“If they fail to perform, I’ll raise the two girls myself. Train them like you and I were trained, turning them into weapons.”
Seichan felt the blood drain into her legs. The Guild had employed brutal techniques and extreme deprivation to hone their operatives. And if those methods weren’t torture enough, the end result—if the girls survived—would be the loss of their souls.
“As to your child,” Valya continued. “I can wait the month out.”
Seichan placed a palm on her belly.
“Don’t worry, boy or girl, I’ll raise the child like my own. Considering the genetic stock of the parents, the outcome could only be spectacular. And after the delivery, I’ll make sure your body is sent to Komandir Pierce, in a box wrapped up with a bow, a late Christmas present from me.”
“Still, they’ll never go along with it.”
“Not yet. First, they’ll need a little convincing.” She turned to the taller of the two men behind her. “Take the youngest.”
Seichan crouched, intending to keep that from happening.
The other guard stepped toward her, leading with his cattle prod, its end sparking and snapping. Seichan judged the seven ways she could disarm him and commandeer the weapon. Then the baby inside kicked her in the kidney.
Gasping, she dropped to a knee.
She pictured the blood in the toilet.
Valya took the tranquilizer pistol from the other man and pointed it at Seichan. “I’m not sure how much sedative your child can survive. But I’m willing to find out. Are you?”
On the floor, Seichan simply glared at her. She recognized in her present state that she could not stop what was going to happen. She could only watch as Harriet was hauled into the arms of the burly guard. Penny sobbed, grabbing for her little sister, only to be roughly shoved back to the bed.
As the guard carried Harriet off, the five-year-old remained her stoic self, accepting the inevitable as surely as Seichan had. Still, the girl stared back at Seichan, as if silently asking again, What did I do wrong?
Seichan’s heart broke as Valya followed her men out. She called harshly after the woman. “Harm the girl and I’ll—”
Before she could finish, Valya slammed the door behind her, cutting off this feeble threat. Seichan scooted and shifted to the bed to comfort Penny. The girl buried her damp face in her bosom and sobbed.
“She’ll be fine,” Seichan assured her. “Harriet will be fine.”
She prayed that was true.
The baby kicked again. Wincing, she cursed the man who put this demon inside her. Still, she worried for the child’s father, for the shitstorm he was flying into. It seemed everyone was going after that tech. But why was it so important?
She stared at the locked door, leaving that mystery to Gray.
She had her own problems to tackle and was all too aware of how physically compromised she was in her condition. Knowing she would not be able to fight her way out, especially with the girls in tow, she needed a new strategy.
One that raised a difficult question.
She squeezed Penny tighter.
How do I outwit the Snow Queen?
11
December 25, 2:48 P.M. WET
Lisbon, Portugal
“What’s Eve doing?” Carly asked.
Mara shifted her attention from the diagnostic information scrolling down one side of the laptop screen. She had been studying the analytics from her music subroutine. With the module almost complete, she wanted to scan for bugs or glitches. From past iterations, she knew this was a critical juncture in Eve’s development. By now, Mara’s careful grooming should have made the program’s consciousness fertile enough for true growth. But it also made it vulnerable. The program balanced on a wire’s edge, teetering between a miracle capable of developing a true depth of soul and some egocentric engine of incalculable malignancy.
“Why’s she just crouched there?” Carly pressed.
Mara cocked her head to the side, matching Eve’s odd posture. Rather than absorbing the last of the subroutine’s data—represented visually by a swirl of musical notes—Eve seemed shut down. She was crouched on one knee, her head tilted to the side, her long dark hair parted over her left ear.
She looked frozen in this position.
“Did she lock up?” Carly asked. “Like a glitched character in a video game?”
“I don’t know.” Admitting such a thing made Mara’s blood go cold. “I don’t know what she’s doing.”
“It almost looks like she’s straining to hear something.” Carly turned to her. “Maybe there’s some song in there she really likes, and she keeps playing it over and over again.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Can’t you ask her? If she knows language, can’t you talk to her?”
“Not yet. It’s too dangerous. It could shatter her fragile digital psyche. To Eve, that virtual Eden is her world. She’s not ready to know about us.”
“About the gods looking down upon her.”
Mara slowly nodded. “But I think you’re right. I think she’s listening to something.”
But what?
Mara had an idea.
“Let me run a test.”
She typed quickly on the keyboard, pulling up another diagnostic program. It measured for any interference patterns, any strong RF signals or localized transmissions that could penetrate Xénese’s insulated systems and damage them.
A chart appeared on one corner of the screen.
She scanned what the diagnostics had registered. “Background EM. Radio waves. Cell tower transmissions. A wireless router nearby.” She tapped the largest spike on the chart. “This one’s really strong. In the microwave band.”
“Microwave?” Carly stepped toward the open window. “There’s a restaurant on the corner. If they’re heating something up—”
“Not that sort of microwave.”
Mara noted a slight drop in the spike and sighed.
Maybe it’s nothing.
Carly stood at the window, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon breeze. The wind tussled her blond curls, dancing the bright sunlight about her cheeks. The edges of her black suit jacket fluttered, offering glimpses of her body’s silhouette.
Mara had to force her gaze away and back to the screen. Eve had finally moved, regaining her feet, standing straight. But the avatar’s head remained tilted, the curve of her ear exposed. Only now, Eve’s expression looked strained, with a pinched brow and narrowed eyes.
Almost scared.
Mystified and concerned, Mara called to Carly. “Come see this.”
Her friend turned from the window and crossed over. As she did so, Mara noted the microwave spike in the diagnostic window shift higher. On the screen, Eve’s head swiveled, as if following Carly’s path.
Mara straightened, suddenly fearing the worst.
Carly must have noted her alarm. “What is it?”
“You turned off your phone, right?”
“Yeah. And pulled the battery. Like you told me.”
Mara knew cell phones used microwave transmissions to communicate with GPS satellites, allowing a phone’s position to be tracked. “Check your pockets. All of them.”
While Carly followed her urgent instructions, Mara patted her own clothes.
Nothing.
Suddenly Carly’s eyes got huge. From a jacket pocket, she removed a shiny metallic coin. “I don’t know what this is. Don’t know how it got there.”
Mara knew the answer to both. She pictured the man who had grabbed Carly at the airport. “It’s a GPS tracker. It was planted on you.”
She turned to the door, knowing the truth.
“I led them right here.”
2:53 P.M.
Todor broke another of the hotel clerk’s fingers.
With his other hand, Todor muffled the man’s scream. Two of his teammates held the clerk pinned to a chair in the establishment’s back office, allowing Todor to stare into the young man’s glassy, dark eyes. He tried to fathom the man’s agony, to wonder what it felt like.
Did pain have a color, a smell, a taste?
His whole life he had craved some inkling of that experience, wondering what he was missing. It wasn’t as if he lacked any sensory experience. He could feel a touch, shiver when cold, sweat when he exerted, but he could flay open his palm with a knife and feel nothing.
He had been taught pain was life’s cautionary tale, a body’s natural warning mechanism. Many of those afflicted like him died at a young age. From injuries that were overlooked or ignored, or more often, from simply taking stupid risks. Unrestricted by pain, they felt like they could do anything.
He had been lucky the Crucible had accepted him as a boy. The rigorous training and restrictions placed upon him by the brotherhood had likely saved his life.
Learning nothing more about pain from his captive, Todor waited for the clerk—some Nigerian immigrant with skin like polished coal—to stop screaming and settle into heaving sobs.
When his team had first entered the hotel lobby, the spindle-limbed clerk had been on the phone, speaking rapidly in his native language, plainly arguing. Todor had come upon him easily. As Todor waited for the call to end, he eavesdropped upon this one’s heathen tongue, angered that such filth had never bothered to fully assimilate.