Forbidden Stranger Page 5

  For Katrinka Dev, however, Ewan had a little more pity. Jordie’s mother had been one of Ewan’s strongest longtime supporters, starting with the lobbying efforts to make the original tech and upgrades illegal, and when Ewan had done a complete turnabout, she’d joined him in those efforts, too. Having her only son in a prison for the criminally insane had ended up wrecking her emotionally, and she’d stepped far away from further involvement with anything to do with the enhancement tech. Unfortunately, she’d also taken away all her funding for any future research. Ewan understood, of course. She didn’t want to have anything to do with what had gone on. If he’d had the choice, he’d have done the same.

  It surprised him, therefore, when his personal comm pinged with a message from her. Concerned that it might have something to do with Jordie, which meant it could also affect Nina, Ewan returned the call as soon as it came in. Katrina didn’t answer right away, but as soon as he hung up, she was already pinging him back.

  “I had to step outside,” she told him without any other greeting as soon as the call went through. “I can’t have Jordie around any sort of tech that can access the ’net. It’s against visitation rules, and it gets him extremely worked up, the poor darling.”

  Ewan had heard Katrinka refer to her son using much less pleasant terminology, but he supposed nearly losing him might have changed her mind about her offspring. “What’s going on?”

  “I want him to be fixed. Repaired. Restored, if you will,” Katrinka said in the flat but airy tone of a woman who’s been so used to getting her own way that she couldn’t imagine anything else. “But more. I want the new and improved version. Jordie 2.0. I want him to get the upgrades.”

  Ewan pressed the spot between his eyes, closing them for a moment while he thought about the kindest way to answer this. “Katrinka, you know that’s never going to happen.”

  “My son was fitted with enhancement technology and an entire grab bag of additional, unsupported, and unevaluated software designed to kill him if he tried to give up any information. He had it shoved into his brain by unskilled and brutally determined . . .” Here, she broke off to sob delicately into her handkerchief. The comm in her hand wavered, drifting away from her face to show the background.

  Industrial tile. Harsh lighting. A hint of a barred door in the background.

  “Are you in the prison right now?”

  Katrinka wiped her eyes and glared at Ewan through the screen. “I visit him as often as I can. And it’s a hospital. Because he’s sick.”

  “How is he?” Ewan tried to put some sincerity into his tone, guessing that Katrinka would see right through his false efforts.

  Maybe she was so used to fake sympathies and emotions that she didn’t seem to notice Ewan’s. She sniffed loudly and wiped at her face. Ewan had to admit, this woman had formerly never been seen without cosmetic electives of professional precision. She looked somehow younger than she had with her hair and face all done up. Younger, but harder worn.

  “He has his bad days and his worse days,” she told Ewan, her tone quiet and less blasé. It didn’t tremble with her tears, but at this point she probably had a lot of experience keeping it steady. “As I’m sure you know or can guess, sedatives don’t work on him. They knock him down for a few minutes, and then they’re out of his system. He doesn’t sleep. They don’t feed him enough, although I frankly don’t think they actually can, not enough to keep his body running the way it keeps trying to. He’s emaciated, but still so strong, he . . .”

  More tears, this time harsh and ratcheting. She closed her eyes and shook her head, moving her mouth but incapable, it seemed, of making actual speech. Although Ewan would never have a second’s sympathy for Jordie, who’d done the damage to himself, at least he could have compassion for Katrinka. She might not have been the best mother in the world, and that by her own admission, but she certainly didn’t deserve this level of anguish.

  “He can never be left unchained,” she said finally. “Worse than an animal, I mean at least some beasts can be tamed. They have him in a collar chained to the ground. Cuffs on his wrists and ankles. He’s got enough room to move around his cell, but no more than that. He killed a guard who wasn’t careful enough to stay out of his reach. He’s strong enough to nearly decapitate a man even when he himself is nothing more than skin and bones, and he’s insane enough to want to do it. Not only to himself, but to everyone. Even me. And I understand, Ewan, believe me, that my son might have a number of good reasons why he might want to kill me, but this is different. He’s not himself anymore. You can’t even compare him to an animal, really. He is a monster. But he can’t, no matter how he might try, end his own life, which is what the onedamned tech is forcing him to try to do, over and over. And since they have determined his punishment is life in confinement, all he can do is suffer. All I can do is watch it happen. How is that humane, I ask you? How is that anything resembling fair treatment? No matter what he did, does my son deserve this?”

  Hearing his mother’s description of Jordie’s condition and treatment didn’t temper Ewan’s hatred toward the boy. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I told you. I want you to give him the upgrades. All the others had them. He deserves to have them, too.”

  “The enhanced were all offered the upgrades to prevent further deterioration of their original tech,” Ewan began, but Katrinka interrupted him with a shout loud enough to make his comm speaker crackle.

  “My son is one of them! He deserves the same upgrades they do!”

  Ewan took a small breath and turned the volume down to be sure nobody in the rest of the house, especially Nina, could overhear this conversation. “Jordie is not one of the enhanced. He was fitted with that tech by a group of people determined to steal the upgrades Wanda Crosson implanted inside Nina’s brain so they could use them for their own gain. They implanted it in him under unapproved conditions, using techniques and surgeries that were not approved for the initial tech implantation. In addition, they fucked with the software and all of the programming. All of it. The only thing Jordie has in common with any of those original fifteen soldiers is the way his body reacts now to physical stresses. What is going on in his head is totally and utterly different.”

  “Not different from all of them. There’s one of them who’s in the same position as my son. Don’t you want to see how to fix her, Ewan?” Katrinka said, her voice no longer shrill but low and sly. “Or are you afraid that once she’s able to remember everything that happened to her, she’ll leave you yet again? And this time, you won’t have any excuses left to get her back?”

  He didn’t answer her at first, unsure if he was even going to be able to find words he could say without tearing Katrinka to shreds. Finally, he replied, “I want to see Nina healthy and happy more than anything in this world. I love her. None of this is about me.”

  “Believe it or not, I also love my son.”

  “The upgrades will not help Jordie, Katrinka. First of all, no judge or jury is ever going to allow it, based on what he did. Second, even if you could get the approval, the upgrades were based on the original enhancement tech and that software. What they did to your son has changed everything. The self-termination programming they put in there was activated when they tried to interrogate him about what happened. Nobody knows exactly how that programming works or what it was tied to, but the damage it did can’t be repaired. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry,” she hissed. Her shoulders hunched, and she looked defeated. “I thought your team was working on a solution for that self-term—that . . . problem.”

  Ewan gave her a suspicious look. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Oh, please. Don’t act as though I don’t have access to everything you do. You think that because you have money, you can get away with anything you want? Well, Ewan, I have more money than you ever had.”

  “What have you been doing?” Ewan asked. “Spying on me? On my team?”

  Katrinka d
idn’t look remotely guilty or even concerned. “So, I don’t have your support in this?”

  “Support in what, exactly?” Ewan demanded, exasperated with the roundabout way she was doing this. Katrinka seemed to have lost the directness he’d admired so much.

  Katrinka looked directly into the camera so it seemed as though she were staring into his eyes. “Research and development into something that will help Jordie. Make him better. You owe him, Ewan.”

  “I don’t owe him anything. The kid worked for me, and he took advantage of every opportunity I ever gave him and used it to do excremental and unforgivable things.”

  “Oh, so high and mighty. You act like you never did something that suited you and nobody else.” Katrinka’s sneer emphasized the lines scored at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth, but then her expression twisted and went soft. Pleading. “What harm can it do, Ewan? What difference could it possibly make to you?”

  Ewan shook his head. “After what he did to Nina, there’s no way I’m ever going to support giving Jordie anything.”

  Katrinka let out a strangled sob and covered her face for a moment before looking at him through the prison bars of her fingers. If she had any idea that she was echoing her son’s current condition, she didn’t seem aware of it. “He’s going to die.”

  “He will die with or without any upgrades, Katrinka. The fact is, I will never get permission to do anything to Jordie. No upgrades, nothing.”

  “What if you do find a solution to the self-termination program?” She cried. “You’ll have to agree to give it to him, too. You’ll have to, Ewan! It’s one thing to put him in prison, but this . . . this is beyond all that. You haven’t seen him. You don’t know!”

  Ewan didn’t bother telling her that he had already visited Jordie in the institution. He’d stayed outside the cell, never letting the kid know he was there, but he’d observed for a long time. The kid’s mind had been shattered and would never be put back together, no matter what Ewan or anyone else did.

  “Even when we find a way to disable that programming, it won’t be up to me to give permission for Jordie to get it or not. That’s up to the courts and lawyers.”

  Katrinka gave a harsh laugh. “Again. Money talks. You just have to make it speak.”

  Ewan said nothing.

  “My son looked up to you so much, Ewan. The day he got accepted to work in your lab was one of the proudest moments he ever had. He looked at you as a father figure!”

  Ewan couldn’t say he’d thought of the kid as his son, no matter what Jordie might have thought. Beyond that, he wasn’t going to be swayed by some kind of history alteration. Jordie Dev had been a sugarhead, addicted to candy, with delusions of grandeur and a set of morals definitely painted in shades of gray. The kid had been smart and dedicated, but never for any altruistic reasons.

  “I’m sorry,” he said for the second time.

  Katrina sneered, her expression going hard. “Saying sorry would indicate an apology of some kind, except for the obvious fact that you are not in any way apologetic. You take no responsibility for what happened to my son, and you refuse to make any sort of amends. You are vile. Disgusting.”

  “I had nothing to do with the path Jordie decided to pursue when he got involved with Crosson and the League of Humanity. If any fingers need to be pointed, I’d suggest you look at yourself, Katrinka. You raised that kid. Not me. As much as you might want to paint me as his father figure, I was never in that role. Certainly not by choice, and not even by default. He worked in my lab, and he stole proprietary information from me to achieve his own goals, which had nothing to do with anything I ever tried to teach him,” Ewan said coldly. “He is directly responsible for almost killing and permanently damaging the woman I love. He ended up where he is all on his own. I don’t have to make any sort of amends for that.”

  Katrinka squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. The brokenhearted mother disappeared, replaced with the socialite who didn’t let anyone see her sweat. Ever. “I see. Well. I came to you first because I’d hoped you’d make it easy for me to pursue this. I’d hoped you’d see how it would benefit the love of your life.”

  She said the last words with such disdain that Ewan was surprised the acid in her voice didn’t drip out of her mouth to burn a hole in the comm screen. Ewan had known Katrinka Dev for years, and most of the time he’d had nothing to do with her personal life beyond the glimpses he got here and there. He’d certainly never included her in his. They’d been friends on the surface, never much deeper than that, even when they’d worked side by side to lobby for legislation, to raise money for charity, even posing for the gossip viddies because neither of them had bothered to arrive with a date. He’d seen her be snarky, condescending, generous, witty. He’d never heard her sound so execrable.

  “But I don’t need you,” she continued as though he’d tried to speak over her instead of staying silent. “I don’t fucking need you. Or your money. I don’t even need your onedamned tech, Ewan. I’ll find a way to get what I want, and when I do, don’t think you can come skulking back around with your hand out, trying to fix up your little bitch with the scrambled brains. Not only will I not allow you to sit at my table, I will make sure you don’t even get so much as a fucking crumb.”

  Before Ewan could reply at all, the comm screen went dark. He thought about pinging her back, but didn’t. Instead, he opened another window and fired off a message to Dominic Rodriguez, the current acting CEO of Donahue Enterprises. Ewan trusted Dominic with his life and, more tellingly, his business. He’d gone above and beyond his job when Ewan and Nina had been on the run, and continued to do so. When Ewan had decided to retire here to the island so he could be with Nina full time, he’d pulled out as the public face of Donahue Enterprises and left Dominic in charge, with Ewan as the silent boss. Although they’d been close as part of the business for years, only recently had Ewan considered the man also a friend.

  Dom called him back immediately. “I’m guessing Katrinka got through to you. I tried to keep her from getting in touch with you directly.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’d rather know what in the universe she thinks she’s trying to do. I wasn’t able to get too much out of her that made sense, other than that she wants me to give Jordie the upgrades.”

  “She’s preparing a legal case against you, saying that because Jordie was outfitted with the enhancement tech, that makes him legally entitled to the same treatment as the rest of them, but I put our lawyers on it. At the very least we can stall the case for a long time. Unless you want to give the kid the upgrades?” Dom paused to look at the screen with a shrug. “We could get a legal team on lobbying for approval. Public and government opinion could go either way at this point. If you’re in favor . . .”

  Ewan’s reasons for not wanting Jordie to get the upgraded tech were complicated and excremental, but they weren’t entirely all nasty and vengeful. “We already know, because of Nina, that the upgrades meant to take care of the original tech’s natural deterioration don’t in any way negate the self-termination programming. And because of what happened to the kid, we can have a pretty good idea of what would happen with Nina if it got activated again. One has nothing to do with the other, except that in Jordie’s case, in addition to the fuckery they did on that kid’s brain, his enhancement tech might also be contributing to his overall condition. I mean, the kid’s constantly battling an overriding urge to off himself while taking out whoever might be unlucky enough to be close to him when he goes. I understand why his mother wants him to be fixed, as she says, but it’s too late for him.”

  Dom shrugged again. “Would it hurt him to have the upgrades? I mean, I get that it might not help him, but would it hurt?”

  “We don’t know. It might just kill him outright,” Ewan replied.

  “Would that be such a bad thing? The way the kid’s living now, can you even call it life? We were supposed to have gotten rid of cruel and unusual punishment, weren’t we?”<
br />
  Ewan frowned. “You make a good point. But it’s not really up to me. There are more than a hundred pages of legislation dealing with exactly how each of those thirteen remaining enhanced are allowed to be upgraded, including another two hundred or so regulating the research, development, and implementation of any additional upgrade tech. Donahue Enterprises is the only corporation allowed to even outline possibilities for future upgrades. We had to work our way around every single law regarding monopolies and trade agreements. We had to deal with the animal rights people who were bound and determined to prove that we intended to use monkeys for test subjects, no matter how many times we proved we weren’t. The simple fact is that Jordie Dev is not eligible for enhancement tech upgrades. He almost got the woman I love killed. If his mother wants to lobby for him to be included as one of the enhanced, she’s going to have to do it without my help.”

  Ewan and Dom talked a bit longer about the business and things Ewan needed to take care of. There wasn’t much. He’d made sure to get everything running along as well as it could without him needing to be hands-on. Even the team he’d set up to work on the new programming didn’t need much from him.

  “I’ll keep you updated if there’s anything more from either of the Devs,” Dom told him before signing off.

  Ewan had used the excuse that the island’s remote location was the reason they had poor ’net service there. Nina had no way to know the ’net had been throttled and had never asked about it, but he thought at some point she might. At any rate, he had the access code to get around it. Now he signed in to one of the news channels to see if there was anything about Katrinka or Jordie. So far, whatever she’d been trying to do had been private, but he wouldn’t put it past her to go public if she thought that would help. He set up an alert with some key phrases that would be messaged to him in case anything showed up in the news. Then the scent of brewing coffee and baking pastries drew him out of his bedroom and toward the kitchen.

  “She’s out for a run again,” Aggie told him as soon as he entered, even though he hadn’t asked about Nina. “Tracker says she’s down by the ocean, but she’s all right. She was acting a little odd this morning, though, Mr. Donahue. I thought you ought to know.”