I nodded. Inside my head, but outside my head, as well. It was the weirdest feeling.
“Well, that’s because Bendigo’s surrounded by Ghouls, and they all want to know what data you took.”
“I took it all.”
“Yeah, and now they’re just figuring that out... or they were.”
“What do you mean?” Mack, impatient and fuming.
“I’ve put a temporary shunt on the link. Now they’re only getting pictures of Delight’s face.”
“That’s Agent Delight to you, child.”
Rohan should have been scared witless to have her looking at him like that. Instead, he returned her gaze, and there wasn’t a skerrick of fear in sight.
“Cutter calls you Delight,” he said, “and that’s good enough for me.”
I felt Delight’s attention rest on me, and did my best to mimic Rohan’s nonchalance. Tens and Mack straightened, Tens dragging Delight a few steps further away from me. I waited to see what happened next, was surprised when Mack left the implant, even though he kept a tight grip on me in the real.
“Time you left,” Tens said, looking at Delight, and I was surprised to see her vanish, more surprised when Tens looked over at Rohan.
“Is she gone?”
Rohan stilled, and then raised his head, with a very satisfied smile on his face.
“She is now,” and then he left, too, with Tens following in his wake.
“We’ve landed,” Tens reminded me, just before he vanished from my head, “and Mack’s gonna want to talk.”
I didn’t say anything in reply, just stood in the silence of my now empty head, and carefully locked down every link I’d found. The only one I had trouble with was the one Rohan had identified as belonging to Bendigo. That one, I stared at for a good long moment, wondering what to do about it.
Rohan had rerouted it to a file that scrolled through different images of Agent Delight, but he hadn’t been able to undo it, or kick Bendigo completely out of my mind. Taking a closer look, I saw that what he’d done wouldn’t last very long once Bendigo realized he’d been re-routed, but that I’d be alerted to any changes that occurred. And Tens hadn’t tried to improve on it, which meant I really did have to come out of my head and talk to them.
Damn.
All I really wanted to do was leave.
Everything.
A very long way behind me.
For good.
But I couldn’t tell them that, any of them. Not even Rohan. The boy was too young to be saddled with that kind of responsibility, and I don’t think a single one of the adults gave two shakes of a shit. Tucking that thought carefully away, in a direction that might even have meant it was stored in my grey matter, instead of inside the implant, I sank back into my body, and opened my eyes.
Mack’s shirt blocked my vision, and he smelt—‘good’ was not a word I wanted intruding, nor was ‘manly’, ‘comforting’ or the phrase ‘like home’; there was just no freaking way!—‘like Mack’, that seemed to be a good fit. Mack smelt like Mack, and that would just have to do.
“Green just isn’t your color,” I said, even though I couldn’t see enough of him to make that call, “and you stink.”
Completely unfair, because he smelt no worse than any other man who worked in an office, but it had the desired effect, and he let me go.
“You shouldn’t go around sniffing your male colleagues,” he said, and Tens sputtered.
I couldn’t resist.
“You’d prefer it if I went around sniffing my female colleagues?” I demanded, and Tens grabbed Rohan, and pulled the boy to the main hatch, so he could open it, and they could both leave.
Mack ignored them.
“Whatever turns you on, kiddo,” he said, and turned to follow Tens and the boy. “Whatever turns you on.”
I stopped him with a single question.
“What about freedom?”
Mack turned back around.
“Not until your internship is over,” he said, “and then not until your contract with Odyssey is up.”
“Contract?”
It was news to me. I didn’t recall signing a contract. Mack frowned.
“You did sign a contract, didn’t you?”
I felt the anger I’d held for Odyssey’s high-handedness return, and grabbed it tight.
“I’m sure there’s a contract with my name on it, somewhere.”
“Hmmm. Be that as it may, we have to discuss what to do next.”
I followed him out through the hatch and into the docking bay. My world still didn’t feel quite real, but there was nothing I could do about that. There was a piece of my head being held hostage by an asshole, and I was probably going to have to go and get it back.
With that firmly in mind, I followed Mack away from the shuttle, and into the ship proper. Tens was waiting by the door, but Rohan was nowhere in sight. Tens caught me looking around, and answered the question I wasn’t going to ask.
“He’s hiding in the engine room,” he said. “I’ll have to go dig him out, later.”
Rohan used his limited swear vocabulary, and vanished out of my implant, and I realized, with a jolt, that I hadn’t even know the little beggar had been there. Tens gave me a grin, but he didn’t seem too happy.
“I’ll give him a lecture on cyber-etiquette, while I’m at it.”
I glared at him.
“Don’t bother,” I said, sliding past him through the door. “With the role models he has, it would be wasted.”
And I sincerely hoped Rohan wasn’t around to hear that. The boy was going to be just fine in the world of Mack and Miss Delight, and that was good. It was also sad to see him stepping away from his sense of right, so fast. The Rohan I’d met on Bendigo’s ship, would never have hidden a link in my head—and he’d certainly never have ridden my mind in secret the way he just had.
I sighed. The Rohan I’d met on Bendigo’s ship wouldn’t have lasted long in the world he was in. This Rohan? He’d do just fine. It was cold comfort, and I turned through another door after Mack, with Tens following close behind. I was surprised to find we’d entered the ship’s cafeteria.
“I need a kaff,” Mack said, “and breakfast.”
Breakfast? I’d thought it was later than that.
“I try to keep to ship’s time rather than shift with the day cycle of every planet we visit,” and I couldn’t be sure if Mack had read the confusion on my face, or if he, too, had stayed in the implant—and since he didn’t clarify, I had no way of being sure.
“You can eat, too.”
Domineering bastard—although I was hungry, and I had forgotten when I last ate.
“You were out overnight.”
Fantastic. Man was reading my mind.
We passed through the canteen to a small room set alongside the kitchen. Mack introduced it with an economy of words, as he took a seat at the end farthest from the door.
“Officer’s Mess.”
He had officers?
If he was in my implant, Mack didn’t respond, but he waved me in, indicating I should take a seat to his right, which would put me in a corner, across the table and diagonal to the nearest door. Can’t say that was appealing. I took the seat at the foot of the table, as far away from him as I could get.
Mack sighed.
“I’d rather not have to shout across the table,” he said, and I shrugged.
“Too bad.”
“Fine,” he said, speaking directly in the implant, and opening a link for Tens. “We’ll just have to do it this way, then.”
Tens stepped into the implant, and made himself comfortable, and I rested my forehead on the back of my knuckles, and sighed.
“Fine,” I said, my heart sinking, and I got up and walked to sit by Mack.
They didn’t say a word, but they did get the hell out of my head, and that was all I wanted. Mack turned to me, not a trace of smugness about him. Tens shut the door, and took a seat opposite me. At first I was surprised that he hadn’t chosen a seat on the other side of me, and then I realized that where he’d chosen would put him closer to the door. I guess they still didn’t trust me not to make a break for it.
