Page 30

EON

T he back of my neck ached horribly. I tried to open my eyes, and my lids pulled against the dry surface like sand.

A blurred face hovered above me, and I saw the flash of a metallic neurodampener chip in Cy’s hand as he pulled it from the back of my neck.

He palmed it and his blurry form moved toward what must have been a desk behind him.

It clinked dully as he tossed it on the surface and rifled through the drawers.

Another deep voice was speaking to him, but the words were garbled in my mind.

My brain was hardly attached to my body, but I willed my limbs to move. They were met with solid resistance, and I lolled my head just enough to make out thick black bands wrapping my arms to the steel chair I was in.

Blue hair flashed, and I saw Cy’s shadowy form approach. A dull pain lanced through my jaw as he squeezed my face between his thumb and fingers.

“Wakey, wakey gorgeous.” He shook me, and it wasn’t gentle. “We have some questions for you.”

He released my face, and I groaned as the pressure abated. “Cy, alwaysss nicccce t-to see you.” My mouth wasn’t working, but I did my best to flash him a grin.

“Don’t get cute, doll.”

I filled my lungs and screamed as loud as I could.

“Hey, none of that.” I tasted leather as Cy stuck two of his fingers in my mouth, pressing down on my tongue until I gagged.

I clamped my teeth down on them as hard as I could, and he chuckled.

“The gloves are tetracarbon-reinforced. Nice try, though. Now, are you gonna stop screaming, or am I really going to have to gag you?” As he said that, he pressed the tips of his fingers down harder until I retched.

I released my jaw, and he pulled them out, letting a trail of my saliva stretch between my lips and his fingers.

I thought I saw disappointment flash in his eyes, then he wiped his gloves on my face.

I hissed, and he chuckled. “You’re pretty when you’re a mess.”

He brought his hand up to my face again when a grunt behind him reminded me Maddox was also here. Cy stepped aside, and my tunnel vision locked on Maddox’s darkened Vysor and grim expression.

“Still feeling the effects of the dampener?” I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were scanning over my slack face and the trail of drool I felt in the corner of my mouth.

“Like a bad hangover,” I huffed.

“Well, sober up.” Cy had something metallic in his hand, but it was much larger than any bioChip.

He held it out before him and pressed the top of the small cube with his thumb.

The entire device vibrated, and eight spindly appendages popped out of the sides—like some sort of perverse, titanium spider.

It leapt from his hand and landed on my chest. I hissed as those eight legs ejected nanowire and latched into my skin.

“Cy, maybe we should—” Maddox started, but Cy cut him off.

“Always soft for women, man. She’s going to catch you off guard like those NSPD idiots. Straighten the fuck up.”

While they argued, I tried to summon my Flux to fry the little beast on my chest, but white-hot pain laced through my head. Cy noticed as my jaw clenched and smirked.

“Got a Flux dampener on you. Don’t think I’m a complete idiot.”

“No reason to think otherwise.” I managed to force my numbed lips into a smile.

His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he moved toward me, but Maddox stepped between us.

“Do you know what that is?” Maddox motioned to the device on my chest.

I finally gave it a look. On top of the cuboid body was a small screen, its green readout slowly pulsing like a heartbeat—my heartbeat.

“Lie detector, I’m guessing.”

Maddox nodded. “Yes, but it’s also a motivation device.”

I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Motivation, huh? That corpo speak?”

“Why don’t you test it out, doll.” Cy pushed around Maddox’s bulky frame. “Go ahead, lie to me. What’s your name.”

“Lady Godiva.” The device flashed red and started shaking. As its processors whirred, it began to heat up.

“That’s it?”

Cy placed a hand on the back of my chair, leaning in close, his eyes burning as he said, “Lie to me again, gorgeous.” Maddox let out a soft cough, but we both ignored him.

“I’m the CEO of MedTek.” The device shook harder, and I realized it wasn’t just heating from running—it was getting uncomfortably hot. Then, like fire, each of the nanowires in my skin flared and pain shot from my chest to the back of my head.

“I’m the Queen of Sheba,” I hissed, and the pain intensified until my vision went white. I wouldn’t have been able to answer any more questions if I tried.

Cy smacked the green light, and the device shut down. “The more you lie, the faster you burn. See—motivation.”

My arms were shaking in the restrains, adrenaline from the pain still coursing through my body. I tried to slow my breathing, slow my heart, before responding.

“And what exactly are you motivating me to do?”

“Just have a few questions we want you to answer—starting with what you know about the explosion at the Green data center.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Immediately, pain lanced through my body. Stupid! I had to be smarter. I had to get out of this. Be careful with my words. I ground my teeth to stop from screaming as Maddox hit the button on my chest.

“Let’s try again. We can start simpler.” He moved away, his arms crossed. “This whole conversation is being recorded. Please state your name for the camera.”

“Eon Ibarra.” They clearly knew, so no point in lying.

“What happened at the Green data center?” Maddox asked calmly.

“I don’t know.” The device lay quiet. Maddox and Cy exchanged a glance.

“But you do know something about the group who attacked it?”

The device started to heat again as I hesitated. “Yes.”

Maddox looked ready to ask another when Cy stepped in. “What were you doing at The Blackout that night?”

“I’d been hired to distract you.”

A triumphant grin grew on Cy’s face, and he smacked Maddox on the arm—a clear I told you so. Maddox didn’t react.

“Oldest trick in the book, the classic honeypot.” Cy’s grin twisted. “Guess your time down at Hellfire served you well?” He still had that stupid, merciless grin.

My chest tightened, and it had nothing to do with the device. So, he knew who I was, had looked into my past.

“It sure did. You were easier to snare than an exec on a bender.”

Cy’s grin dropped, and I couldn’t help but preen as I watched it get replaced with anger.

There was nothing I loved more than the look on an idiot’s face when they realized I’d tricked them, and seeing it on Cy twisted something horrible and lascivious inside me.

He lurched toward me but, Maddox grabbed his shoulder.

“How did you know we would be there?” In this little game, Maddox was clearly the good cop, his voice as monotone as ever.

I smirked at him. “Because you went exactly where I told you to go.”

They looked at each other, another indecipherable exchange.

Cy’s gaze locked with mine again, his face hard. “How did you get inside POM’s internal network?”

“What, like it’s hard?”

His eyes flashed at me. There was anger, but maybe below that, something else.

“So what are you?” Maddox asked. “A whore and a hacker?”

I rolled my eyes. “Whores make the best hackers, dumbass. Most of hacking is social engineering, you should know that. And no one has more access—gets more overlooked—than a whore. ” I slurred the word, and I swore he flinched.

Not Cy. In fact, he was grinning again.

“That was a damn good lure. Why’d you do it?”

“Friend asked me to.” No lie there.

Cy rolled his eyes. “Yeah? Who is this friend?”

“An old one. We go way back.”

“All the way back to the Tech District data center?”

I didn’t answer, and I felt needles in my chest. “At least that far.”

He chuckled, not letting me dance around answers anymore. “Tell me the name of who hired you.”

The pain started again, shooting straight to the base of my skull like a knife driven beneath my vertebrae.

I clenched my teeth, but as the pain built, I couldn’t hold in my scream.

I’d never felt anything like this—so inescapable, so all-consuming.

My vision went white and all I heard was a dull ringing as my brain started to shut down.

Then it all came back in a flash.

Maddox’s lips were pulled tight, beads of sweat clinging to his temples.

They were nothing compared to me. My clothes were soaked, and I felt my hair clinging to my neck.

I felt cold and hot, like my body was trying to expel an invader that was nothing more than a ghost. My throat ached.

I must have been screaming. The pain had felt like an eternity, but it was obvious it had only been a few minutes.

Cy’s face no longer looked amused. “This would be a lot easier if you just cooperated.”

“I don’t want to cooperate.”

“And I don’t want to have to hurt you, doll.”

“Who’s the liar now?”

He couldn’t hide his grin at that. “Fair enough. But not like this. You’re tough, that’s obvious.

But this little bug taps directly into your nervous system, releasing hormones that mimic the worst, purest kind of pain.

You can’t resist forever. The longest someone ever lasted was about eight minutes at full strength. ”

“What strength am I at now?”

“Sixty percent.”

“That’s fucked. Just another innovative use of technology by POM.”

“Sure is. But it’s not really the tech, right?

It’s your body. It was designed to avoid pain, to do anything to get away from it.

But we don’t let shock set in. After eight minutes, you’d tell me anything I wanted to hear.

After ten minutes, you’d do anything I wanted—even kill your own grandma.

Anything at all, to get the pain to stop.

You can’t fight a million years of evolution, doll. ”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He let out a small chuckle. “Maybe I’m just old school—don’t like doing things the easy way. Besides, it would scramble your brain. It wasn’t designed to withstand that. Seems an awful waste since apparently you’re some genius-level hacker.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “Don’t like your women braindead, huh?”

“Give me some credit.” He reached forward and grabbed my chin, his thumb tracing over my lips. “Why do you think I like you so much?”

The hunger in his gaze was something I’d seen a million times before, and I’d used it to get what I’d wanted. Now I was tied up, at his mercy, and I knew I wasn’t in control. Now it felt much more dangerous—more dangerous than the device strapped to my chest.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t use it.

“Also, I’m not a hacker. What is this, 2064? I’m a cyberrunner.”

“Oh? Cyberrunner, sex worker—any other skills you’ve got hidden away, Mary Sue?”

“What can I say? I’ve got depth. Not my fault you only know how to fight and fuck.”

His eyes lit up. He made it too easy.

“You been thinking about that, huh?”

“Not as much as you’ve been thinking about me. Found me awfully quickly, Cy. You must’ve really missed me.” He kept a neutral face, and I pushed him. “How many times did you jerk off thinking about me before today?”

Maddox let out a soft cough and turned his back on us, busying himself with something. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“That mouth is going to get you into trouble.”

“Always has. But I want to see how far you’re willing to go to get what you want.”

He leaned over, hand on the arm of the chair.

The other reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun.

He traced the tip down the curve of my jaw.

I swallowed as it slid down my neck, pausing on my pulse before slipping lower over my collarbone.

His cheek brushed mine as he leaned in closer, his lips next to my ear.

“Doll, something you will learn about me—no matter the cost, I always get what I want.”

The pistol traced lower, and he hooked the weapon under the edge of my shirt, lifting it. There, along my ribs, ran a vivid raised scar. Pink hardened skin webbed with smaller white lines, indicative of an electric burn.

Cy ran his long finger along the scar gently, almost with reverence. The sensation was equally unwelcome and ticklish and arousing, and I bit my lip to stop from responding to any of those feelings.

“I know the first time we met wasn’t at The Blackout. You were inside the Tech data center with your anarchist friends, and we had a little date, didn’t we?”

His Flux snaked down the pistol, zapping the sensitive skin of my scar, and I hissed.

“I may have been thinking about you, but you’ve been thinking about me a lot longer, haven’t you, doll?” He pressed the weapon more roughly into the scar, and I bared my teeth at him.

His lips moved against my ear again as the device on my chest heated. “Answer the question.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking about you.” The device cooled and stopped humming.

“And how many times have you fucked yourself while thinking about me, running your hands over that scar?”

There was no point in lying.

“A few.”

The device burned painfully.

“A lot.”

He chuckled and ran his tongue over the sensitive skin under my jaw where my pulse beat.

“And how many times did you fuck some poor bastard, wishing it was me inside you, knowing that no one else would ever compare to the way I made you feel?”

I didn’t answer, and the device shook on my chest. The pain was brutal, but not as brutal as the look in his eye as he gripped my hair and snapped my head back so I couldn’t look away.

“Answer the fucking question.” The pain was already unbearable, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. His eyes burned that electric blue, and he snarled at me, but I clenched my jaw and just grinned at him.

His eyes were pure rage, and I expected him to hit me, hurt me—when the pain suddenly ended, and the device shut down.

Maddox had gotten very close to us without either of us noticing. We both turned to him.

“Seems a shame to burn those pretty tits over a question that has nothing to do with our job here, Cy.”

Maddox practically grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him away. They started arguing in hushed voices, and I let my head loll back. The echoes of pain still throbbed through my body, and all I could focus on was breathing.

A moment later, Cy was back in my face.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day. We’re getting the call back to HQ. Now you just sit tight, and we’ll finish this conversation later.”

“You’re just going to leave me like this? What if I have to pee?”

“Not my problem.”

Maddox opened the heavy steel door to the room we were in. Cy followed behind, turning back just as he was out of sight.

“Until next time, doll.” He blew me a kiss, and I would have given anything to shock that stupid grin right off his face.