Working Stiff

“Did McCallister pay you?”

Bryn blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected. “Pay me?”

“Did McCallister give you money in return for sex? Or your silence about such activities?”

“No.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first, although you’re certainly his most … unusual choice.” Harte lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I suppose he has somewhat perverse taste, considering your … condition.” She paused and cocked her head, staring hard at Bryn for a moment. “Do you understand what’s happening to you, Bryn? Why you can’t stop yourself from telling me these very personal things?”

“No.” Bryn tried to remember the panic she’d felt before, the internal struggle. Harte needed to see those things. She expected to see them.

Mareen entered the room from that same side door she’d used before, set a second cup of coffee pale with milk on the side table beside Bryn, and departed without a word.

“Drink your coffee, Bryn; I wouldn’t want it to get cold.”

Bryn obediently reached for it and sipped. It was delicious, and the hot liquid made her feel sharper, but more jittery, too. The cup rattled lightly against the saucer as she put it down. Look at us, so civilized, sipping our coffee from expensive cups while she mind-rapes me. Or tries to.

“I knew from the moment I saw your revival profile that McCallister had some use for you beyond his stated objectives; he tried to opt you out of certain control features built into Returné for the safety of the company. I countermanded that, in the hopes you’d tell me something more about McCallister’s business. It’s not your fault, Bryn. You may feel you’re betraying him, but I assure you, you’re not. You’re simply a recording device I put next to him.” Harte tapped her fingernails again, thinking, then continued. “Have you seen him meet anyone not associated directly with Pharmadene?”

“Liam,” Bryn said.

“The estate administrator. No, not counting Liam. Anyone else?”

“No. Just Joe Fideli and his other security people. No one else.”

“Hmm.” Harte’s eyes lowered to half-mast, making her look deceptively relaxed. “And have you overheard him discuss anything that did not relate to Pharmadene business?”

“No.”

“That’s deeply unfortunate. I was really hoping you would be more … enlightening.” Harte sat back and drank her coffee in silence for a moment, and Bryn was just starting to relax a bit when she said, “Are you in love with Patrick McCallister?”

“No!” Bryn said. Too quickly. Too much force. It was an instinctive denial, not a reasoned answer, and Harte speared her with a cold, level gaze. Bryn swallowed and tried again. “I have no feelings for him.”

“That, Ms. Davis, means that when he took you to the motel, he did so without your consent. I assume that he coerced you by use of the same command I just engaged. Is that correct? You had no feelings for him, yet you participated in a full day of illicit sex with him, under duress?”

“I …” She was caught, dead caught; either she admitted she had just lied, and proved she wasn’t conditioned the way Harte wanted, or she dropped McCallister in what was, at the very least, a charge of rape. “It wasn’t about love. It was about needing something.” That was the best middle ground she could walk, but she could see, with a sinking feeling, that Harte wasn’t buying it for a second.

“You should have just admitted it,” the other woman said. She straightened and put her cup down, pressed the intercom button, and said, “Mareen, please send Ms. Davis’s escort in. I have what I need to know.” She went back to her coffee, sipping in ladylike composure. “I have not ended Condition Sapphire, Bryn. You should not be able to lie to me. And the fact that you have tells me that something is very, very wrong here. With you. With McCallister. If you’d simply told me that he’d used the protocols on you, I would have believed you; he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, which is why he’s valuable to me. If you’d told me you loved him, I’d have believed that, too; he’s got that effect on women. But something in the middle … no. Not with him.”

“I—”

“Don’t waste your time. The point is that you’ve lied to me, he’s lied to me, and there’s something deeper. Something that threatens me, and the company. And I will find out what that is. Now.”

Bryn’s guts went tight and cold. The look in Harte’s eyes was that of a hawk zeroing in on a rabbit: no mercy, no feeling at all. This wasn’t about jealousy, which was somehow what Bryn had expected; this was pure, cold calculation, and she had fallen for it.

The guard who’d brought her in entered the room. “Ma’am?”

“Please take Ms. Davis to level three,” Harte said. “Check her in. I’ll call down orders in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And find Patrick McCallister. Now. You don’t have to be gentle about it if he resists.”

He nodded and started to hustle Bryn out.

“Wait,” Harte said. “Let her finish her coffee.”

It was time for the false civility to end. Bryn picked up the coffee cup and threw it hard at Harte’s face. She missed, but the coffee didn’t, drenching the woman in a milky brown, sticky wave from hair to neckline, ruining the teal silk suit.

Harte jumped up, shocked, wiping coffee from her eyes. Too bad it wasn’t hot enough to leave scars, Bryn thought; that would have been something. She’d have to settle for the look on Harte’s face—comically horrified.

But then it turned into a stiff mask of spite. “So we know where we stand,” Harte said. “You’re his little spy, aren’t you? His slave. He turned you.”

“You turned me. You made me this. I’m not dead; I’m not alive; what am I supposed to do? Thank you?” Bryn was shaking all over with the fury she’d held in for so long, ever since that first raw, primal scream of waking. “I’ve seen how this ends. Have you?”

“Not yet,” Harte said. She’d regained her composure; she’d taken a hand towel from a drawer and was blotting the worst of the coffee from her hair and face. The expensive suit was a total ruin. “But I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later. Good-bye, Ms. Davis. I hope you enjoy your … retirement. I’ll give Patrick your farewells. You won’t be seeing him again.”

Bryn kicked and fought, but the guard had all the leverage and muscle, and he was used to restraining angry people; she got in a couple of off-balance shots, but he took them stoically without granting her any chance of escape. After the second elbow to the ribs, he swept her feet out from under her, took her facedown to the carpet, and yanked her arms tight behind her back. She felt zip-cuffs being yanked in place, too tightly, and then he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her back to a standing position. “March,” he said. “You give me trouble, and I’ll give you a beating you’re not going to forget.”

“I’ll heal,” she said. She wasn’t aware, until she saw herself reflected in a pane of glass, that she was smiling. It was an unhinged sort of smile, half a snarl. She felt like an animal backed into a corner, and that was how she looked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You would.”

And without any warning he hit her with a rock-hard hammer of an uppercut, and she was out like a switched-off light.

Waking up was painful. Her head, first; it throbbed in queasy red flashes. Next, her jaw; she knew that awful grinding feeling. It was dislocated. Bryn worked it gingerly until it snapped back into place with a mind-numbing zap of agony. It, like the headache, lasted only a few minutes, and then the pain faded. Busy little nanites, burning up energy I can’t afford.

Bryn sat up.

She was in an empty white room. No furniture, not even a cot—just a clean, white, shiny room, like a box made of dry-erase whiteboards.

One entire wall of the room was thick, tempered glass. Outside the window, a portable camera had been set up, and a red light showed it was recording. I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later, Harte had said. She was living up to her commitments.

The only other things of interest about the room were the spray nozzles and pipes across the ceiling, and the drain in the floor. Bryn considered that, and the shiny, slick walls.