Chapter Thirty-Four

The ceiling was covered in hot pink satin.

I blinked

I’d been here before.

Wonderland.

“Jin. You’re awake. Easy now.”

We’d made it. Against all the odds, we’d made it to Mokpo and Etienne had found Alice.

And that sounded like Royce talking to me.

A huge hand touched my forehead, and I knew it was him.

“Royce?” I said, voice hoarse.

“The one and only,” he said.

“You’re alive,” Alice said.

My bed was surrounded. “I feel so flattered,” I said.

Gavin and Etienne stood on either side of me, touching my arms.

I tried to sit up. “Gavin,” I said. “Your hand.”

He held up the other one, and it was covered in a thick cast. He smiled. “Doing fine. Royce took care of it for now. Still needs surgery, but should be good as new in a few weeks.”

“How did you guys escape?” I said, guilty that I’d put them both in danger by running away with Etienne.

Alice crossed her arms, put her chin in the air. “I rescued them, of course. Piece of cake.”

Royce put his arm around Alice, fingers running down along her thigh.

“Unbelievable, but she got right in there. We were out in hours. Good thing too, since I really needed to do some work on Gavin’s hand, and you were in really rough shape when you came in,” he said.

I looked between Royce and Alice. She’d been flirting with him from day one. Well, Royce could do a lot worse—I had a lot of respect for her. I was happy that one of us got to be with her, and besides, now I had Etienne, and nothing could ever compare.

“I’ve got you stabilized, finally. You were delirious with pain and fever when Etienne finally found Alice,” Royce said.

“I wasn’t quite back from rescuing Royce and Gavin when you guys showed up,” Alice said. “I told my staff to expect you, just in case you turned up, but you did leave something of a lasting impression on them.”

“They held me at knife point when I showed up,” Etienne said.

“Sorry about that.”

Royce shook his head. “I read the documents that Etienne gave us. Unbelievable. Hate to tell you this, but the circuit he surrounded your heart with? It’s essentially permanent. There’s no good way to remove it without killing you. Not surprisingly, it’s similar to Alice’s implant.”

“He was going to tune it, do all the work for it on you, then rip it out when it was ready,” Etienne said.

“No way you’d survive that,” Royce said.

“Why rip it out of my chest? Why not just make another one?” I said.

“Materials,” Alice said. “And time. It’s made of rare substances that take a lot of time to collect and or manufacture.”

“Plus, it’s not complete. In its present form it’s…imperfect,” Royce said.

“Meaning…it’s going to kill me,” I said. “Story of my life, at this point.”

“I can tweak almost anything. I’m not a surgeon, but just looking at the plans that were decrypted, this thing might help me too. Fix my heart,” Alice said.

Great incentive for her to figure things out.

“Do we know any high class hackers that might be able to decrypt the other plans?” I said.

Royce smirked. “I sent it to Caramel and Gideon. Caramel is great at decrypting hardware ciphers.”

Caramel?

A hacker?

I thought I’d seen everything.

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“Don’t be so judgmental. She’s smarter than you think,” Royce said.

Guess so. Still didn’t excuse her fashion sense.

“You were screaming in so much pain when we got here. Are you feeling better?” Etienne said.

“I’m alive, and I’m surrounded by everyone I care about. Could be way worse. But yes, physically I feel okay. Just tired. Weak. But not dying.”

“Better not be. I’ve got you back on all kinds of good stuff again. From your blood work, I’m still working out what kind of cocktail that guy put you on, but I can tell you one thing—it was not easy on your body,” Royce said.

“Certainly doesn’t feel that way,” I said.

“You’ll need more surgery to deal with the new implant, once we have more information. Now that you’re more stable, I’d prefer to take you back to Pasadena for the next surgeries. I have way better equipment there, and I can put your marrow tags back at the same time,” Royce said.

I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I could still die. If this was more stable than I’d been before, then I must have been dire indeed, because I felt like total crap.

Someone knocked on the door, and Alice went out for a minute, returning with a scowl on her face. “We have a problem,” she said. “Jin has a phone call to make.”

 

***

“No way. I’m not talking to that guy,” I said.

“He just told me that there’s a kill switch installed in your circuits. Meaning he could stop your heart if he wanted to,” Alice said. “I’m guessing he’s got a tracking device in you too, since he was able to find you here. I’ll take a look at those plans to confirm what he’s got implanted, but it’s totally possible.”

“Fuck,” Royce said. “I’m sure we could disable it, but it would take time to figure out what to tweak, and I don’t want to put you through another surgery here. I don’t know how much more your body can take.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “So what the hell do we do?”

“I’m sending my people into the city. He’s here somewhere. We just need to find him and take him out before he catches you. Can’t be certain, he probably has to be within a certain range to use a kill switch. Long range on that sort of thing usually isn’t effective,” she said. “If he can’t have you alive, he’ll want that circuit back. He’s counting on it to save him too.”

“I could use myself as bait? Go sit somewhere in the city and see if he shows up?” I said.

“No,” Etienne and Gavin said together.

“I’m not letting you get close to that monster again,” Gavin said. “I didn’t like him then, and I don’t like him now.”

Right. Gavin had known Tae-min too. Gavin was going to be next up in the mesh protocols, and Tae-min helped with all his pre-op testing. Not pleasant stuff.

“I have an idea. Turnabout—fair play, right? Tae-min has implants too. Not just the mesh, but augments in his heart from the shooting incident. Anything about that in those plans?” I said.

Alice and Royce smiled.

“Once we hear back from Caramel, we’ll know for sure,” Royce said. “You’re thinking maybe we could hack his implant?”

Royce put that new biosensor implant in me because the old one wasn’t secure. If something as innocuous as a biosensor could be hacked, why not a more complicated array?

Alice bit her lip. “I’d need to get a sensor close enough to scan the device, lock on to the frequencies. Then we could scramble his pacemakers. Might kill him in the process. Can’t guarantee anything.”

“Good,” Gavin said. “I’m just sad I can’t strangle him with my bare hands. No one touches Jin and gets away with it.”

Poor Etienne bit her lip. She’d known Tae-min as her friend and employer all these years.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “This has to be hard for you.”

She shook her head. “Gavin’s right. He’s done good things for me, but he’s a lying bastard. He knew you were alive this whole time, and he never told me. What he was planning to do to you—it’s unforgivable. He’s no better than the old Chaebol administration that he told me he hated so much. He’s written his own fate.”

Gavin nodded. “We’re all on the same page. It’s good to have you back with us,” he said to Etienne. “That was on my list of things I never thought I’d see happen.”

They’d been friends before we were separated too, and I’m sure Gavin was thrilled at finding Etienne alive. He didn’t always show his emotions, but they were in there. Beneath all the knives and fierce fashion sense, Gavin was a teddy bear.

“So once we get that information, we track him down and have someone get close enough to trigger a pulse switch,” Royce said.

Alice nodded. “I can put together the hardware, and you can make sure the biomech parts line up. Then we hunt him down before he gets close to Jin.”

I sat up, ignoring the half dozen hands that tried to keep me lying down.

“Alice. The drone swarm. Do you still have some?” I said.

A grin spread across her face, her mermaid hair glowing in the basement lights, reflecting off her pale skin. “Of course. I tend to crash them when I’m using too many at the same time—good to have backups.”

I smiled. “Bring them to me. That’s how we’ll find him.”

“Can you fly them in your condition?” she asked.

“Ironically, thanks to Tae-min the mesh is still working. Shouldn’t take long to hunt him down.”

“I know you don’t want to, but you should call him,” Alice said. “Make him think that you’re going to give yourself up so that he doesn’t get impatient and pull the switch on you first. He already knows our location, so it’s not like there’s any danger of him tracking us.”

“You tried tracing him already?” Gavin said.

Alice nodded. “Of course. No luck. He’s not completely stupid, it seems.”

“Tae-min isn’t stupid. He’s just an asshole,” I said. “Fine. Give me a phone.”

Alice punched some numbers into a cell phone and then handed it to me. “I’ll get the drones and the transmitters in place while you chat.” She turned to Royce. “Don’t let her get too worked up.”

“I’m not sure why you think I have any control over her. She does what she wants,” he said.

Etienne and Gavin both laughed.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Everyone can just hush.”

I pushed the call button and waited while it rang.

“Alice?” Tae-min said.

“You’ve got me,” I said. “What do you want?”

He laughed. “Ah, Jin, you’re seeing reason much faster than I thought you would. You used to be so stubborn. Look, I didn’t want to use force, but this is for your own good.”

“Right, so you installed a kill switch in my heart for my own protection?” I said.

“In a manner of speaking. It doesn’t necessarily have to kill you—but it’s for safety, in case you do something to hurt yourself or others. Once the implant is activated…there could be neurological effects. It had to be added to the design. I hope you understand.”

“Perfectly logical. How thoughtful of you,” I said.

Royce poked my arm—wasn’t sure if he just wanted me to stop antagonizing Tae-min, or if he was worried that I was getting too worked up. Maybe both.

“So glad you understand. It was dangerous of you to leave so soon after surgery. Hopefully you’ve been cared for in the interim. I’d hate for you to do any permanent damage.”

Yeah, damage to his precious circuit is what he meant, but I managed not to say that out loud.

“I’ll go back with you, but I need your word that you won’t try to do anything to my friends. That includes Etienne,” I said.

“Etienne. Yes. Very naughty of her to be so disobedient. I’m afraid after something like that, I can’t allow her to return to the Chaebol. But I will leave her in peace. You might want to inform her that all of her accounts have been permanently frozen.”

Disobedient. Like she was a dog. She’d been living with this illusion of power all these years, but in reality she’d just been a prisoner on a very long leash.

I didn’t want to share that little piece of information with her just yet—I already felt so guilty. If we made it back to Pasadena, she’d be free to do whatever she wanted, but I’d do whatever I could to make her happy. She could have my whole fortune, for all I cared.

“Of course I can’t meet with you personally—as I understand it, your friend Alice has a bit of clout in this city. Wouldn't want anyone to get any bright ideas,” he said. “I’ll have a car waiting for you at the eastern side of town, at the soccer training center. You have exactly an hour for that doctor friend of yours to prepare you for travel. Don’t be late.”

I wanted to scream some angry epithet at him, but he ended the call before I had the chance.

Alice came back into the room with the box of drone materials just as I hung up and barely resisted throwing the phone across the room.

“Good and bad news,” she said. “I got the decoded plans from Caramel—I’d like to meet her. Her skills are impressive.”

I laughed. “Better you than me. She’s…special.” Distantly, I also remembered that Caramel had my car. Seemed like a tiny price to pay for getting my life back and finding Etienne, but it still stung. I wanted my damned Lotus.

“So what’s the bad news?” Royce said.

“Tae-min’s on a fool’s errand,” Alice said. “The chip—it’s not just a matter of needing to bio-tune it with a live subject. It’s incomplete. Just from looking at it, I can tell it won’t work.”

Everyone in the room was silent.

“What a big surprise, I’m still dying,” I said.

“Shit,” Royce said. “That’s okay, we were planning on needing to do repairs on it. I’ve been trying to work on something similar to this myself. Between the existing plans, and what I’ve already researched, we can fix it. We can fix it, and then make another one—this might be exactly the kind of thing that will help Alice and other people with implant rejections.”

I stared at Royce. “So that’s where all your money’s been going.”

He smirked. “Your bill is so big at this point, you’re going to need to expand SEI to a few other continents to pay me back.”

I just smiled. “You’ve more than earned it,” I said seriously, which caught him off guard.

He squirmed and looked away for a second, cleared his throat. “First, we need to take care of this Tae-min asshole.”

“There’s some other good news. I know one of the things the circuit needs to be complete,” Alice said. “And I know how to get it.”

“What? What is it?” I said.

“There’s a conduction issue in the circuit—eventually it would have just fried your whole system. It needs a different type of metal to modulate the voltage correctly,” she said. “What it needs is Anthozite.”

Anthozite. The stuff that was almost impossible to get anymore.

The stuff that Alice could dive for.

I grinned at her. “There are benefits to being friends with a mermaid.”

“Looks like I get to go for a swim after you’re done flying.”

Land and sea.

Attacks from all angles.

That’s my kind of party.