by Jamie Grey
“Why? I’m alive because of Dr. Samil and better than I could have ever imagined. Of course, I believe in her and her cause. And I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her,” he added with a growl.
Renna and Viktis exchanged horrified glances. She hadn’t thought there could be anything worse than humans being experimented on against their will, but this was it. What kind of insane person would choose that path?
“Enough talking. Inside, both of you.” Larson shoved Viktis through the door into a cavernous warehouse.
Renna gazed around the once-familiar space, jaw slack. She recognized it, and yet it was completely different. Back in her day, Blur had set up his desk at one end, out in the open so that everyone could see him. And so he could keep an eye on them.
Finn had had his own office area at the opposite end of the space, but he’d rarely been there, preferring to be down with the rest of the members in the central space. They’d had a dozen long tables scattered about, where gang members could play cards or work through jobs. They’d hung out in low couches in each corner, while a sparring ring was set up at one side for whoever wanted to use it.
Now, Samil had set up an open-air lab area where Blur’s desk had been, with machines and medical devices. The sparing ring was gone, along with the couches, but the tables were still there. A whole group of different faces turned to stare at her as she and Viktis entered the space. Renna bit back a gasp. Each one was in some stage of becoming a hybrid—a metal arm or robotic eye or other technological implant clearly visible on each person.
The people standing around the tables in the warehouse space wore neat, nondescript clothing, their skin clean and hair groomed. They were all still obviously human. But how much longer before they turned into the unthinking machines Renna had destroyed at Navang’s facility?
Did Samil have a neural network here, too? Once they connected to it and she controlled them, would they even know the difference?
Would Renna?
Viktis risked touching her arm when Larson turned to glance behind them. “You all right?”
She nodded, swallowing away the fear clogging her throat. “I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”
Before he could respond, a door opened at the back of the hall, and Dr. Samil walked out, dressed in a crisp black suit. The click of her heels against the floor resounded through the space as she approached, and a smile stretched her pretty face.
The hybrids followed her with their gazes, each one wearing the same identical expression of worship.
“Welcome, Renna. It must be strange to come back to your origins after all this time.” Samil’s tone was friendly, and Renna still had a hard time reconciling the woman who’d helped her back at MYTH with the monster trying to destroy them all.
Renna shrugged, faking boredom. “Not so strange. I escaped from here once. I can do it again.”
Samil frowned. “There’s no need to be so belligerent. I wish you’d realize that I want to help you.”
“By turning me into a robot. Not exactly what I’d call helping.” Renna glared at the woman. “I don’t care what you do to me, but let Viktis go. He has nothing to do with this.”
Samil turned her gaze to the Ileth. “I haven’t been able to experiment much on aliens yet. Larson, take him to one of the holding cells. I’ll look at him after I’m done with Renna.”
Larson grabbed Viktis’s arm. The alien tried to struggle, but Larson clapped an exovise around Viktis’s wrists before he could move and shoved him to the floor. “Alien scum.”
Viktis landed on his hands and knees, wincing as his skin scraped the hard cement. Larson kicked him in the stomach with a thud.
“No!” Renna cried. “Leave him alone.”
But Larson smiled at her as he kicked out again with his heavy boot. Viktis collapsed, curling into a fetal position, but he didn’t make a sound.
“Major, take him away and do that where the test subjects won’t see,” Samil said, wrinkling her nose. “I’ll be in my private labs. You won’t resist if you know what’s good for your friend,” she added to Renna.
The fight went out of her. Viktis was here in this mess because of her. She’d do whatever was necessary to ensure he made it out alive. If that meant cooperating with Samil for now, then so be it.
The doctor led her to a large office at the back of the warehouse and held the door open for Renna. A large mahogany desk with two soft chairs in front of it took up one side of the space, while the other side was dominated by a wall full of lab equipment and holomonitors.
“Is this where you destroy lives?” Renna asked sweetly.
“This is where I save them.” Samil sank gracefully into the chair behind her desk. “Do have a seat.”
Standing would only look petulant at this point, so Renna sat down and crossed her legs. “You call experimenting on people saving them?”
“You’ve seen these people. They’d be dead or dying without me.”
“But at least they wouldn’t be monsters.”
Samil shook her head sadly. “Now we get to the truth of it. To you, these enhanced people are monsters, things to be destroyed. Is that how you feel about yourself, too? Is that why you came alone? So that I could end all this pain for you?”
“I’m hardly alone,” Renna said.
“The alien doesn’t count. You’ve left your MYTH friends to come chasing after me.” A knowing smile curved Samil’s lips. “Or wasn’t that your choice?”
Renna curled her hands into fists in her lap. “You planted that false information. You turned them against me.”
“And it was so easy. I know you already know how it feels to be all alone, but now you’ve had something even more important ripped away from you. Love. Trust. A life.” Samil leaned back in her chair. “And who did this to you? MYTH. They are a cancer that needs to be purged.”
Renna shook her head. “You’re completely insane. You’re the one who did this, not MYTH.”
“No, I just gave them the information. They decided to believe it. To betray you.” Samil’s expression turned businesslike. “It’s nothing personal. I just needed you to understand why I’m doing this. To understand that I’m truly not as bad as you think. That MYTH has its own problems.”
“You’ve killed thousands of people and experimented on thousands more, but you’re not evil?” Renna shook her head. “Could have fooled me. Just because some organization hurt your feelings, it’s their fault that you’ve turned into an evil bitch?”
“Oh, I don’t blame MYTH.” Samil leaned forward to rest her elbows on the desk. “I actually am grateful to them for making me stronger, for showing me what real ruthlessness is. When they greenlighted the experiments on Banos Prime after the explosion, they showed me what was possible, even amidst all that death. I couldn’t save my fiancée, but I can save so many more now.”
Renna shook her head. “Then what is it you want exactly if it’s not revenge on MYTH for killing your fiancée?”
“This has nothing to do with revenge anymore. Perhaps it did once, but I have a bigger goal now.” Samil’s face took on the glow of a true fanatic. “MYTH has resources beyond your imagining, but beneath their shiny exterior, they’ve become corrupted. They experiment on children. They’ve destroyed whole colonies at a senator’s whim. MYTH no longer serves the galaxy. They serve themselves. And I plan to change that.”
Samil got to her feet, pacing behind her desk. “MYTH is only concerned with how to make more money, how to amass power, how to rule instead of how to serve. I want to create an organization that will become something people can believe in.” She nodded to the door. “Those people out there are only the beginning. The poor, the hungry, the crippled. They all want a better life. They want something more. And I plan to give it to them.”
“As long as they become your slaves, you mean.”
“I don’t want slaves, Renna. I want willing soldiers, and there are plenty of people who want what only I can give them.”
“And what is that?”
“I can give them a future.” Samil’s smile was so bright she could have lit the room. “And that’s all because of you. Your DNA will fix them, make them stronger. It will help the surgery and the implants and the technology to improve their lives. It will help them connect with each other. You should be proud.”
“Proud that someone experimented on me against my will?”
“Sacrifices have to be made,” Samil said with a shrug. “I’m sorry you’re in this situation, but I thought you, if anyone, would understand. With your history.”
Renna’s heart kicked with unease, but she remained silent.
“Don’t you see how similar we are?” Samil continued. “We both loved someone who betrayed us. We worked for an organization that doesn’t care what happens to us, as long as it remains in power. Our skills can save so many people.”
“Correction. Your skills, my DNA. There’s a bit of a difference there.”
Samil rolled her eyes. “If you must be literal. I have a great deal of respect for what you’ve accomplished and how far you’ve come from that tenement back on Earth. I know how hard it is to rise above something like that.”
“You don’t know a damn thing,” Renna spat.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Samil pressed a button on her desk, and before Renna could blink, metal cords snaked from the arms of Renna’s chair and wrapped themselves around her wrists.
THIRTY-TWO
Samil pulled a small, clear plastic box from her desk while Renna thrashed and struggled against the ties of her chair.
“What the hell is that? What are you doing?” she demanded.
“A new test. There’s a microchip in here that will allow me to use your implant as a transmitter. I want to see exactly how far you’ve come in your abilities.” She held up the small box. “Does this look familiar? I hear you stole several of these from Dr. Aldani before you left his facility.”
Renna’s blood ran cold. She knew exactly what Samil was talking about. Those devices were meant for long-range communication and infiltration of networks. Gheewala’s words came back to her—the implication that Renna’s changing implant could help her communicate with someone on the other side of the galaxy.
She pressed her back against the chair, trying to get as far away from Samil as possible as the doctor approached. “What are you going to do?”
“First I’m going to upload the new chip to your implant. If you survive, we’ll go from there.” She moved behind Renna and pressed a cool finger to the port at the back of Renna’s neck.
“This may hurt a bit,” she warned. Then she jacked in the microchip connector.
Colors and numbers blazed across Renna’s vision in a wash of hazy red pain. It seared her eyes and shot through her brain like a thousand zaps of lightning. Something clicked, and she felt the program start to run through her implant, spinning and whirring in her mind like clockwork. A dark fog grew at the edges of her vision. As the last of the code inserted itself, Renna moaned and slumped back in her chair. She couldn’t have moved a muscle if she’d tried.
Samil smiled. “You’re still alive. That’s a good sign.” She pressed a finger to her own communicator. “I need someone to take our guest to the recovery room while I prep for phase two.”
Renna tried to open her mouth, to ask what phase two was, but nothing obeyed. Everything was so heavy, her head felt like a boulder on her neck. She lolled back against the back of her chair and let her eyes drift closed. Samil’s wicked face was the last thing she saw before the darkness consumed her.
“Wake up, Renna.” Dr. Samil’s hand squeezed Renna’s shoulder, and for a split second, she thought she was back at MYTH HQ, with the good doctor trying to save her.
Then she remembered. Everything.
Acid burned the back of her throat and her head pounded like she’d had way too much to Draven ice wine, but she forced herself to focus as she searched the space. It was some sort of recovery room, with a hard bed, a wall of monitors, and a long, metal table pushed against the wall.
Samil’s silver med-drone floated behind her head, ready to help if the doctor needed it. “Time to see if the chip worked.” Samil tapped something into her tablet, and the holovid on the wall flickered to life. “Excellent. Looks like you’re back online. Now all I need to do is upload the software.”
“Where’s Viktis?” Renna croaked. She knew Samil wouldn’t tell her, but she had to ask anyway.
“He won’t be bothering us. I promise.”
Renna struggled to sit up, but she could barely move. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“Like I told you, I’ve upgraded your implant with a new communications system. Now we get to see how well it worked.” She tapped at her tablet again. “There. Program uploaded. How does it feel?”
Didn’t feel like anything, if Renna was honest, but it wouldn’t do to let Samil know that. Renna glared. “How the hell do you think it feels? You violated my brain. It hurts like a bitch.”
“I can’t get over how hard your body is fighting this. It’s astonishing.” Samil shook her head and glanced up at the holoscreen. “I wish I had more time to study you before our final phase.”
The ominous words made the skin on Renna’s arms turn to goose flesh. What exactly did the woman plan to do with her?
“Perfect. We’re into the system. You are amazing, Renna.” Samil smiled up at the holoscreens, and Renna followed her gaze. The screen showed a long, empty hallway, but Samil pressed a button and the image separated into four different panes, each showing a different part of some facility, like a security monitor.
Another press and the cameras zoomed out to show the facade of four different buildings.
The pounding in Renna’s head had turned into a high-pitched vibration that made her teeth ache. She clenched her jaw against the pain. “What exactly are we looking at?”
“MYTH headquarters on four different worlds. Including the main headquarters on Titus Beta where you were held. I used the new microchip and your implant’s special attributes to jack into their security system.”
Renna fought the urge to touch the port in the back of her neck. “How the hell did you do that? Dallas said they locked you out.”
Samil preened. “Luckily I already connected you to the neural network installed in their facilities. It was easy, especially since you thought it was just another test. Sorry it hurt so much.”
The memory shot through her with a jolt. The metal machine she’d used to scan Renna’s eyes had been the first step of Samil’s plan. Gods, she’d been so stupid to think she’d ever been a step ahead of this woman.
“Now with this new comm chip,” Samil continued, “they won’t know we’re in their system until it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” Renna asked. She glanced down at her legs. She was unbound, but her body wouldn’t fucking move. What the hell had Samil done to her?
“This.” Samil typed in a command to her tablet, and a split second later, Renna hissed as a jolt of pain shot through her. Fire sped through her nerves and into her fingers and toes in an angry rush.
“I’ve just uploaded a virus. Using your implant’s connection, it should propagate into the MYTH systems in a few minutes and take down all of their defenses and networks. Then I can pick off each facility at my leisure.”
Renna’s breath caught in her throat. Finn and Jayla were returning to HQ. They’d be there if Samil struck. She had to do something to stop her.
“Let me guess. You have a platoon of hybrids ready to take down each facility?” she asked sarcastically as her brain spun, searching for a way out.
Samil leaned back and crossed her arms. “I don’t need a platoon. I only need one mole inside each command center. And with the virus rampant, MYTH will be blind, unable to communicate with each other. It’s the best sort of divide-and-conquer. All I’ll have to do is sweep up the pieces when the rest of the universe realizes what MYTH has be
come.”
The images on the holoscreens cycled through different parts of each facility, showing MYTH men and women at their posts or rooms full of servers. There was even footage of the front gate of one of the buildings, with two laser cannons at the ready.
Renna’s skin went clammy. Thousands of people would die if Samil went through with this. “These people are smart,” she protested. “They’ll find a way to stop you and fight back. And when they come for you, I’m going to be leading the charge.”
Dr. Samil chuckled. “You won’t be going anywhere, my little dove. That virus should also destroy any last resistance between your neural system and the implant. You’ll be mine to command in a matter of hours. My ultimate secret weapon.”
Renna stared at the woman. She’d expected to feel horror or fear before she turned into a hybrid, but right now she was fucking furious. Her fingers itched to curl around Samil’s neck, but she needed to focus on figuring out a way to stop Samil or warn MYTH. Not exactly an easy feat when she wasn’t able to move.
But maybe there was another way. Her implant had been behaving lately; maybe she could use it one last time.
Renna let her eyes drift closed.
“Don’t you want to watch, dear?” Samil asked. “I think MYTH is about to find out they’re no longer the ones in charge.”
She shook her head. “I’d rather stab my eyes out with a needle.”
“Even if your former lover is on the screen?”
Renna’s eyes flew open, despite herself. In one of the panes, Finn and Dallas strode through a hangar. Perhaps the Athena had landed or was getting ready to leave again. Maybe they’d be able to escape in time.
She studied his tired face as Finn gestured angrily at something Dallas said and the older man shook his head. Dark shadows ringed Finn’s eyes. Even though it had been only less than twenty-four hours since she’d fled from him, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Perfect. Two of my favorite people.” Samil pressed a button on her tablet, and a moment later, both men stopped dead in their tracks. Finn’s head snapped back and forth as he searched for something.
