Juliet didn’t think it was possible, but Harriet’s face paled even further at the security officer’s words. At least, she assumed the words had upset her, but it could also have been the man’s harsh, robotic voice. “Oh,” the lab tech said, visibly flustered as she began to wring her hands. “We better not keep him waiting. Come on, Juliet.”
Juliet had been about to reassure her, her own nerves forgotten in her desire to help someone she saw as weaker than herself, but she stopped, remembering that she wasn’t supposed to know who Montclair was. “Is that your, um, boss?”
“More like Kline’s boss.” Harriet shook her head, her nervousness evident in the way she tugged at the lapel of her lab coat. “So yes, that makes him my boss, too.” Before Juliet could respond, they stood before the door to Harriet’s lab. Harriet leaned over to interact with the security panel, putting in her keys, and their two escorting guards took up positions on the other side of the hallway, creating a sort of box formation with the other two. The air was thick with tension, and Juliet couldn't stop thinking about Athena’s mechs. Was WBD replacing her security detail with combat synths? Did that mean they were aware or at least suspicious of her abilities?
“Four guards and I’m starting to think they’re not all human. I hope Montclair isn’t here to expose me,” she subvocalized.
“I’ll be ready with your speed enhancement, but remember that this deck limits me significantly; you’ll move as fast as before, but I’m going to struggle to do any other tasks at the same time.”
Juliet mentally “nodded.” She and Angel had spoken about strategies for combat now that the plucky AI had rewritten the code that gave her control of most of Juliet’s cybernetics. The deck’s two processing chips were quick, but they lacked the massively multi-threaded nature of Angel’s original chip, especially when it was combined with the co-processor that used to be in Juliet’s data port. Angel’s control over her augmented speed wouldn’t be as precise using the deck. Worse, she couldn’t monitor her for damage in real-time, so she planned to use her boosts only in small bursts.
The door hissed open, and Harriet stepped through. Juliet followed and saw Montclair in the flesh for the first time. He looked exactly the same as he had in Kline’s memory—tall, thin, dour expression, dark, emotionless eyes, gray hair combed back away from his tall forehead, and a black suit over a white shirt and black tie. “Miss Kennedy,” he said flatly, then looked at Juliet and ran his cold gaze over her. “And charge.”
“Hello, sir. Um, Mister Montclair.” Harriet looked like she didn’t know what to do with her hands. First, she clutched the fabric of her lab coat as though she might curtsey. Then she sort of reached toward Montclair, pulled her hand back, and squeezed it tightly with her other one as her eyes darted around the room nervously. The door closed behind Juliet with a snick, and she stepped to the side, not wanting to walk closer to Montclair. He radiated wrongness in a way she hadn’t been able to perceive in her deep dive into Kline’s memory.
As soon as she met his eyes, she recognized a malevolence similar to what she’d seen in Doctor Chen. There was something the same about them that had nothing to do with looks or, obviously, words—he hadn’t said enough to gauge his personality. Nevertheless, something about him felt off, and Juliet wanted to distance herself from the man. To that end, she started edging her way across the room toward the door to her cell as he looked at Harriet and said, “I thought you were on lockdown.”
“Well, Mister Kline approved one-hour trips to the learning annex and exercise room. I was just about to write up my AM reports.” Harriet nodded toward the open door to Juliet’s cell and said, “Please return to your quarters, Juliet.” She’d put on a brave face, and Juliet had to commend her for getting a grip on her nerves. She also felt immensely, embarrassingly grateful for the easy out. She hurried toward the door, trying to help Harriet look good.
Montclair turned toward her. “Just a moment, Miss Bianchi.” Juliet froze and looked at him, her body nearly trembling with the need to do one of two things: run or fight. She fought the sensation, steeling herself, and looked into his dark eyes.
“Yes, sir?”
“I understand you’ve been very cooperative, hmm? Working hard to help Kline figure out what’s gone haywire with that malfunctioning chip, yes?”
“I’m doing my best, sir, but I don’t have any memories of the, um, PAI. I’m just grateful for the kind treatment I’ve received here.”
“Hmm.” Montclair moved closer, looming over her as he closed the distance. Juliet guessed his height at something close to two meters. It wasn’t his size that intimidated her, however. It was a weird sensation, almost like he was a feral animal. She felt like, at any moment, he might lean down and bite her or something equally disturbing. “Is that so? Tell me, what’s that flickering on those pretty little irises?”
“I’m sorry?” Juliet’s heart began to race as she subvocalized, “Hide everything, but get Daisy ready. We may be about to lose our chance to test her anymore.”
“I’m on it.” Juliet knew Angel could feel how serious she was, could feel her stress. She was smart enough to make her own conclusions. Meanwhile, Juliet’s mind raced—it sounded like Montclair didn’t know about the deck. How would he respond?
“Are you being coy, young woman?” Montclair let his gaze drift over her form, and suddenly, she wasn’t so thankful for the bodysuit’s form-hugging comfort. “What’s on your wrist?”
Juliet looked at her wrist and lifted her arm, chuckling nervously as she rolled her sleeve back, “Oh, it’s just this entertainment deck Mister Kline let me borrow. I was listening to music while exercising—”
Montclair snatched the deck and yanked the cable out, then turned to Harriet, holding it up. “Who approved this?”
“Well, Director Kline, sir.” It was the first time Juliet had heard Kline’s title mentioned, and she wondered if Harriet had done it for effect. If she’d hoped to get him to back off with the mention of Kline’s authority over the project, she must have been disappointed. Montclair scoffed and tucked the deck into his inner jacket pocket. Then he turned his back on Juliet and took a lunging step toward Harriet, radiating violence. For a moment, Juliet thought he’d strike her, but he stopped and, utterly calm, straightened his jacket.
“That’s absurd. Far too much risk for—” The door opened with a snick, and he stopped mid-phrase as Kline entered the room. He raised an eyebrow, glancing from Juliet to Harriet and then settling his gaze on Montclair. He put one hand in his trouser pocket, then reached under his jacket to pull out an honest-to-God Nikko-vape, sucking deeply on it.
Everyone stared at him for a moment, and then he exhaled a cloud of vapor. “What’s going on here?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Montclair glared at him, his posture leaning forward aggressively, and growled, “Tell me what the hell you did to my listener.”
Juliet saw Harriet stumble back, practically falling into her desk chair—it looked like her knees gave out on her. Juliet could tell why; Montclair was radiating pure, uncut hatred and pent-up violence. She was amazed that Kline didn’t flinch back. He calmly slipped his vape cartridge under his jacket and shrugged. “I heard about that. Where’d he get those emergency codes? It was a lucky thing you were at Ark when he broke into your lab. Sorry to hear about your assistant and those samples—”
Montclair lurched forward and grabbed Kline’s jacket, driving him back against the closed door. “You piddling little—”
“Ruby? Are you getting this?” Kline asked, holding his hands out to the side, turning his face away from Montclair’s looming, snarling countenance. “I think this is the sort of thing Mrs. Gentry asked us to report.”
Montclair leaned close, putting his mouth a centimeter from Kline’s ear. He whispered something that Juliet couldn’t quite hear, not without boosting her augmented hearing, and Angel couldn’t do that without the deck. Still, she picked up a fragment of hissed vitriol, and it didn’t make any sense: “. . . get that? Little sister?”
“Um,” Harriet said, her voice quavering as she worked to come to grips with the scene playing out. “Director Kline? I think Vice President Montclair was wondering about that deck you gave Juliet.” Juliet could have kissed her, utterly stunned by the woman’s bravery.
Kline grinned despite Montclair’s grip on his jacket. “What’s that? This project isn’t under your purview any longer, Montclair. No need to worry about my methods.”
Montclair loosened his grip, straightened, and stared at Kline. He was either trying to intimidate him further or deciding if he wanted to go through the trouble of killing him on the spot; either option seemed plausible to Juliet. She took the opportunity to try to listen. She stared hard at Montclair and instantly recognized the same weird void she’d experienced with Doctor Chen. Almost instinctively, she closed her eyes and then opened her other perception, staring into the mental space she’d discovered while swimming.
It came to her without any difficulty, like another sense she’d always had. She saw the galaxies of thoughts and emotions pulsing and throbbing where Harriet, Kline, and Montclair stood, but one was different. One was oblong, only partially alight, with at least half of its sphere utterly dark.
While she stared in wonder, she heard something clatter onto the plasteel floor, and then Montclair’s voice said, “You’re running out of time, Kline. These security breaches are a minor setback. We have more batches behind the one that was destroyed.” She heard the door open, and then, to her amazement, the malformed galaxy of thoughts drifted out to join two other, healthy-looking ones. Juliet hastily opened her eyes and confirmed what she’d suspected—four guards stood in the hallway with Montclair. “Synths,” she subvocalized.
The guards? Angel’s voice echoed up from the depths of her mind.
“Two of them, yeah.”
“Well, sorry about that, ladies,” Kline said as the door slid shut. He stepped forward and picked up Juliet’s deck. He turned it in his fingers a few times, then smiled. “Looks okay.” He held it out to her, and Juliet stepped forward to take it.
“Um, thanks, Kline. Who was that guy? What a creep!”
“Just someone who shouldn’t be here. Don’t worry. I’m going to do my best to ensure you two never have to deal with him again.” He looked over at Harriet and smiled, pressing his hands into his lower back as he stretched. “Man, didn’t want to walk into that! I was just coming to see how things are progressing with all the security lockdowns messing things up.” As he spoke, Juliet inserted her data cable into the deck and tucked it back under her sleeve.
“Doing okay?” she subvocalized.
“Much better now,” Angel replied. “I’m rather impressed by Kline after that.”
“Don’t get too attached.” Juliet tried to keep from chuckling as she subvocalized. “He’s still on the enemy team.”
“Things have been good, sir,” Harriet was saying. “We’d just returned from exercise, and I was about to work on my AM reports, but Vice President—”
“No need to explain, Harriet. I wanted to let you both know that I couldn’t get a new appointment for your, uh, magnetic treatment until next Friday, Juliet. So, no Doctor Chen this week. You keeping busy?” He stepped over to the doorway to Juliet’s room and peered through. “I like the painting. You like to camp?”
Juliet followed him over, looking at her surprisingly artistic scene of a campfire in the woods. “Um, not really. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been.” She didn’t have to lie; the only thing she’d ever done close to camping was when she’d been with Charlie Unit up in the mountains. Even then, they’d had barracks. “I’m not sure where the idea came from, but it helps me relax.”
Kline nodded, and she saw him tap at his breast pocket, but only briefly. She might have tried to read him if they weren’t standing in a doorway together. She was curious if he was really so cool or if he was losing it inside. If so, he was a hell of an actor. “Well, that’s important. Anything else I can do for you?”
Juliet nodded and grinned toward Harriet. “We were hoping I could get another exercise session in the afternoons. It’s boring sitting around here all day.”
“Yep. I was going to suggest it. Put it into the schedule, Harriet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh? What’s with all the ‘sirs?’ Did Montclair rattle you that much?”
“He’s awful, Kline!” Harriet said. “Before you walked in, I thought he was going to hit me!”
Juliet nodded. “He’s bad.”
“Right. Well, like I said, I’m going to see about getting him restricted from this area. I’ll go take care of that right now, in fact.” Kline turned, started for the door, then paused and looked at Harriet. “Order something good for lunch for the two of you. Tell the kitchen they can take it from my account.”
“Um, all right. Thank you.” Harriet looked like she was feeling much better with his assurances.
Juliet stepped into her room but turned back toward Kline as he fiddled with the exterior door and called, “Thank you, Kline.” He waved a hand over his shoulder, and then he was gone, slipping past the four looming guards in the hallway. “I’m going to take a nap while you do your report, Harriet.”
“Wait! What do you want for lunch?”
Juliet paused, wondering how extensive the menu was, but decided she wouldn’t know what to order, not back when she worked in the scrapyard. “You pick, Harriet. I’d just order something dumb like a pizza.”
“I love pizza!”
“Well,” Juliet turned back toward her, “wanna?”
“I’ll order it!”
Juliet smiled and walked over to her couch, listening to the door beep and close with a resounding thunk of the bolts. She stretched out and turned onto her side, putting her back to the door. “Angel, that was so weird. I can see people’s minds just by closing my eyes.”
“Their minds? Or their thoughts?”
“The things in their minds, I guess—thoughts, memories, dreams, emotions.”
“How, though? Did something change?”
“When I was swimming! Remember when I basically stunned us? When I was floating there, full of wonder and amazement?”
“Yes! It was,” Angel laughed, “wonderful and amazing! But how?”
“Well, I started to realize that I could sense myself drifting when I listened to the people around me. When I realized I could sense a direction, I started to put it together that my brain has been trying to cope with this new “sense” since the day Grave put the GIPEL in my head. I’ve been fighting it almost the entire time since then. Even with my resistance, I’ve gained quite a lot of control. For instance, I don’t have to work as hard to keep people’s thoughts away when I sleep. I can find a person’s thoughts by looking into their eyes and even dive into their memories. Anyway, I don’t want to get lost in the weeds.
“The point I’m trying to make is that I figured out that my brain was treating people’s thoughts as sound. I was hearing them. But then, when I realized I could “move” between minds, everything started to click—it was a lot more than just hearing. If I could move in a direction, could I look? When I tried, it all fell into place. I started seeing people’s minds, Angel, and they’re beautiful!”
“Really? Can you feel them? If you can move and see and hear, can you feel?”
“I . . . I’m not sure. I know I can pull the tendrils of thought my way. That’s how I hear them. What am I pulling them with? Is that the same as my telekinesis? Is that my touch? God! This is so weird! I should have been working on this from the start! I—”
“You had good reason to mistrust and fear it. I’m hesitant to remind you of this, considering the progress you’ve made, but you were violated, Juliet. I’m glad that WBD’s fiddling with your memories has backfired. I’m glad it’s let you get past the hangups, for lack of a better word, but don’t you dare blame yourself.”
Juliet nodded, feeling some tears gathering in her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she felt like crying because of Angel’s love and understanding or because she was remembering how scared and freaked out she’d been when the squints at Grave had injected her with those nanites. A snort of laughter escaped her, and she felt Angel’s curiosity. “I just remembered how the guys used to call the scientists ‘squints.’ God, sometimes I miss them—Houston, Polk, Vandemere, Yang. That was fun, training with those guys.”
She started to close her eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted, but then they snapped open, and she subvocalized, “I didn’t tell you the weirdest thing!”
“What?”
“When Montclair was talking to Kline, I tried to hear his thoughts. It was just like listening to Chen—silence. But then, I closed my eyes and looked. Angel, his mind is weird. It’s half . . . dead. It's like there’s a void where most of his thoughts should be. He’s broken somehow, in some way that makes him . . . wrong. That’s not all, though! I saw another one like that when I was drifting in the pool. At first, I thought it had been Montclair, but thinking back, it was different.”
Juliet flopped onto her back and stared at her painting, looking at the glowing embers she’d drawn drifting up toward the black sky. Was she that good? Was it her arm, or had Angel been helping her? Was it strange that she didn’t know?
“Was there more?” Angel asked. “I felt like you were going to say more.”
“Oh, I was just thinking. Every mind is different. Did I tell you that? Anyway, there’s something very, very wrong with that man, and I think there are others like him. When I get to the pool, I’ll let my ‘mind’ wander. I’ll make my way through this ship or station or whatever it is. I’ll hunt for the broken minds, and then I’ll listen to the people near them. I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s going on here.”