I won’t leap at Ivy. I’m not sixteen anymore. But I refuse to sit here and take her bullshit in the name of keeping peace.
“You’re really doing well here. I admire that about you.”
Ivy was all teed up to bite back at me, so my compliment disarms her.
“You really know what men want. I’ve never been good at that.”
“Damn right,” she says, after a pause.
“So you don’t try to be more than what they want. You don’t try to be too clever or too opinionated or too interesting or funny or friendly. Because, if we’re honest, that’s not what men are really looking for. I admire that you’re none of those things.”
“Umm … ”
“You’re just a hole. Like a Fleshlight with less personality.”
Ivy bolts up with her claws out, but my dodging is unnecessary. Roxy is already back, and Ivy runs into her torso before she can cross the space to tackle me. There’s a hot, mutual exchange of glares between the girls, and for a second I think they’ll rip each other apart. The idea makes me happy. If there’s a catfight in the offing, I want popcorn.
But then Roxy sits. Not across from Ivy, but right beside her. Roxy’s hand goes to Ivy’s thigh, and her lips seductively part. Ivy, seeing and feeling Roxy’s advances, moves back as if bitten.
“Bridget,” Trevor says.
His hand is out, like it was for the others. I take it, somehow touched. I like Trevor, but I don’t understand him. He’s Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, cordial in situations that normally call for debauchery. He strikes me as the kind of man who’d use a cloth napkin in a strip club, sitting with his back to the stage until the strippers tap him on the shoulder and invite him to look. Strange that he’s concocted such a hedonistic contest. Strange that to win this game, we’re supposed to defile this guy who, when clothes are on, strikes me as a Boy Scout.
We move to the remote couch. He makes a point of waiting for me to sit before joining me. When he finally does, I’m compelled to watch him. He really is nice to look at. Blue eyes. A face that’s nearly as chiseled as Daniel’s, but far more boyish. Medium-length light brown hair, swept up into a messy semi-fauxhawk like a college boy. He’s the picture of a young billionaire, caught somewhere between cultivated charm and all the debauchery that money can’t help but buy.
“Thank God,” he says, with a smile that instantly softens my tension. His teeth are white and straight. A genuine smile that spreads to his eyes — the confident expression of a kid who’s never failed to receive something he wants. Or someone.
“What?”
“Thank God you’re here,” he clarifies.
Damn you, Trevor Stone. I’m trying to keep my walls up, but his eyes convince me he means it. I’m suddenly, foolishly sure I’m at the top of this game. It’s me, him, and the five extras we need to shed like dead skin.
I look away, wondering if I’m blushing. I hate that I might be.“I’ve been here for almost three weeks,” I manage to say.
“I mean here. Sitting in that chair, across from me, right now. The two of us finally alone.”
“I guess we each get our turn.”
Trevor laughs. It’s a light, sure, carefree laugh. The kind my hard past never nurtured. “Yes. But … ” He trails off, and when I look up, his eyes are mischievous, like he’s considering saying something he shouldn’t.
“What?”
“Roxy.”
“What about her? You sure didn’t spend much time talking to her.”
He looks around the mostly empty room. “Okay,” he says, his voice conspiratorial. “Do you know what she told me the minute we sat down?”
“What?”
“She said she wanted to … you know. To have sex right here in front of you and Ivy.” He manages to say this as if precedent, here at the house, hasn’t been abundantly set. Somehow, I react as if this is outrageous, despite seeing much crazier things.
“I wasn’t clear if she wanted to do it to make you jealous somehow, or if she was hoping you’d want to … you know … join in.”
Now I’m sure I’m blushing. Holy fuck. This really, really sucks. I’m not a prude, or interested in this man, so why is my body betraying me? He’s hitting buttons I didn’t know I had, that I don’t want to have.
“This must be terrible for you. All these women wanting you to have sex with them all the time.”
He shrugs. “The novelty wears off. You’re not stupid, Bridget, so I won’t try and convince you that I haven’t partaken. Hell, you’ve seen it. Nature of all of this, I suppose.” He looks up, into the room’s corners, as his mind strays. “But Roxy? She’s a mess.”
I actually laugh, surprised that he’d say it.
“So why did you keep her?”
He pauses, his thoughts obviously heavy. He’s looking past me, thinking. Then his eyes settle on mine, and I get the feeling of a decision made.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret. Something I think you’ve already figured out.”
I scoot forward, intrigued.
“There’s more to this than a big dating game.”
I nod. I don’t want to seem too eager, but of course I already know. Though Daniel didn’t tell me what this is, only what it isn’t.
“I need to find the most … unique … person I can, in a very specific way. But most people fall in the middle, perfectly average. If I want to find what I’m looking for, there’s no point in sifting through the ordinary. We need the outliers. We need people on the fringe for this to work.”
I’m dying to ask, For what to work? but I know the answer he’ll give me — the same as one of Daniel’s standbys, about how it’s confidential or complicated.
“Roxy is interesting because she lacks social restraint. She doesn’t understand boundaries, so she’ll do things nobody else will do, go further than anyone else will go. And that matters to us. Not because of the acts themselves — not because of the sex — but because of what it represents. Do you know what I mean?”
Sure I do. It boils down to she’s fucked up. But right now, I’m more interested in the pronoun Trevor keeps slipping into: we and us instead of I and me. It’s the same way Daniel talks about all of this.
“What about Ivy?”
Another pause, like he’s wondering if he should broach confidentiality. But then, because I’m clearly different to him, he does.
“Ivy has trouble telling reality from fantasy.”
“Everyone here seems to have that problem.”
“Literally, Bridget. She has a mild form of schizophrenia. If Ivy has a nightmare, in the morning she’ll think there really was a monster in her closet. She hears things, sees things. She’s medicated and has it mostly under control, but for the same reason Roxy’s unique situation interests us, so does Ivy’s.”
“Her situation?”
“Her brain. Her way of seeing the world.”
I stop to digest that, thinking of how Ivy just told me she had sex with Trevor last night. Did she really? And if she only imagined it, does she really not know she’s mistaken? My mind flashes to things Daniel told me about the other girls. One of the eliminated — I don’t remember which — was a savant, like Rain Man. Abby had that weird thing where her senses got confused, where letters had colors in her mind and months had smells and tastes. I don’t know if Kylie has a condition or not, but Daniel made it sound like her skills at manipulation and deceit are an asset rather than a liability.
“Does my situation interest you?”
“Definitely,” Trevor says.
“What ‘condition’ do I have?”
“We prefer to think of them as superpowers.”
“Okay. Superpowers. So what’s mine?”
Trevor shrugs then leans back smiling as if all of this is so perfectly normal. He spreads out a bit, his hands going up behind his head. “I don’t know.”
“Then why did you keep me? Especially after … ” I don’t need to elaborate. He knows what happened as well a
s anyone.
“Maybe I like a mystery. Maybe I want to figure you out.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I say.
All of a sudden, Trevor stands. He’d lulled me into a quiet, intimate discussion, and now all at once it seems to have ended. I’m looking up at his tall, immaculately dressed form, feeling somehow stupid just because I’m still sitting where I am, where he invited me to be. Suddenly, the decision to stand or not is impossible to make. So I sit and gawk, waiting.
“Hopefully we’ll find out tomorrow, when the games begin.”
He gives me a warm smile then heads toward the other girls. I follow. Apparently, our group date is over. Apparently, we’re all dismissed.
I should be nervous at Trevor’s mention of the word “games.”
But I’m too preoccupied. Because as interested as Trevor seems in me, I’m the only one he didn’t escort back to the circle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daniel
Halo doesn’t choose the tests, I do. For all the talk about Halo acting like a rudimentary artificial intelligence, the focus still belongs firmly on rudimentary and artificial, not intelligence. There are two kinds of futurists: those who believe computers will eventually do our thinking and/or become our overlords, and those who think that’s all a load of shit. I’m in the latter camp. You can’t look at the trillions of synapses in the brain and wonder, “Where is the intelligence? Where is the creativity?” It’s not just about wiring. I don’t believe in God, but being an AI-atheist almost makes me want to. There’s no question that there’s a something in thought that goes above neural interconnections. And I just can’t believe a computer will ever have a soul. Or a true intelligence, at least not in the way I understand it.
The board talks like Halo is the next big thing. Wait until Eros gets Halo on the Internet, they say. Soon, we won’t even have to ask the network to do anything, if it’s able to think for itself. It’ll help us build the Internet of the future, and become the planet’s hive mind … with us pulling the strings.
And my response is, Guys and Gals, this is a glorified flow chart to figure out which girls are the most fuckable. It’s a puzzle the younger version of me would have been willing to attempt all by himself.
Supposedly, Halo can’t be hacked. Supposedly. You’d have to have the cypher key to get down to the ones and zeros, which is about as far as you have to drill down to work on the AI because the higher languages are all Eros-proprietary and closely guarded secrets in their own right. Nobody can solve numbers that big. And supposedly Halo is immune to “garbage in, garbage out” thinking. If I tried to falsify data to get an artificial result, Halo is supposed to be smart enough to compare that data with what we already have, flag anything inconsistent, and notify the board.
But for all its big cock and balls, Halo still needs me to choose the tests.
And, kind of, Fuck Halo. I know what the board wants to do with it. I’m not an idiot; I can see the handwriting on the wall if Halo performs well in this experiment. They’ll take the next step and then the next, and nobody will be able to change Eros’s direction — certainly not me. Company resources will pour into development, away from current foci. Good, entitled people will be shut out and bankrupted, whether it’s logical, justified, or even legal.
Halo’s success will be fantastic for Eros.
But again, Fuck Halo because of it.
The board strongly implied — on par with an order — that Bridget should fall to the next elimination’s axe. Untold billions might rest on this venture’s results, if all of this bears fruit, and the board is convinced that Bridget isn’t the one we’re looking for. The sooner she goes, the better.
But I can only raise my hands and say, Hey, your precious fucking algorithm said she should make it to six, so she made it to six.
And if she makes it to five, I’ll say the same thing.
Hey, I heard you. You wanted Bridget gone. But Halo sees a reason she should stay — and because we’re all so eager to bend over and take whatever Halo commands, then screw you and what you wanted. In fact, Halo told me to tell you all to go fuck yourselves.
I’m angrier than I should be. I can’t help it.
I’m at my desk, working with pencil and paper because the feel of wood and graphite helps me to think in ways a computer never can. I’m drawing flow charts that I’ll burn in my pocket incinerator once I’m done. I know where the cameras are in here, and am conveniently positioned so they can see me but not what I’m writing. Because although no one can hack Halo, even a guy with a pencil can fuck its shit up at least a little by doing the wrong tests at the wrong times.
This is supposed to work like the qualitative analysis in my high school chemistry test. We know the girls’ key differentiators — what Trevor calls their “superpowers” — and so one by one, we’re supposed to design and administer tests that focus on one differentiator at a time. We test one girl against her superpower while testing all the others as controls. She’ll either pass, or she won’t. The variable will either be eliminated like in those old chemistry experiments, or it won’t be.
If I was listening to the board, I should do a Bridget test first.
But fuck the board.
If I wanted to give Halo the best data for the next elimination, I should administer an experiment that will either remove or fail to remove Bridget’s superpower from contention. It makes sense that she’d go next because of the remaining six — she scored lowest and hence is probably next to go. But Bridget didn’t score lowest because she was the poorest fit for our mockingly named “Trevor’s bride” criteria. She scored lowest because someone was shaking the box.
I draw my flow chart.
If this happens, then that happens.
But if this happens, that might happen.
I’m just like an algorithm. Difference is, I have a brain. Halo doesn’t run this show. I do. Everyone agrees you can’t hack Halo, but I sure don’t plan to make its job easy.
Not the Bridget test.
In part because I haven’t yet manufactured a superpower for Bridget. Technically speaking, she has none. That’s why the board objects to her presence. The others were carefully selected. She was only added to the first round to humor me — a guy whom it’s unfortunately necessary to pacify, at least for now. Anyone making it this far should be a contender, meaning they should have a superpower. Something that makes them highly unique in a valuable way.
I’ll come up with something for Bridget. I’ll concoct a lie. But I’ll need time until I do.
I draw a box on my paper, connect the lines, and follow the flow. I’m not a computer, but I’m goddamn smart in spite of it, if I say so myself.
No, the Bridget test won’t come first.
I burn the paper and stow my pencil. I did my writing on the glass part of my desk, so it’s left no impressions. There’s no way to be totally clean, and my ability to lie will narrow considerably once Caspian shows up. But this is good enough for now. And the thrill of getting caught, I’ve found, makes everything a lot more worth doing.
I head back to my room. I put on one of my better-tailored suits. Then I head downstairs, where the others are waiting with no idea what’s coming.
It’s game time.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bridget
When I enter the Great Room for today’s so-called game, I find Kylie on an enormous flat couch with her legs wrapped around Richard. Kylie’s impulses seem to flap around like a pressure hose without someone holding the end, so I’m not surprised to see genuine lust pointed at Richard. To see them — and I definitely do, well before they see me — you’d swear these two were into each other beyond any contests or sexual relief. Richard has his hand up Kylie’s dress, and she’s rubbing him through his tight jeans, but their mouths tell most of the story. The fucking around here is often mechanical, but watching these two and taking the temperature of their embraces, I have to wonder if the whispers I’ve heard are true: that o
n the side, Richard and Kylie are sort of becoming a non-exclusive thing.
I watch them for what’s probably seconds but feels like minutes. I’m reminded of standing by and watching Tony fuck Erin against the wall the day I arrived, and part of me wants to see how far this will go.
I feel someone move into the space beside me. It’s Kat.
“So is true,” Kat says to me, low enough that they can’t hear us. They’re a dozen yards away in the Great Room, their attention fully on each other. In a house full of hedonism, it’s strange that any of us would recognize a genuine tryst, but it seems like Kat and I have heard the same rumor, and are finding it true.
I look back. Roxy has just entered, dressed in a way that’s somehow more pretty than abjectly slutty. She’s looking at the pair like she wants to join them, but Jessica stops her. Roxy gives her a fierce look but pauses. We were called here for a test, not for an orgy. Kylie either didn’t get the message because her face was full of Richard or she arrived early enough to sneak in a quickie.
The four of us are near the room’s doors, in the small entry alcove. We hear nothing but smacking lips and moans coming from the big flat couch, and I’m perversely certain (with more excitement than I care to admit, especially considering that this is Kylie) that soon the wet noises of Richard’s fingers inside Kylie will join them. They still haven’t noticed us, and nobody’s speaking.
I hear the door shift behind me. I glance back to see that Ivy has arrived with Logan, apparently in the middle of telling her something. Ivy stops before he notices her staring, and then Logan stops speaking and starts watching, too.
“Go, Richard,” he says.
Richard must hear it because he looks up and, seeing his audience, grins. He pulls his hand out from under Kylie’s dress to wave, and I notice that three of his fingers shine in the lights.
Burning Choice (Trevor's Harem #3) Page 6
