“But, see, Mr. Donahue, I don’t want to go against the law. It just says you can’t upgrade the tech that’s already been installed, right? And you can’t use it on anyone new. But I don’t want to do that, Mr. Donahue. What I’m talking about is accessing the existing tech.” Jordie spun on his heel, a broad grin stretching his lips over his teeth. “Using it as-is, but enabling new functions, stuff the tech’s already capable of doing, if only you reprogrammed it a little. The base tech is . . . well, it’s close to brilliant, Mr. Donahue.”
Ewan held back a grim laugh at Jordie’s assessment, which might have been meant as a compliment, but sounded more like a patronizing pat on the head. “Thanks.”
“Imperfect though. But you know that.” Jordie spun again, this time in a complete circle. “I can make it so much better.”
Bitterness flooded Ewan’s mouth. He remembered being an arrogant young apprentice, but he didn’t think he’d ever been this cocky. “What exactly are we talking about?”
“Remote functions.”
“Snacks,” said Nina from the doorway. She held up a platter of sandwiches. “Peanut butter and jelly. Hope that’s shiny fine with both of you.”
“Mr. Donahue, I bet you have the good stuff. Real jelly, right? Real peanut butter. Not synth.” Jordie went still. No more twitching. His hands rested calmly at his sides, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “Of course you do. You’ve got enough money to have the best of everything. Including her. Right?”
Nina crossed to put the platter on Ewan’s desk. “Kid’s got a point.”
She sounded light about it. Ewan didn’t feel the same. He was still thinking over what Jordie had begun to tell him. The kid had already grabbed up a sandwich and was taking a bite, making loud noises of appreciation and smacking his lips together.
“Slow down,” Nina cautioned. “You’ll choke.”
Jordie chewed and swallowed with an exaggerated motion of his head. “Thanks. You got any synthmilk? Or real milk, yeah, that would be even better.”
“Sorry, no,” Nina said with a look at Ewan.
The food seemed to calm the kid even more, and that made sense, if he was on a candy rush. Ewan didn’t take a sandwich, but he did sit at his desk and pull up the apprentice portal on his monitor. He scrolled quickly through Jordie’s previous requests. He hadn’t noticed a pattern to the kid’s previous work, but looking now, he could see there were definitely parallels in the projects he’d chosen.
“Jordie.” Ewan watched the kid chew, swallow, and nod. “I’m not going to be able to approve any research or work on projects related to the enhancement tech.”
Nina’s head swung around, her eyes widening. She might be able to control her body’s involuntary physical reactions, but this was clearly an emotional one. “What about it?”
“I have some ideas, Ms. Bronson. Some really amazing ideas, about how to fix up that tech, make it really more useful. . . .” Jordie paused to shove more sandwich in his mouth, which silenced him while he chewed it.
“Upgrades?”
Ewan couldn’t miss the glance Nina flicked his way. “He’s not talking about . . .”
Jordie faced Nina, his brow knitted. His mouth twisted as he swallowed the last bites of food. Crumbs clustered in the corners of his lips, and he didn’t even bother to lick them away. He cocked his head to stare at her intently. “Mr. Donahue says they’re illegal. We can’t work on them.”
“I know what Mr. Donahue says,” Nina told the kid quietly, “but I’d like to know if you have something in mind.”
Frustrated, Ewan shook his head. The urge to shout the kid down was intense, but he held back. Screaming at sugarheads never did any good; you couldn’t rattle them. “Jordie, I’ve already told you that I can’t condone any kind of illegal work in my lab. No compromise on that.”
Before Nina could speak, Ewan held up a hand. “I refuse to allow kids to risk their futures for any of this, Nina.”
“I see.” She looked angry, but nodded.
Jordie had started pacing again. “It’s not illegal, I mean, technically, it can’t be, since nobody’s thought it up yet, so they didn’t outlaw it. I could get to work, it would be great, you’d be so rich, Mr. Donahue, you’d be so rich. We’d all be rich . . .”
“It shouldn’t be about money,” Nina said.
Jordie stopped then, for the first time seeming to really listen to what someone else was saying. “Well . . . if it’s not about money, Ms. Bronson, what should it be about?”
“I won’t approve any proposals related to the enhancement tech, Jordie,” Ewan said firmly and stepped in front of the kid to catch his attention. “You need to go home, now.”
“Is that . . . is that your final answer?”
Ewan, aware of Nina’s gaze upon him, kept his eyes on Jordie’s. “Yes it is. You’ve had a lot of great projects. I suggest you focus on one of them. Put this one aside.”
“Okay. Fine. I guess you’re the guy in charge.” Jordie snagged another sandwich from the platter. “I’ll take this to go, is that all right, Mr. Donahue? I haven’t had real jelly in a long time. Well, never, I don’t think. It’s not like my parents can’t afford it, you know what I mean? But they spend their money on other things. Usually other spouses. Real jelly is hyper delish, Mr. Donahue. So good, am I right? Ms. Bronson knows. She does, I can tell.”
Nina gave Jordie a half smile. “Yes. It’s good. Hyper delish, for sure.”
“I’ll get out of your way now, Mr. Donahue.” For a moment, Jordie’s shoulders slumped. “I sure do wish you’d reconsider. This idea that I have, if you’d only listen to it, I promise you it could change everything.”
Jordie didn’t give Ewan the chance to protest or even to agree. He lifted the sandwich in the air and gave Nina a nod. He left the office and Nina went after him to stand in the doorway, watching as let himself out the front door. She turned to Ewan.
“He’s a strange kid,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “He was hopped up on candy, that was easy to see. Beyond that, I don’t know what all that was about. He’s always been one of the more creative kids in the program. Some of his work’s been really far reaching, broad scope, very inventive. Most of it didn’t work the way he’d anticipated because he tends to dive in too deep without all of his research done first, but he often managed to get close.”
“What was his idea? For the enhancement tech?”
Ewan straightened. “It doesn’t matter, Nina.”
“It could,” she told him. “I wish you thought differently.”
“Would it matter, even if I did?”
“It might. To me,” Nina said.
Ewan sighed. “It would still be against the law, Nina. You’ve told me more than once that you’re not willing to get any upgrades unless all of you can. And none of you can, not legally.”
“It would matter to know that you wanted to.” Nina picked up one of the sandwiches but put it down without taking even one bite. “I guess it would make a difference to know that you would if you could. If you think it’s important and worthwhile. I don’t know, Ewan. I guess I’d like to know that you’ve changed your mind about it.”
He hadn’t, at least not in the way she wanted him to. Changed his mind about reversing the Enhancement Repeal Act, yes. About the use of the tech, no, and especially after watching the way it had affected her, it didn’t seem as though he ever would.
“You mean everything to me, Nina. Can’t you see that?”
She nodded after a long minute, her mouth pulling into a frown that hurt his heart to see. “I do see it. That’s why this is all so hard, Ewan. Believe me, I’ve never been the sort of girl to wail and whine and cling on when someone doesn’t want me—”
“I do want you!” he cried, frustrated that she couldn’t seem to realize that. He calmed somewhat at her expression, but only a little. Softer, he added, “I want you, and I want to be with you. That should be so obvious.”
“And I’ve nev
er been the sort to hold onto something after it had gone sour, either,” she finished. “You’re not the first man I’ve ever loved, Ewan, but I had thought maybe you’d be the last.”
“But not anymore?” he asked, tasting another wash of bitterness. “You’re ready to call it quits, huh? Ready to move on?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Ewan shrugged, turning from her to get back to his desk. “You didn’t have to say it. It was all over your face.”
“I’m afraid it’s all ruined,” Nina told him. “That we’ll never be able to get back what we had.”
His heart sank even further. “Baby, don’t say that. Please.”
“It’s how it all feels.” Her voice trembled. Broke. She turned an anguished expression away from him. “You broke my heart in ways I didn’t know it could be broken, and that’s saying a lot, considering the fact I was dead on an operating room table for nearly eight minutes.”
Stricken, he went to her. Reached for her. Yet in the last moment, he could not bring himself to touch her.
“We need to get you some better security,” Nina said abruptly. Her back straightened. She cleared her throat and faced him. “Nobody should be able to walk up to your front door that way.”
“I . . . I’ll get on it,” Ewan said, wishing there could be more and unable to find it.
Nina nodded. “Yeah. Good.”
“Good,” he echoed, and that was that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nina wasn’t often bored. If she wasn’t engaged in whatever activity she was doing, she almost always managed to find a way to entertain herself. Not today, though. If there was ever place more dull than this cocktail party, she’d never been there, and that included the endless, mind-numbing days of recovery in the hospital. At least there she’d had pudding to look forward to.
She scanned the room for a view of Ewan and found him deep in conversation with a tall woman Nina recognized. Katrinka what’s-her-bucket, she thought, forgetting the woman’s last name. She tried again, searching her memory, trying not to fret when nothing came up. There was no blank spot to probe around or worry the edges of. The knowledge simply was not there. Frowning, Nina thought harder, still coming up blank.
She turned quickly at the tap on her shoulder, though, very aware that while she wasn’t unarmed, without her harness and gear she was definitely not as prepared as she was used to being.
“Oops, sorry, I should know better than to come up on you unexpected-like.” Al gave Nina a wide grin. Tonight she wore a tux again, but her white-blond hair was pushed back off her forehead in a pattern of waves, and she’d added glittery eyeliner that highlighted her striking green eyes. “You looked lonely, that’s all. I figured you must be as bored as I am.”
“What are you doing here?” Nina looked around the room. “Working?”
Al held her first finger and thumb close together. “Oh, yeah, about this much. But mostly not. I mean, I’m always working at least a little, aren’t you? I’m here with a friend, though, not really on a job. Who knew I kept such hyper posh company, huh?”
“Yeah, same.” Nina smiled at Al’s clearly self-delighted giggle. “Both about the working and the company.”
“What’s up? You look bad.” Al tilted her head and gave Nina an obvious once-over.
Nina felt her mouth twist. Al had always been a flirt, and always appreciative of Nina’s physical attributes. She’d also never pulled any punches, literally or figuratively. They’d slept together once and the next morning, Al had made Nina breakfast and matter-of-factly critiqued the performance. If she was telling Nina she looked bad, she really did.
“Thanks?”
“Oh, sorry, my mouth did an autocorrect. You look gorgeous,” Al amended with a leering wink that had Nina laughing again. “But I mean, you look disturbed. Or bored. Or hungry, which I can understand. The buffet is swill. Synthshrimp? C’mon. Nobody’s going to eat the real stuff, but why put out something as excremental as the fake junk?”
The party might have been tedious, but the food had hardly been swill. Nina shook her head, still disturbed at being unable to remember Katrinka’s last name. “I’m having a glitch in my tech again.”
“Again? That’s no good. Same stuff?” Al lifted a tall glass of nuts and chocolates she didn’t seem to find so disgusting and plucked out a few bites to nibble at. Her eyebrows lifted in curiosity as she waited for Nina’s reply.
“Yeah. I can’t remember things I’m sure I knew before.”
Al shrugged. “That’s what it’s supposed to do. Are you sure it’s a glitch?”
“Random things,” Nina said. “I’m not being reset. I just try to think of something and I can’t remember it.”
“I’m sorry. You should tell someone about it,” Al replied, sounding sincere.
“I’m telling you.”
Al waved a hand around the room. “I mean someone who could do something about it. This party is full of lobbyists, and most of them were in support of the Enhancement Repeal Act. If you told them what was going on, maybe you’d be able to sway their opinions. Get some sympathy. That has to be worth putting up with the rest of this blah blah blah business.”
If Ewan had told her he was taking her to a party full of lobbyists, Nina couldn’t remember it. “I didn’t know. Anyway, what difference would it make? I’m . . .”
She’d started to say she was in a relationship with one of the most prominent lobbyists in the North American United States and possibly the world. The man who was arguably the entire face of the Enhancement Repeal Act in the first place. But was she? In a relationship with him? Not being sure of that had nothing to do with her forgetting anything. She simply wasn’t sure.
Al gave her a curious look. “He really didn’t tell you anything about the party tonight, huh?”
Ewan had said only that it was a fundraiser, and since he’d already taken her to several of those, Nina hadn’t thought much of it. She’d put on the clothes he’d bought her and did her hair and went along to stuff her face with hors d’oeuvres. “Maybe he did, and I forgot it.”
“That sounds hyper noxious. I’m sorry, gal pal.” Al put a consoling hand on Nina’s shoulder and peered up at her with a look of genuine concern. “And I’m sorry to have ask you this, Nina, but . . . are you sure it’s a glitch in the tech and not something personal?”
The fear that she was the only one experiencing this was very real, but Nina didn’t want to admit it out loud. “Leona asked me the same thing. But the tech degrades. We all know that.”
“I sometimes can’t run as fast as I could in the training sessions,” Al said. “Either it’s the tech degrading or I haven’t been keeping up with my fitness routine, who knows? But it’s so mild, it doesn’t bother me at all. And I haven’t had anything going wonky with my memories.”
“That you know of,” Nina said abruptly. “I mean, what if you’re forgetting things, but you don’t know it because you don’t remember you ever knew it in the first place?”
Al looked thoughtful. “Hells, I sure hope not. How would I be able to tell?”
“Never mind. You’d know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so negative about it. I’m sure you’re fine.” Nina shook her head and tried to put on a smile she didn’t feel.
Al didn’t look persuaded. She frowned. “Maybe.”
A slight woman with long black hair glided up behind Al and tucked a proprietary hand into the crook of Al’s elbow. She gave Nina an icy look. “Darling, I need a drink. I’m positively Sahara’d.”
Al pressed her lips together and shoved her hands into the pockets of her tuxedo trousers. Her tone showed her annoyance. “I’ll be right there.”
Her date was clearly unwilling to leave Al alone, but she nodded and walked away with a long, lingering glance over her shoulder. Al didn’t look after her. She rolled her eyes at Nina.
“That was my hyper posh date,” she said. “I guess I should go get her a drink, because clearly, her hands are br
oken and she can’t manage to hold the glass for herself. Anyway, she likes to trot me around and show me off, and even though I’m basically over being her puppet, if I leave now I’ll miss out on the main meal.”
Nina chuckled. One thing all the enhanced had in common—an undiminishable and constant appetite. “Good luck with that.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Al headed off with a wave, then paused. “Listen, keep in touch. Let me know what’s going on. I’ll keep asking around, see if I hear anything from any of the others. And I’ll pay better attention to anything going on with me. Shiny fine?”
“Thanks, Al.”
Nina nodded and waved farewell, then looked across the room in search of Ewan. He was still deep in conversation with Katrinka. She was nodding, looking serious. Behind her was a familiar face, easily recognized because Nina had seen him only a few days before at Ewan’s house. Jordie appeared uncomfortable and out of place. Even from across the room, Nina could see he was as twitchy as he’d been in Ewan’s office, and something about his demeanor left Nina uncomfortable enough to push through the crowd toward him.
By the time she got to him, he’d already spotted her. He stepped up to greet her, blocking her path to Ewan. “Ms. Bronson. Hello! I wondered if you’d be here, and when I saw Mr. Donahue without you, I was confused. I thought, he wouldn’t come to a party like this without her, would he?”
First, assess the situation. Second, protect the client. Third, eliminate the threat.
At least she could remember that much.
“Hi, Jordie. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Nina looked at him carefully. Assessing the situation.
He seemed to calm himself in her presence. “Oh, my mother makes me come to all these things. She thinks it’ll help me advance in life or something, which is stupid. I’m not interested in politics. I’d rather be in the lab, working on my projects. I just want to, you know. Create things.”
“Your . . . mother?”
Jordie shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. She’s over there, talking to Mr. Donahue.”