Forbidden Stranger Page 9

  “None of the original studies were ever able to confirm the inability of the enhanced to experience a range of emotion that could be considered normal,” Zulik said now.

  Ewan hated that word. “‘Normal.’ What does that even mean?”

  “It’s not as though there’s any way to truly determine what someone . . . Well. Feels.” On the screen of Ewan’s personal comm, Zulik shrugged. His black brows contrasted sharply with his bleached white hair as he narrowed his eyes at the screen. “It’s not like a blood test or even a genetic screening. It’s kind of like pain, it’s different for everyone. What might be a ten for one person is a five for another. Feelings are the same. Nina’s grief and hysterical laughter might be excessive, but that doesn’t make her feelings wrong.”

  “I know that.”

  Zulik nodded with another frown. “But you don’t like seeing her upset.”

  “Of course I don’t,” Ewan replied. “I wouldn’t like it if she was doubled over in pain from some kind of physical problem, either.”

  “You’d want me to give her medicine for it, although with her particular set of enhancements they wouldn’t do much for her,” Zulik said.

  Ewan scowled, already knowing where this was going. “Yes.”

  “Well, Donahue, I’m sure you understand that I could give her something to stop her from having emotions, but in the long run, suppressing them would do more harm to her.”

  “I don’t want them to be suppressed. I just want to help her keep from hurting,” Ewan told the doc.

  Zulik twisted in his chair and leaned back, tapping his fingers on the desk. He pursed his lips, staring upward, before looking back into the comm screen. “How’s the rest of everything going? No signs of breaking down? Her memory functions are returning?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “And the new set of upgrades? Any breakthroughs?” Zulik asked.

  Ewan shook his head, frustrated. “No.”

  “And you won’t reconsider Article 757?”

  Ewan sat back in his chair. Article 757 allowed prisoners who’d been convicted of certain level crimes to be used for medical experiments without their consent. Its precedent had been used to allow the implementation of the enhancement tech in the fifteen soldiers, along with the secret self-termination programming that had not been originally approved.

  “I will never allow that,” he told the doc. “No matter what I think about Jordie Dev and the things he did, he’s being punished. There’s no way I’m going to have him used in testing the upgrade tech. His brain is already so damaged from what they did to him that any results we get would be too skewed, so even if I didn’t have an ethical issue with Article 757 I wouldn’t use Jordie.”

  “His mother is angling for it,” Zulik said.

  Shock pinched Ewan between the ribs. “How could she want that for her son?”

  Zulik shrugged. “I don’t know, but all I can say is that I heard she has her own team working on upgrades.”

  “That’s illegal,” Ewan said, knowing that it didn’t matter. Katrinka Dev thought she was above the law, and she sure had enough money to make a “do first and apologize later” attitude possible.

  “That’s the rumor going around. More than that, I heard that her team is close to a breakthrough,” Zulik said, then added, “and she’s using Article 757 to finalize the testing. She’s going to try it out on her son.”

  * * *

  In the beginning, there’d been a whole team of docs. The details were fuzzy, but Nina remembered being watched, inspected, analyzed, poked, and prodded. Now she only had Doc Zulik, who sent her weekly assignments of those damned mental puzzles she despised. He followed up with her once a week, too, although only through viddy chat. His next visit would be in a couple months . . . if she was still here, she reminded herself. Even if every time she thought about leaving she felt sick, there was still the chance she would decide to go.

  “I’m getting stronger. I can run around the island five times now without having to take a break.” Nina leaned a bit to look at the screen.

  “Good, good. Exercise is an excellent stress management tool.” Zulik looked pleased.

  Nina laughed. “I would hardly say I’m stressed, Doc. There’s nothing here to be stressed about.”

  “You worry that you won’t be able to regain your memories. You fear never connecting with your former self. That’s bound to cause some stress.” Zulik gave her a kind smile. “Exercise your body. Get your strength back. All of that will help you more than anything else.”

  “Even the puzzles?” Nina asked with a grin.

  Zulik chuckled with a shake of his head. “You and those onedamned puzzles. What is it about them that you hate so much?”

  “I’m not sure.” Nina shrugged, trying to put her finger on it. “They feel like a waste of time, I guess. Sometimes they’re too easy.”

  “You’re bored with the puzzles, as you are with the work Mr. Donahue’s been giving you.”

  Nina hesitated before answering, not wanting to sound ungrateful even to the doc in case he mentioned something to Ewan. There was no point in denying it, though. “Yes. All of it.”

  “You need something more to keep you occupied. A hobby, perhaps?”

  Nina’s laugh lacked humor. “Yeah, sure. If only I could remember, did I ever have a hobby? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I ever will.”

  “There’s nothing to prevent you from taking one up,” Zulik told her. He sat back in his chair with his fingers laid over his big belly. He was an enormous man, broad and tall, built like a mountain. “Donahue’s made it very clear he supports anything that will assist in your recovery. I’m sure he’d be happy to order you in supplies or whatever you might need to start something new. That is, unless you feel you’re ready to leave the island . . .”

  “Leave the island?” The thought of it sent waves of nausea coursing through her. “And do what? Where would I go? What would I do? I mean, I work for Mr. Donahue!”

  When the doc said nothing, Nina realized she’d been shouting. She swallowed hard and forced herself to take a deep breath. If she’d always been a hysterical ninny, she was glad she couldn’t remember it. Bad enough to know she was this way now.

  “I’m just bored,” she said finally, when the doc continued to remain silent. “I might be ready for a hobby, but not something more than that. Not yet.”

  Maybe she would never be, was the unspoken next sentence. This might be her life for the rest of it, an island home and boxes of dusty files and gray skies. A pair of nannies who weren’t supposed to let her know they were babysitting her and a gorgeous, swoon-worthy boss who seemed bent on giving her everything she could ever need . . . except the truth.

  Would that be such a horrible life?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The message blinking on Ewan’s personal comm came from an unrecognized number. The groups that had been threatening his life and livelihood because of his connection to the enhancement tech had all been disbanded or had turned their attentions to some newer, trendier focus, but that didn’t mean he could stop being vigilant. The security team he’d put together to scrub his publicly accessible information and essentially make him a cipher was top-notch, and with Aggie and Jerome here on the island, as well as the island’s defenses, he wasn’t worried about any physical threats coming his way. Still, the unknown number gave him a long pause before he swiped to read it.

  Got a new comm. Wondering about Nina. How’s she doing?

  The message was from Al, Nina’s friend and the fellow enhanced soldier Ewan had hired when Nina had been taken by the League of Humanity. Ewan didn’t bother typing a message in reply. He thumbed the screen to place a call.

  Al answered after a single ping. Her white-blond buzz cut emphasized the hollows of her cheeks. She looked thinner, almost dangerously so, but her icy green eyes flashed with the same strength he remembered. “Donahue. How’s the island?”

  “Rainy,” he said.

&n
bsp; She laughed. “How’s Nina?”

  “She’s about the same.” He looked automatically to his bedroom door, but it was closed and locked.

  “Still can’t remember?” Al frowned, and at his nod, added, “That sucks. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”

  “Me, too. How are you?”

  Al had not opted to take the upgraded tech. She had her reasons, which were none of Ewan’s business, but after working with her to find Nina, he’d come to think of her as a friend. Knowing that she was going to experience mental and physical deterioration, no matter if it was her choice or not, left him unsettled and feeling guilty.

  “Fine. I’m not having any problems, which is the question I know you want to ask but think you shouldn’t ’cuz it would be rude. So just to let you know, everything’s hyper icy with me. I’m all shiny fine, ’til the end of the line.” She paused. “I’m back to work for ProtectCorps.”

  The last Ewan had known, Al had been working solo, for private hire. “Yeah?”

  “Without Nina, they needed more of us. I’d be bored to death if I didn’t work, and the money sure is nice.” Al grinned, although her gaze looked serious. “I thought you should know, in case you hadn’t heard. About Riley.”

  Of the fifteen original enhanced soldiers, Constance Riley had been the only one who’d never taken on any kind of security work after the procedures. She’d quietly retired, far out of the public eye, long before Nina had come to work for Ewan. He recognized her name in the context of talking now to Al, but beyond that, he knew nothing about her. The look on Al’s face didn’t give Ewan any confidence that what she had to tell him was good news.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She . . .” Al cleared her throat. “She went bad.”

  Outside Ewan’s window, gray skies promised rain. That had nothing to do with the rivers of ice suddenly coalescing along his spine. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s dead.” Al had always come across as confident, perhaps to the point of arrogance, but now she was clearly struggling to speak.

  Ewan swallowed against a sting of bile. “What happened?”

  “She tried to assassinate the governor of New Mexico during a political donor dinner. She’d been working for his campaign, and for the governor himself, for the past six years. Not as a protector. She handled his social media. The witnesses at her table said she was smiling and clapping along with everyone else, when all of a sudden she got up and headed for the lectern. She broke a water glass on the way there and tried to slice his throat open with it. When his security team got to her before she could kill him, she used it on herself.” Al shuddered and covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders hunched. “Nobody knows why, at least not anyone who’s able to share. The story made national news. Now there’s a whole bunch of people running off their mouths about us again. It’s not as bad as it was before, but there’ve been some protests. They’re saying we should all be rounded up and put away. You haven’t heard anything about it?”

  “I haven’t been keeping up with the news the past few days.” A chill guilt sliced at him. “Nobody can lock you all up unless you’ve done something against the law.”

  “They’re talking about turning over the tech legislation to make it illegal, not just upgrades, but the tech itself. Which means owning it would be illegal, which means we’d all be breaking the law. Unless we, you know, dig it out of our brain meat.” Al bit out the words, punctuating each with a shake of her head. “This is a really high-profile situation. Lots and lots of spin on it. Lots of viddy commentary.”

  Ewan had spent years of his life working against the tech he’d invented, throwing everything he had into ensuring that nobody else would ever be subjected to being implanted with a device that could essentially wipe away their memories and, in Ewan’s mind, their humanity. What religious people called the soul. Although he’d been accused of it, Ewan had never once believed that any person implanted with the tech was less than human.

  Falling in love with Nina had changed his mind about a lot of things, but the necessity of keeping that enhancement tech upgraded for the safety, health, and comfort of those who had it had taken a paramount importance. He’d spent a lot less time but no less of his heart, soul, and determination in making sure that the upgrades necessary to allow them to continue with a quality of life was going to be available to them all until they died.

  “It’s not that easy, Al. Not unless the president of the United States herself decides to write an executive order. And even then, you’re still all human beings. You have rights. Nobody can take that away from you.”

  “You know as well as me that doesn’t matter,” Al said bitterly. “If they want to round us up and put us in a kennel like we’re dogs, they’ll find a way to do it.”

  He wished he could keep denying it, but the ice in the pit of his stomach wouldn’t let him. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “Nobody’s contacted you about this? Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “They will,” Al predicted. “You’re the go-to bro, aren’t you? Won’t they come to you to see if it had anything to do with the tech or the upgrades? I know you’ve got security to keep away the viddy reporters, but I wouldn’t put it past some hyper riled reporter to try to get there.”

  Ewan thought of Katrinka Dev, and her team’s efforts to bypass the work his team had been doing. He had the resources to prove that rumor true. That meant others would, too, government officials or lobbyists more interested in a potential paycheck than upholding the law. He couldn’t tell Al that he might no longer be the front line choice for tech-related issues.

  Before he could answer, Al said, “Did any of the others say no to them? The upgrades?”

  “No. You were the only one,” Ewan answered. “And you can have them at any time, Al. Free of charge. I told you, I’d take care of you.”

  “I don’t want them. I don’t want anyone else inside there, messing things up. When it’s my time to go, it’s my time,” Al said fiercely. Her fists had clenched. Her gaze bore down on his through the comm screen. “When my mind starts to go, I want to have the option to choose how I end my life.”

  Ewan nodded, hating her words but respecting her meaning. “I support your right to do that.”

  “What if that’s what Riley was doing?” Al demanded.

  Ewan hesitated.

  “Maybe she wanted to die,” Al continued before Ewan could say anything.

  “If she wanted to end her life, there had to be a better way to do it,” Ewan pointed out. “Maybe someone hired her as an assassin. She had the abilities, the same as any of you. Just because she hadn’t been doing work that used her enhancements publicly doesn’t mean she couldn’t have been doing it in secret. The fact no group has stepped forward to claim it as theirs doesn’t mean anything, either.”

  Al shook her head. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see if anyone’s claiming it.”

  Ewan pulled up the news browser on his monitor to look at the reports about the attack, but cursed under his breath when it refused to load. “I strangled the ’net on the island, to help keep Nina from accessing anything that might set off the self-termination programming.”

  Al was silent for a moment, then said, “How’s that working out for you? That whole keeping-information-from-her business kind of backfired before, if I remember correctly.”

  “She’s still alive,” he retorted, her words a fanged bite. “So I guess I haven’t completely screwed it up.”

  At that, Al gave him a grin. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. You have plenty of time.”

  * * *

  Zulik had recommended Nina take up a hobby, so she’d been trying out some things. Cooking hadn’t gone over so well. Aggie had been happy enough to teach her some things, but the older woman was protective of her kitchen, and Nina was much fonder of eating bread than baking it. She didn’t consider exercise a hobby, not even that weirdly instinctual combination o
f martial arts and yoga she’d taken to practicing every morning when she was alone. Rock climbing was out, and so was sailing. Even swimming wasn’t going to work, not in that perpetually rough sea around the island.

  “What about needlepoint?” Aggie asked her over mugs of sweet, hot tea and a platter of the slightly burned muffins Nina had helped bake. “Sure and enough, that would take up quite a bit of your time.”

  Nina winced. “You mean like embroidery? Things you hang up on the wall? What are they called?”

  “Samplers,” Aggie said. “You could do a lot of things. Throw pillows, for example. A great auntie of mine was mad for doing curtains. You always knew what would be in your holiday basket, that was for certain. A new throw pillow.”

  Nina’s second wince was harder and more like a flinch. “That sounds . . . pretty awful.”

  “Nobody liked them very much,” Aggie admitted. “Or her, for that matter. She was a fairly irritating woman. Shiny fine, dolly, so needlepoint isn’t for you. We’ll think of something else.”

  A week after that conversation, Nina walked into the attic office to find an easel set up by the window’s natural light. A canvas rested on it. A small table had been set up with an array of paints, brushes, and cleaners. Stunned, she stood in front of it. With one finger, she tentatively touched the blank canvas.

  Painting?

  Was she a painter? Was she creative at all? Nina crossed her arms over her chest and studied the setup as she shifted from foot to foot. Ewan had done this. She had not asked for it, but Aggie must have told him Nina was looking for a hobby, or maybe it had been Zulik. The idea of Nina’s doc sharing information like that with Ewan didn’t sit well with her.