Page 18 of Seductive Architect (Grunts of Vanguard #2)

“Clones?” I asked.

“I tested him. He remembers Mom grounding him for the vodka I hid in his backpack.”

“Aliens?”

“Don’t the Venusians have the ability to shapeshift?”

“Yeah, but you’d be able to smell them.”

I leaned over the balcony, watching the employees below.

Janet claimed Tia at Synergy had been acting weird.

They had a rivalry bordering on epic. I heard how she hadn’t made a snide comment or threatened to impale our beloved administrative assistant.

I believed her. Drew and Arthur continued going through the motions, but it was almost as if their emotions had been dialed down.

“Could it be an empath? ”

“Maybe. Usually, they don’t affect people this long. We’d be affected.”

“Not me,” she said. Janet tapped her temple, her tiara hardly moving. “Nobody is messing with this brain. It’s a fortress.”

I didn’t argue with her. It seemed to rule out empaths, telepaths, and all the other paths. “Could it be the drinking water? It wouldn’t be the first time using the drinking supply?—”

“Ahem.” She glanced at the cup in my hand.

All day I had been chugging coffee. “I guess we’ll know in a few hours if that’s the cause.”

“What about Wyatt? Don’t aliens have some sort of immunity to these things? He’s been acting normal so far today.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “It’s hard to tell?—”

“What’s normal?” she finished. “I can try stealing some chocolate from him later and see how he reacts. If he doesn’t cry, we’ll know they got to him.”

“The question is, who are ‘they’ and why these people?”

Janet peered over the railing at the people below. She thrust an elbow into my ribcage. I tried to snatch the paper cup, but I watched in slow motion as the contents flew everywhere. When it splashed along the lobby floor, I spotted the familiar red lipstick.

“See,” Janet said .

Tia waved, and not with her middle finger in the air. “I think I liked her better when she wanted you dead.”

“Me too. Now, who am I going to terrorize?”

Of all the people I could have had this conversation with, I’d never have picked Janet. Her brand of chaos made my head hurt. With Connie scouring all the security cameras in Vanguard for the last forty-eight hours, I needed to chat with somebody. I prepared for it to bite me in the ass.

“Hudson is a robot.”

“In bed? Does he come with a turbo button?”

Yup, already regretted it. “He’s a machine. I can hear him just as clearly as the toaster. Except?—”

“Wait, a second here.” Her eyes darted back and forth as she processed the info. It went from confusion to looking as if she smelled something foul. “This explains why he didn’t hit on me.”

I ignored her. “I recognize the code from Synergy. But I can’t understand it. It’s too sophisticated to be created by one of their programmers.” I hid my face in my palms. “I can’t believe I’m dating a machine.”

Even now, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. About that grin. About the way he made me feel like a person. The irony wasn’t lost on me. It required a machine for me to connect with my humanity. That terrified me. Because if he wasn't real, what did that say about me?

Janet snorted. It went from a guffaw to belly-aching laughter. She smacked me on the back hard enough that I grabbed the railing. I should have known better than to?—

“He’s the perfect man for you.”

“What?”

“He’s a beef cake made up of ones and zeroes. He might as well have ‘Orion’s Perfect Man’ scrawled across his forehead in Sharpie.” Huh. When she put it like that, I saw her point. “And it’s cute that you said dating.”

It was the one thing she took out of the conversation.

Dating? Of course, I’d be dating a person of interest sitting in the middle of a lot of red string.

I really needed to get my personal life under control before I found myself captured by a secret cabal.

At the same time, my cheeks burned. I was dating.

“So…” She let the word trail off. I had never seen Janet express genuine concern. That alone made me worry. We were on the cusp of discovering the truth. Never in a million years did I think Janet would be my partner in crime.

“We need a plan,” I said. “What are the facts?”

“Arthur, Drew, and Tia are acting weird.”

I nodded. “There is weird code broadcasting from Synergy.”

“You’re boning a sexy computer.”

“Who may have been created by Senator McAfee and Ricardo?”

“Do you think it’s a coincidence? ”

I scoffed. “There’s no such thing as a coincidence. They’re related.” I just didn’t know how. “We need more info.”

“Okay, boss. What’s the play?”

It started with Arthur, and now we had three confirmed cases of weird . Was it spreading? If we could find a common denominator, that’d at least give us a jumping off point.

“I’ll have Connie track their days for the last three days. Maybe they went to the same place or met with the same person.” I eyed Janet. What skills could we exploit? “Do you think you can figure out what’s going on in Synergy?”

Janet stood tall, reaching into her shirt and giving the ladies a lift. “There’s a security guard who’s been eyeing the girls. I can get in. What do you need?”

“Anything about their super soldiers… or Senator McAfee.”

She nodded. “And you’ll ride your boyfriend until he tells you the truth.”

Rolling my eyes, I fought off a smirk. It’s not how I expected the interrogation to go, but it wouldn’t be the worst way to find information.

The thought of Hudson on all fours… nope.

Conspiracy. Conspiracy. Conspiracy. I turned away, hiding the tent in my pants.

I didn’t want to use him. But I needed answers.

“I’ve got Hudson.”

“I bet you do.” She jabbed at me with her elbow. “Have your jollies. Don’t forget the mission. ”

She hit my dilemma in only the way she could. Hudson might be a sexy man I wanted to climb over, but the questions had reached critical mass. For now, the feels in my chest… and my penis… couldn’t drive my decisions.

“Let’s get to it,” Janet said. When I turned around, she had unbuttoned her shirt, exposing the leopard-print bra. “Time to unleash some chaos.” We bumped fists, and she stormed off, heading to the elevator.

“Connie, did you get all of that?”

Silence.

Before I could move forward with stopping whatever was happening in this building, I needed my co-pilot.

Connie had been acting off for days… well, as much as a computer could.

It wouldn’t be the first time she had a hiccup in her code that needed solving.

The last time had been a logic loop that caused her to spiral into madness at the mention of staplers.

I walked into the Secret Identities lobby and past Arthur’s office.

He remained hunched over his keyboard, staring at his screen, but not moving.

Nothing too odd there… except as I glanced in Drew’s office, he was doing the same thing.

Mind control? Alien parasite? There were too many possibilities. We needed to narrow down our scope.

I walked into my office and shut the door. I pushed the button on the lock, as if we didn’t have a superpowered roster that could bust it down .

“Connie,” I said. “Are you okay?”

It took a moment before a giant thumbs-up appeared. “Is that concern in your voice? I’m touched. Really.”

That eliminated one worry. “I need you to track Arthur and Drew for the last forty-eight hours. Find out if they had any interactions or overlaps with Tia from Synergy.”

“Janet’s arch-nemesis?”

“The same. Add Ricardo and Senator McAfee to the list.”

“It sounds like somebody has a theory. Care to share with the rest of the class?”

“Not a theory yet. More of a gut feeling.”

I flicked my wrist, and the projectors filled the room with code.

With a couple of well-rehearsed motions, the building’s security cameras came to life.

From here, I could see every inch of Synergy…

except the janitor’s closet. Unless I spotted a villain creeping through the corridors, it was like hunting for a needle in a haystack.

I replaced the courtyard with the camera in the mailroom.

Connie had mentioned it going on the fritz when Hudson entered the view.

Blinking with static, I froze the screen, capturing Hudson’s smile on camera.

The image distorted, making it impossible to tell what was happening, but I assumed he filled a cart with today’s deliveries.

“Spying on your man friend?”

“What’s with these other cameras?” Similar glitches were happening on the second and third floors. “Have they been tampered with?”

Before Connie could respond, I called that part of me that talked with machines.

Narrowing my eyes, I focused on the monitor for the second floor.

It wasn’t a problem with the camera itself.

It did exactly as it was instructed. An external force tampered with the feed, stopping it from broadcasting normally.

“Everything looks fine on my end.” With the number of inconsistencies coming from Connie, I’d need to do a deep dive into her code when we solved this. “I’m reaching out to the security office.”

One camera remained mostly obscured. I didn’t need to see it to imagine the frosted glass durable enough to withstand a grenade.

It housed some of their more sensitive material on cybernetics.

It was as if somebody wanted to make sure their coming and going didn’t get recorded.

Most of the theories on the wall had to do with big picture items. None of them hit this close to home.

Hudson could provide the missing information.

As much as I wanted to follow the fuzzy feeling in my gut, I had almost busted him for armed robbery.

I needed to be sure. But part of me didn’t want to know the answer.

I’d need to scan the footage from last night and verify his story.

Once I had that, I could ask him out for another date.

It might be time to admit that I knew his secret.

Or I could ask, then verify .

Orion: Up for a date night?

Hudson: What are we adding to the list tonight?

The list. Was that programming, too? Or was it him trying to be human? I couldn’t tell anymore.

My phone eagerly awaited my reply. After seeing our texts, it had already come up with cute names for us.

Orison. Hudorian. FuzzFest. Instead, I focused on the screens.

It was one thing staring at the wall, trying to fit the pieces together.

It was another when the events on the wall had reached my friends.

I wasn’t going to let some mysterious plot hurt the people I cared about.

It came back to Hudson. I was convinced he was the key.