It wasn’t strength or skill that had smacked them up against that jutting rock. Just chance. And then, just as fast, bam. That bastard came up so fast, he barely shoved the kid out of the way before the tree trunk snapped his arm, smashed God only knew what else in his thorax, knocked him loose—and then spun out perpendicular to the falls, catching on a rock across the torrent. It formed a barrier, trapping him against a temporary dam. But not for long.
Smashing him, then saving him. When it worked loose, it would fuck him again, definitively. He’d ride that bastard out over the cliff.
The story of his life. Something inside him laughed, with stony irony. Wasn’t it always the way. Like Tony, who’d dragged Kev out of his own rapids years ago, and kept him there, brain damaged, shambling and speechless. Washing dishes, mopping floors for room and board at the diner. Lying on a sagging cot, watching paint peel in the windowless mildewed room behind the diner where he’d slept. For fucking years.
The rope thrown out to save him. The same rope that he strangled himself on. It was almost funny. Except that it wasn’t.
The tree was about to go. The branches stuck on the rocks on the other side were wavering, wild water bending the flexible limbs, teasing them loose. The tree shuddered, rolled. The water sucked and insisted.
Any time now. He composed himself, tried to pay attention, to be present for it, to breathe. Difficult. So cold. So much water. The kid’s mouth gaped, begging Kev to do something. As if he could swim against that current, even if he weren’t fucked-up. He had as much strength left as a broken doll. A final swell shook the tree loose. The ponderous slow motion made those last moments of clinging stretch out, infinitely long.
He struggled to stay conscious. The last wild ride. He’d better enjoy it. He wondered if he’d know, once he was dead, who he’d been before. What he’d done, who he’d known. Who he’d loved.
Probably not. This was all he got. It would just have to do.
Whoosh, the river rolled him under the tree and spat him far out into vastness. Endless space, above, below. Turning, head over ass.
The angel flashed across his mind. Those big gray eyes, so achingly sweet. A sharp sting of regret that he didn’t understand. And another face, too, scowling his disapproval as the immutable laws of physics had their stern way with him. A face he saw in his dreams every night. A young guy. His face maddeningly familiar.
Kev had been having a dream argument with that guy that very morning, he suddenly remembered. The man had been scolding him.
“Dying is easy. You told me that yourself,” the guy said. “It’s living that’s hard. Meathead. Hypocrite. You piss me off.”
So that was how he’d known today would be dangerous.
Part of his mind hooted and shrieked with unreasoning joy at the icy rush of air and water on his face. Whoa. This shit is fun. Another part pondered acceleration rates of falling objects, wind shear, probable force of impending impact on the rocks below. He calculated it down to ten digits after the decimal in that last, eternal instant—
And hurtled into a blank, white nothing.
Goddamnit to hell. Thick, stupid, useless cow.
Ava Cheung refocused her mind to a laser point. So much information streamed through the human nervous system to make a body move smoothly through space. So much of it was automatic. One couldn’t fathom how much until one tried to provide the impulses for someone else’s body, using one’s own will while simultaneously suppressing theirs. Mandy was responding poorly. Shuffling, clumsy. Ava could not get the girl to shut her mouth and keep it closed. The drooling was driving her crazy, and it was all the more grotesque with Mandy’s sexpot beauty, her heavily lashed blue eyes vacant behind the goggles, her pupils vastly dilated by the X-Cog prep drugs.
Ava fancied that X-Cog master-crowning required a skill level comparable to what it must take to play an instrument at a professional level. It required intense concentration to make the crowned person move and speak naturally. Unless you upped the doses, which lowered the subject’s resistance, but melted their brains in a scant hour. Not cost efficient. One had to be a virtuoso, like her, and Dr. O, of course.
This rendered the X-Cog interface less commercially feasible. How many people were willing to put in the hours to hone a new skill? People were lazy, contemptible slobs, as a rule. They needed things to be easy.
Ava was committed to finding a way to make X-Cog accessible to anyone with the money to pay for it, and Mandy was the umpteenth effort to that end. But a virtuoso needed a decent instrument to play. Not a thick, dull, unresponsive piece of shit.
Ava yanked off the master crown and flung it onto the table, more forcefully than she should have, considering how much it cost to develop and produce. The streamlined silver cap was very different from Dr. O’s heavy, clunky design, which had given her tension headaches. Dr. O hadn’t bothered with aesthetics. Dr. O had been a results man.
The new design was her own graceful innovation. Everything essential was there, but the end result was a light-as-air tangle of flexible wires and sensors on a light mesh cap. Both master and slave crowns were designed to be easily concealed beneath a hat, scarf, or wig.
Ava’s brilliance was wasted on Mandy. The dumb little bitch was going straight into the shredder. Mandy whimpered as Ava wrenched goggles and crown off the girl’s head, yanking out long blond hair. She whipped the master crown glasses off. Stupid, talentless cow. Crowning her was like trying to send nervous impulses through a lump of clay.
Ava smoothed glossy black hair back and stared at Mandy, who swayed on her feet, gaping. The girl was dressed in the silver spandex jog bra and shorts that Ava had mandated as a uniform for X-Cog test subjects. She liked her girls to look sexy and sharp. But Mandy looked anything but sharp, with drool trailing off her chin.
The look on the girl’s face disgusted her. She slapped Mandy. The girl stumbled against the table, looking vaguely confused.
Ava slapped her again, harder. And again. Smack. Smack. Blood trickled from Mandy’s nose, from her split lip. The girl’s hands crept up, tried to cover her face. Ava struck Mandy’s ears, whapped the back of her head, knocking her forward. Mandy thudded heavily to her knees.
“Back off, Av. That’s millions of dollars you’re kicking around.”
Ava spun around, and shot a poisonous look at the man who had just walked in. “Mind your own fucking business, Des.”
Desmond jerked his chin towards Mandy. “She is my business.”
“She’s a worthless piece of shit,” Ava hissed.
“Don’t take your frustration out on her.” Desmond’s arrogant, know-it-all tone made her want to put out one of his bright blue eyes. “You thought that upping the burn would give you more direct control with the crown at a lower dose of the drug. You were wrong. Too bad. Honest mistake. We won’t make it again. Grow up, Ava. Move on.”
“But the basic idea is sound! Next time, I’ll recalibrate the—”
“No.” The curt word cut her off. “We reached the point of diminishing returns weeks ago. No more cutting, no more burning.”
There was no arguing with Des when he got that tone. He was the one with the money, the contacts. He’d funded her whole show, since Dr. O bit the dust. But bumping up against the limits of her power over him made her bad tempered. She kicked Mandy’s buttock viciously. The girl lurched forward with a pathetic grunt. “Don’t lecture me,” she said, sulkily. “I’m the one who’s clubbing with the stinking masses to troll for test subjects! Wasting time I should spend on research, bumping and grinding with Ecstasy whores like her!” She kicked Mandy again, making her whimper. “I need to delegate this tedious shit!”
“I’m trying, babe, but I don’t understand why you’re so set on wiping them. I enjoy crowning the ones who aren’t burned or cut much better. It’s that inner resistance that makes it exciting, you know?”
Ava snorted. “It’s not about excitement. You’ve never tried to crown a subject into anything more complex th
an sucking on your dick. Try making one of them type a string of code, and see how far you get. You can compel a girl to blow you by putting a twenty dollar gun to her head. You don’t need a ten-million-dollar X-Cog crown. I want to market X-Cog to defense contractors. Understand? Are you with me here?”
“Fellatio is actually a pretty complex motor process.” Des sounded faintly hurt. “Particularly when you’re hung.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “Please. Leave the neuroscience to me.”
Des waved that away. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“I don’t want to hear the bad news,” she said pettishly.
“Then I’ll tell you the good news, first.” He nudged Mandy thoughtfully with his toe. “We need a steady supply of high quality, hand-selected lab rats. We also need someone to deal with our disposal issue. Remember Tom Bixby, from the Haven?”
Ava grimaced. Bixby had been one of Dr. O’s rich pets. One who’d survived and thrived after Dr. O’s Brain Potential Program. Off to Harvard with Dessie. She still remembered his hot eyes, his groping hands. “An arrogant prick, as I recall. That’s your brilliant idea?”
“He runs his own private military company. Bixby Enterprises. It’s gotten huge. I think X-Cog would be extremely interesting to him. And we would have multiple layers of security, since he’s Club O.”
Ava’s lip curled. “But he’s a dickhead.”
Des’s eyes rolled impatiently. “Don’t be a spoiled baby. Offering him a partnership would solve all our problems in one move.”
“And create a lot more,” she said.
Des’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve set up a demo. You will be good, Ava.”
Well, look at him. Throwing his weight around. Trying to whip her into line with his big dick. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me the bad news,” she said. “Maybe it’ll cheer me up.”
Des stared at her, nostrils distended, cheeks reddening. Anger turned him on. A fact she often turned to her advantage. “I was at a Parrish Foundation board meeting today,” he said finally. “Parrish is taking over where his bitch of a wife left off. Getting rid of Linda distracted him for a while, but the party’s over, everybody out of the pool. He’s engaged a panel of financial forensics experts to examine every penny of Parrish Foundation money spent in the past three years. And to vet all future projects. No more cutting it close.”
“Oh, God,” Ava moaned. “I’m so close to a breakthrough!”
“I know, but what can you do. He’s as much of a pit bull as his ballbusting wife, may she burn in hell. The Morality Police don’t want anything naughty going down, after Dr. O’s big scandal.”
“Fucking hypocrites. ‘Helix was a victim, too,’” Ava mimicked.
Des looked at the moaning girl at his feet. “This shit does not look good, Av. Save it for when we can afford a more secret facility, and that won’t be until after we get control of the Foundation board.”
“It can’t wait! Besides, no one will miss her. She’s just a whore that I scraped off the bathroom floor of a dance club. No wonder she’s a dud.” She kicked Mandy in the kidney. “I need better raw material to work with.”
“We need reliable funding first.” Des’s voice was stern. “And someone to supply lab rats, and safely dispose of the garbage for us. The Parrish Foundation is watching like a hawk. It’s too risky.”
“Charles Parrish has been raking in hundreds of millions in medical patents for years,” Ava said bitterly. “Like he cared where the smell came from before his nose got rubbed in shit.”
“Thank God he’s retiring. I’m giving a fawning speech for that pompous tightass at the retirement banquet. Fucking bore.”
“Retiring? That’s good.”
“Not really. It just leaves him that much more time to be possessive and controlling about Parrish Foundation research money.”
Ava gave him a big, brilliant smile. “So let’s kill him.”
Des looked startled. “That wouldn’t solve our problem.”
“No? You’re on the board. You handpicked the last two board members after we got rid of Linda. If Parrish disappeared, the rest of them will do anything you want, for the 400K salaries, the skybox, the Lear jet. The paid luxury vacations. They’re sheep. It’s easy, Dessie.”
Des grunted. “Hardly. Don’t oversimplify.”
“But it is simple,” Ava said. “We create the perfect board. Eliminate the watchdogs. Create a perfect screen of bland, squeaky clean product development projects that they can all feel virtuous about. Siphon a percentage of the money back to the real stuff, like Dr. O did. Except we won’t fuck up, and let it explode in our faces.”
Des looked dubious, but he wasn’t rejecting it out of hand.
“Who inherits Parrish’s fortune when he dies?” Ava asked.
Des frowned thoughtfully. “His younger daughter, Ronnie. Ronnie’s thirteen. Edie, the older one, was at the Haven with us, remember? Glasses, braces. Woof, woof. The cognitive enhancement program bombed out big-time on her, as I recall. She never got into Club O. Just didn’t have what it took.”
Ava nodded. She remembered the tongue-tied Edie. One of the privileged ones, like Des himself. Rich kids who did the soft-core version of Dr. O’s dirty mind games, because Mommy and Daddy wanted better grades. Ava hated the pampered little cunt for that.
“Who inherits if Ronnie dies?” Her voice hardened.
“Av. Please,” Des grumbled. “We can’t kill everyone in sight.”
“Who?” she persisted.
He shrugged. “The Foundation, I guess. I know that Edie’s out of the will, because I overheard Dad and Charles talking about her. He’d cut off her personal funds. He was arranging to disinherit her. That was a few years ago.”
“What did she do? Drugs? Partying? Fucking the wrong men?”
Des shook his head. “No, she’s just weird. She embarrasses him. Charles can’t stand that. She had, ah, problems. You know . . .” He twirled his index finger in a circle at his temple. “Doesn’t surprise me, since she’s one of Dr. O’s duds. Most of them cracked up years ago.”
Ava tapped her lip. “Dr. O wanted to do an interface with Edie Parrish so bad, he was practically pissing himself,” she said. “She had the perfect test results for it, but she was Charles Parrish’s little baby girl. He had to keep her in bubble wrap. Stick with the standard cognitive enhancement program. It drove him crazy.”
She left the rest of the thought silent. How she, Ava, had borne the brunt of Dr. O’s frustration. He’d taken it out on her. She had good reason to hate that mealy-mouthed little Parrish princess bitch.
Des looked baffled. “What was it that he liked about her? What can you see from test results and MRI’s?”
Ava’s smile was bitter. Des was such an ignorant dickhead sometimes. “They were exactly like mine,” she said softly.
Des’s face was still blank. “Meaning?”
Ava sighed. “I was his best interface, Dessie. Besides Kev McCloud, of course. We were the only ones that didn’t die of brain bleed. Some lasted a few days, but only McCloud and I were genuinely reusable. That’s why I survived. That’s why I wasn’t flushed down the john with the rest of them.” She brushed her hair back with a swipe of her hand, preening. “And being pretty helped, too.”
Des looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Um. I see. I’m, ah, sorry.”
The insincere, pat words grated on her. “No, you’re not. You don’t give a shit, and we both prefer it that way,” she said crisply. “Kev McCloud was the cornerstone of Dr. O’s research. X-Cog wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for McCloud. So Dr. O was always looking for test results similar to his, and mine. And Edie Parrish had them. That’s all.”
Des let out a dubious grunt. “Kev McCloud managed to escape and practically fuck the whole project. Looks like that perfect interface had some pretty big fucking holes in it. And his twin, Sean, forced Dr. O to slit his own throat, remember? That should give you pause, Av.”
Pause, hah. It had
given her sleepless nights for years. Wondering frantically how Sean McCloud had managed it. When she could not.
How? How the fuck had he done that? All those years of being Dr. O’s slave-crowned dollbaby. Used like a puppet, all the while dreaming of hammers crushing, knives gouging, axe blades hacking. Gouts of black arterial blood. Her hands began to shake, just thinking about it.
She locked the feelings down automatically, so that she could function. “The McClouds are freaks. Edie will be different. She’s female, artistic, creative. Shy, introverted personality. Probably emotionally crushed by her father, which is fine for our purposes. She’ll be a good little girl. She won’t slit my throat.”
Des’s blue eyes narrowed. “What is this? First you want to kill her. Then you want to crown her.”
“Crown first, kill later,” she said airily. “Waste not, want not.”
Des shot a speaking glance at Mandy, who was rocking on the ground, sucking on her thumb. “You don’t call that a waste?”
Ava’s teeth ground. “No. I call that a calculated risk. So what are we going to do about Parrish?”
Des looked irritated. “Shit,” he muttered. “I don’t know.”
Ava sighed. Des was so fucking slow sometimes. “Des. Honey. Brainstorm with me. He’s about to retire, right? Dangerous age for a man. Health problems, chronic pain? Grief, solitude? And he was bereaved last year, too. Poor Linda. He must be fragile. Depressed. And his daughter, with her mental problems? Oh, dear. So sad. Plus, he disinherited her. She must be so angry with him. She must feel betrayed. Maybe even . . .” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Murderous?”
Des’s face took on an expression of dawning discovery. “She might. Wouldn’t surprise anyone. He’s such a self-righteous, pompous tight ass. I’m surprised someone hasn’t beaten her to it.”
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