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I WANT TO BE A MAN FOR YOU
ROMEO-THREE
This is worse than last time—and better. The intensity of the pain is like nothing I’ve felt before, but the time is less. It’s ebbs and flows. And it’s because of her. She’s taking it from me, slumped half on top of me, her small-ass body shaking and shuddering.
We lie on the gurney before a firing squad audience in suits, in this factory of nightmares, both of us sweating and shaking. Frozen and hot by turns. Tierney is there, was there through the whole pain. Feeling it right beside me. I can feel her with me, as if she’s in my head beside me.
The pain has quit, my brain gone still, but it’s left me wrecked, weak as I don’t think I’ve ever been before. She’s in worse shape, her eyes squeezed shut, shaking, teeth chattering, sweat dripping down her brow.
The pain the chip can cause is debilitating. Even for me who was designed and raised to function through it—but for her?
Her eyes find mine, bloodshot, her hand sliding into my hair. “Are you okay?”
“Are you.”
Her eyes squeeze shut, breathing through her nose like she’s trying not to puke, her hair sliding along the bare skin of my throat.
No one moves. The room is silent but for the breathing of seven people in a small room.
Tierney Jones straightens to standing, her hands straightening her coat. She’s not looking at me though.
She’s staring over me at the line of grim-faced suits across from her.
The She-Bitch raises a penciled brow.
Caruthers looks deeply disturbed.
Smithers is smirking. Fucker probably just creamed his pants watching us writhe.
The suits are varying shades of confused and disapproving.
The fat one shuffles and sweats, mouth popping open and closed. That’s all he ever does.
“Ms. Jones, did your chip pick up the coding last time?”
Tierney shakes her head. “No.”
“You experienced no pain transference?”
“No. I don’t ... I don’t know why that happened.”
Baldwin makes a low-pitched considering hum, and turns to the suits. “She believes in keeping the subjects comfortable,” Baldwin says. “She’s established a degree of trust that has not gone unnoticed. It’s been quite effective. If ... unusual.”
One of the suits, a bald man with eyes like buttons, nods like that makes sense, his gaze roaming over me, as I shiver and sputter like a man two breaths from death. It’s how I feel.
Caruthers clears his throat, and his hand slides over the curve of Tierney Jones waist, slowly pulling her away from me. “She has a high degree of empathy. Her character assessment placed that as one of her chief assets. It makes this a uniquely taxing position for her. There’s been some evidence of emotional transference in the past.”
I try to force a laugh out. He needs a character assessment to know that. I knew it three seconds after I met her. It’s in those clear bright eyes. She doesn’t look at the world the way most people do. She’s not searching for an angle or a way to get ahead.
She looks at people and she sees them for the best parts of themselves. She doesn’t see the bad. She never does.
A fucking character assessment. I wonder if it also tells him that she feels conflicted about her father’s rebellion and terrified for her sister. That she’s lonely and desperately wants a family of her own.
Baldwin’s eyes gleam. “I was only aware of emotional transference between Delilah Rsinski and Romeo-Eight.”
Caruthers jaw clenches and he looks over at Tierney in a way that makes my jaw clench, like he wants to take her for his own. He shifts her with that hand on her hip, so she’s by his side, but does let his hand drop away.
The woman-executive tucks in the corner of her thin lips. “Does she touch them all?”
“No.” Tierney Jones picks up a second sheet from the shelf behind her and, leaving Caruthers’ side, drapes it over me, tucking it around me.
If I weren’t strapped down, I’d kill them all. I’d start with Caruthers. For eye-fucking her, for touching her, I would rip out his throat and let him drown in his own blood. Then I’d go after the woman in the suit. Then the two idiot men. I’d snap their necks.
Crackcrackcrack. And while their bodies fell to the ground, I would look to the She-Bitch.
Baldwin. I glare up at her and imagine a thousand vile things I could do to her. She smiles at me, clips across the floor in her shiny suit and strokes my hair back from my face, with maternal fingers that mimic Tierney’s for gentleness. With my hands bound down, I can’t do shit.
She checks my pulse, my eyes, my temperature. “He’ll live.”
I hiss.
She laughs, wiping away my sweat with the corner of a sheet as if she cares deeply.
I try to bite her hand.
She laughs harder. “So it was effective?”
I try to bite again, but the gesture lacks efficacy. She’s trying to normalize what Tierney did. She and Michael are working together for once to protect Tierney and fuck if I know what their motives are.
Tierney Jones points at the screen, her finger tapping of the enormous pink-gray image of my brain and the chip inside it. “The ganglion reached the desired area of the hypothalamus. That’s exactly where we need them.”
“So we can begin coding attempts for the final stage?” the woman-executive asks.
Tierney Jones tucks her hair behind her ear. “We’re not quite ready on the codes. The simulation is still rejecting them.”
“How long?” asks the button-eyed one.
She swallows. “Two weeks, I think, before I can start initial attempts, but it would be for small controls and multiple uploads. Sleep. Sit. Stand. Blink. It will be a while before I can force more complicated maneuvers.” She swallows. “Like ovulation or intercourse for example.”
She studiously avoids looking at me. She’s buying us time.
The suits exchange glances.
“Start testing sooner,” the woman says.
The man, the bald one clears his throat. “Can you make them feel pain at any time?”
For the first time, a trickle of pure fear slicks down my spine. I’ve never doubted that I will be able to get out of this lab with my brothers and sisters. That Baldwin’s blood would paint my hands and vengeance will be mine. But for the first time, I wonder if we Sierras will ever truly be free. If they can press a button at any time and make us writhe with blinding pain, how can we fight them? If we can’t get these chips out of our heads, will they be able to torture us remotely. Every single baby born is immediately chipped. Every single living human on this continent—except for those born Outlaw.
As soon as we are free, we are going to find a way to either remove these chips or destroy them. I want no more people mucking about in my head. Having Tierney Jones in there is bad enough.
Baldwin’s hand stroking my hair stops. She sucks in a short breath, her eyes moving to Tierney Jones, whose mouth has dropped open.
Those fat lips wobble. “It would be too risky to have the ganglia move just for punitive purposes.”
“What are the risks?” His button eyes practically gleam.
“You mean other than the pain it would cause?”
The suit nods.
Tierney stiffens, points at me. “Weakening of the subject. Fatigue. Risk of brain damage. Breakdown of the chip itself. Change in impulse control, brain function, decision making, muscle damage. And let’s add pain transference to the list. What if that same pain were felt not just by me, but by all of us?”
“I didn’t ask if it should be done,” hisses Button Eyes. “I asked if it could be done.”
I consider swiping out with a stray foot to his groin, kicking him so as he fell. His chin would hit the edge of the counter behind him, potentially snapping his neck. I eye the angles, play out the trajectory. Definitely knocking him unconscious at a minimum. But it would be counterproductive. They will not think more highly of her if their prisoner rises to her defense, and it would only land me with more attentive guards at a time when I want less attentive guards. In the end, nothing would change. One IdentityCorps executive is as bad as any other.
So I lie there, quietly studying them all. Memorizing the information in their feeds, imagining it’s their chips that are turning to squids and stirring their brains.
Caruthers shifts, tapping his leg with his hand. He wants to protect Tierney Jones from this man. For once, I agree with him.
Baldwin pats my cheek. “That’s a question for another day, Mr. Lensky. Perhaps you might want to discuss that with a separate part of the team. An empathetic soul isn’t the right person to ask about designing pain-administering technology.”
Lensky frowns, face reddening.
Cho sucks on her tongue. “Your father would have been proud of your work here, Ms. Jones.”
Everyone looks like she should be inordinately pleased at the statement, and Tierney Jones manages to make appropriately thankful noises, but I can tell from the way she takes her glasses off and tucks them in the pocket over her left tit that she isn’t pleased at all.
In fact, she looks genuinely disturbed, confused. Like she just remembered something.
The question is what.
Baldwin turns to Bob. “Take him back to his cell, Mr. Reynaldi.”
Tierney Jones touches his forearm lightly. She’s so tiny next to this massive man that my heart clutches. “Please make sure he’s allowed warm water for his shower and extra time in it.”
The fat one nods, and his meaty hands drop down on the sides of my gurney, up near my head. He’s not so bad. I don’t think I’ll kill him.
“And Bob,” she says as he wheels me away. “Stay and confirm that the shower is warm, and that they provide warm air for him to dry with?”
I send a final evil glance at Caruthers, then a longer softer one at her, how she feels when she strikes the enter key and pulverizes my mind. I want to touch her. I want my hands free so I can wrap my arms around her and breathe in her coconut smell, feel her small body in my hands, tell her I don’t blame her.
Just once before we leave. I want to be a man in front of her. A real man. Not a prisoner.