And I was starving. I stopped, leaving the more secure systems I’d noticed well alone. Mack sighed, but I couldn’t work out if it was with relief, or not. Rohan ducked back into my head, but this time I saw him, and threw him right back out again. No way was the little rat getting control of my limbs, again.
“What did you give her?” Barangail asked, and he was staring at me like I’d sprouted another head.
Mack just looked at him.
“Stim pack,” he said. “The one from the ambush was wearing off, and she gets grouchy when she’s in pain.”
True. I did. And right now I didn’t hurt at all. And it felt good. I could probably run for...
“Not right now, you can’t,” Mack said. “Right now, our host is taking us to dinner and we don’t want to offend him.”
He said all that out loud, and I suspected it was more for Barangail’s benefit than mine. Fortunately, his lordship seemed to get the hint.
“This way,” he said, and his men backed away from us, making sure some between us and their principle.
Barangail was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “How long does it last?”
And Mack bared his teeth. I’m thinking it was meant to be taken as a smile, but I wasn’t fooled. I’d seen Mack smile, and I’d seen him bare his teeth. The two things were as different as when Cascade did them. The difference just wasn’t as obvious.
“This one?” Mack asked. “I’m not sure; it’s new.”
And I rolled my eyes. Man was experimenting on me? Again?
Barangail gave me a dubious look, and turned away.
“Just keep her under control,” he said, and I wondered what him or any of his men could do, if Mack didn’t. Fortunately, Barangail wasn’t privy to that thought. “Dinner is this way.”
9—A Suspicious Meal
Our host led the way down broad corridors of a polished white stone I couldn’t identify. I thought about leaping into the closest database to find out what it was called, only to have Mack call me back.
“Why don’t you check the menu?” he suggested, and my stomach thought that was a great idea.
No sooner had the seed been planted, than I was leaping into the system to do exactly that.
“And keep an eye out for trouble, but don’t do anything.”
Huh. Was he sure I should go looking for trouble?
Mack sighed.
“Dinner first.”
Dinner. Oh. Yes, right.
I rifled through the database, found the link to the kitchen, and headed on over to the terminal to which the chefs were referring. There was an interesting section there on soporifics, with Mack’s and my weights calculated in for dosage. There was also a list of the ingredients that would go a long way to masking the taste.
I kept an eye on Barangail and his team, as I followed them down the corridor—and I did it, while erasing the soporifics and their related dishes from the display screen. Some of those things were temperature sensitive; I wondered where he kept them.
“Focus, Cutter.”
I huffed out a sigh, but I did as I was told, concentrating on erasing the data from the system, and tweaking the menu to something we should be able to eat without needing a medical team, after. All the while, I glared at Barangail, until four of his protection detail dropped back to walk beside and behind me.
“Now, look what you’ve done,” Mack grumbled. “You’ve gone and made these nice men nervous.”
I had? The thought made me grin. Nervous was good. They should be nervous.
The one nearest me, glanced down at my face, and took a step away from my side.
Like that would do him any good.
“Cutter.”
“Yes, Mack?”
“You need to let Rohan back into your head.”
I so did not.
“Please.”
Please? Really? That was almost sweet.
“Don’t make me come in there.”
Where? In my implant? Like he could if I decided not to let him.
“So, what’s for dinner?”
And I told him, aware of shock stiffening Barangail’s spine, as I described every dish to the last ingredient. It took me, until we’d reached the dining room, and was enough to keep my wandering mind from getting us into trouble. When I’d finished, Barangail sighed.
“I was hoping to keep some of that a surprise,” he said, and sounded so dejected I might have felt sorry for him, except I didn’t.
He’d been planning on drugging us and knocking us out over dinner, and I didn’t like being lied to.
“Oh, yeah?” I challenged, and then continued before Mack could stop me. “Which part? The actual dishes, or the amount of hypomelantin you intended to put in the sorbet? You know, so it could build on the effects of the kazveriform you were going to put in the gravy and inject into the steak, and we won’t go anywhere near how much glorrin is in the soup.”
I looked at Mack. The soup had been simmering on the stove, when I’d been tinkering with the recipes on-screen.
“Actually, we should skip the soup.”
Mack was staring at me, both eyebrows raised high enough to hit his hairline.
“What?”
He looked from me to Barangail, eyebrows still raised.
“You what?” he asked, but his tone was more mild than outraged.
Barangail walked through the dining room door, and stopped—and we stopped with him. A steward hovered nearby, as though he’d been waiting for our arrival. As Barangail entered, he’d stepped forward. When Barangail answered Mack, the steward stepped back, hurriedly erasing a look of sheer puzzlement from his face.
“I wanted to be sure of your services,” Barangail said, making it sound like it was perfectly reasonable to be drugging his contractors to make sure they’d work for him. “I wanted you to stick around.”
Like that made it any better.
Leaving Mack to digest this piece of information, he started walking, again, moving to the head of the table, the steward hovering in his wake. His team moved with him, except for the six men moving with Mack and me. They followed us, as we stepped across the dining room’s threshold.
No sooner had we entered, than we
