Working Stiff (34 page)

“No.” That was still the truth. She had no idea what Harte would consider
questionable
, considering what was being sanctioned by her at Pharmadene.

Harte’s eyes went flat and cold, like a shark’s. “I want you to listen to me very closely,” she said. “Condition Sapphire, Bryn. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. She felt nothing. The inhibitor was working, she hoped; if it wasn’t, it was going to be a panic-stricken interview on her side, and a very informative one on Harte’s.

“You and McCallister have become close, haven’t you? Tell me the truth.”

“Yes,” Bryn said.
Nice to know I can still lie
. Patrick McCallister definitely wasn’t close to her; they had an emotional barrier between them the size of the Great Wall of China. She was honest enough to admit that it was partly her own issue.

Harte was moving on. “You’ve stayed at his family home.”

“Yes, while security was upgraded on my apartment.”

“And quite recently, you and McCallister took a trip out of town together—quite an elaborate little trip, apparently, one on which he took great pains to evade surveillance. Where did you go?”

Bryn didn’t dare hesitate, not for a second; she remembered how it had felt when she’d lost control in the bar. Hesitation would be fatal, and it would betray her completely. “To a motel,” she said. “The Hallmark Motor Court Inn. I don’t really know what town it was in.”

Harte opened a folder, took up the Montblanc, and marked something down without really looking at her. “And what did you do all that time at the motel, Bryn?”

Even with the inhibitors, Bryn felt a little stirring of impulse to blurt it out—the lab, Manny Glickman, the IV, Pansy, the mugging, McCallister’s gentle touch on her forehead. She gulped it down and squeezed the arms of the chair as she said, “We made love. Three times. Once on the bed—”

Harte glanced up, eyebrows arched, and then held up a hand. “I don’t need the details. Well … not yet. Not until I have Patrick McCallister’s story to match it against.” Her smile was cold, and thin enough to cut. “You went all that way, to a
motel
, to indulge your apparently ravenous sexual appetites for each other. You do know he has a
house
.”

“He said we were being watched. And there was something else he wanted there, at the motel.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No,” Bryn said.

Harte waited a beat before she said, “Did you do anything else while you were on this little pleasure trip?”

“No.” Again, Bryn felt that stirring inside, like something hammering hard against a closed door, struggling to get free.
Tell her. Tell her everything
. She shuddered and held on. How long had Manny said the inhibitors would last? Was she getting close to the time they’d wear off? What if he’d been wrong about the effective dose?

“Did McCallister pay you?”

Bryn blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected. “
Pay
me?”

“Did McCallister give you money in return for sex? Or your silence about such activities?”

“No.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first, although you’re certainly his most … unusual choice.” Harte lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I suppose he has somewhat perverse taste, considering your … condition.” She paused and cocked her head, staring hard at Bryn for a moment. “Do you understand what’s happening to you, Bryn? Why you can’t stop yourself from telling me these very personal things?”

“No.” Bryn tried to remember the panic she’d felt before, the internal struggle. Harte needed to see those things. She
expected
to see them.

Mareen entered the room from that same side door she’d used before, set a second cup of coffee pale with milk on the side table beside Bryn, and departed without a word.

“Drink your coffee, Bryn; I wouldn’t want it to get cold.”

Bryn obediently reached for it and sipped. It was delicious, and the hot liquid made her feel sharper, but more jittery, too. The cup rattled lightly against the saucer as she put it down.
Look at us, so civilized, sipping our coffee from expensive cups while she mind-rapes me. Or tries to.

“I knew from the moment I saw your revival profile that McCallister had some use for you beyond his stated objectives; he tried to opt you out of certain control features built into Returné for the safety of the company. I countermanded that, in the hopes you’d tell me something more about McCallister’s business. It’s not your fault, Bryn. You may feel you’re betraying him, but I assure you, you’re not. You’re simply a recording device I put next to him.” Harte tapped her fingernails again, thinking, then continued. “Have you seen him meet anyone not associated directly with Pharmadene?”

“Liam,” Bryn said.

“The estate administrator. No, not counting Liam. Anyone else?”

“No. Just Joe Fideli and his other security people. No one else.”

“Hmm.” Harte’s eyes lowered to half-mast, making her look deceptively relaxed. “And have you overheard him discuss anything that did not relate to Pharmadene business?”

“No.”

“That’s deeply unfortunate. I was really hoping you would be more … enlightening.” Harte sat back and drank her coffee in silence for a moment, and Bryn was just starting to relax a bit when she said, “Are you in love with Patrick McCallister?”

“No!” Bryn said. Too quickly. Too much force. It was an instinctive denial, not a reasoned answer, and Harte speared her with a cold, level gaze. Bryn swallowed and tried again. “I have no feelings for him.”

“That, Ms. Davis, means that when he took you to the motel, he did so without your consent. I assume that he coerced you by use of the same command I just engaged. Is that correct? You had no feelings for him, yet you participated in a full day of illicit sex with him, under duress?”

“I …” She was caught, dead caught; either she admitted she had just lied, and proved she wasn’t conditioned the way Harte wanted, or she dropped McCallister in what was, at the very least, a charge of rape. “It wasn’t about love. It was about needing something.” That was the best middle ground she could walk, but she could see, with a sinking feeling, that Harte wasn’t buying it for a second.

“You should have just admitted it,” the other woman said. She straightened and put her cup down, pressed the intercom button, and said, “Mareen, please send Ms. Davis’s escort in. I have what I need to know.” She went back to her coffee, sipping in ladylike composure. “I have not ended Condition Sapphire, Bryn. You should not be able to lie to me. And the fact that you have tells me that something is very, very wrong here. With you. With McCallister. If you’d simply told me that he’d used the protocols on you, I would have believed you; he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, which is why he’s valuable to me. If you’d told me you loved him, I’d have believed that, too; he’s got that effect on women. But something in the middle … no. Not with him.”

“I—”

“Don’t waste your time. The point is that you’ve lied to me, he’s lied to me, and there’s something deeper. Something that threatens me, and the company. And I will find out what that is. Now.”

Bryn’s guts went tight and cold. The look in Harte’s eyes was that of a hawk zeroing in on a rabbit: no mercy, no feeling at all. This wasn’t about jealousy, which was somehow what Bryn had expected; this was pure, cold calculation, and she had fallen for it.

The guard who’d brought her in entered the room. “Ma’am?”

“Please take Ms. Davis to level three,” Harte said. “Check her in. I’ll call down orders in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And find Patrick McCallister. Now. You don’t have to be gentle about it if he resists.”

He nodded and started to hustle Bryn out.

“Wait,” Harte said. “Let her finish her coffee.”

It was time for the false civility to end. Bryn picked up the coffee cup and threw it hard at Harte’s face. She missed, but the coffee didn’t, drenching the woman in a milky brown, sticky wave from hair to neckline, ruining the teal silk suit.

Harte jumped up, shocked, wiping coffee from her eyes. Too bad it wasn’t hot enough to leave scars, Bryn thought; that would have been something. She’d have to settle for the look on Harte’s face—comically horrified.

But then it turned into a stiff mask of spite. “So we know where we stand,” Harte said. “You’re his little spy, aren’t you? His slave. He turned you.”

“
You
turned me. You made me
this
. I’m not dead; I’m not alive; what am I supposed to do? Thank you?” Bryn was shaking all over with the fury she’d held in for so long, ever since that first raw, primal scream of waking. “I’ve seen how this ends. Have
you
?”

“Not yet,” Harte said. She’d regained her composure; she’d taken a hand towel from a drawer and was blotting the worst of the coffee from her hair and face. The expensive suit was a total ruin. “But I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later. Good-bye, Ms. Davis. I hope you enjoy your … retirement. I’ll give Patrick your farewells. You won’t be seeing him again.”

Bryn kicked and fought, but the guard had all the leverage and muscle, and he was used to restraining angry people; she got in a couple of off-balance shots, but he took them stoically without granting her any chance of escape. After the second elbow to the ribs, he swept her feet out from under her, took her facedown to the carpet, and yanked her arms tight behind her back. She felt zip-cuffs being yanked in place, too tightly, and then he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her back to a standing position. “March,” he said. “You give me trouble, and I’ll give you a beating you’re not going to forget.”

“I’ll heal,” she said. She wasn’t aware, until she saw herself reflected in a pane of glass, that she was smiling. It was an unhinged sort of smile, half a snarl. She felt like an animal backed into a corner, and that was how she looked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You would.”

And without any warning he hit her with a rock-hard hammer of an uppercut, and she was out like a switched-off light.

Waking up was painful. Her head, first; it throbbed in queasy red flashes. Next, her jaw; she knew that awful grinding feeling. It was dislocated. Bryn worked it gingerly until it snapped back into place with a mind-numbing zap of agony. It, like the headache, lasted only a few minutes, and then the pain faded.
Busy little nanites, burning up energy I can’t afford.

Bryn sat up.

She was in an empty white room. No furniture, not even a cot—just a clean, white,
shiny
room, like a box made of dry-erase whiteboards.

One entire wall of the room was thick, tempered glass. Outside the window, a portable camera had been set up, and a red light showed it was recording.
I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later
, Harte had said. She was living up to her commitments.

The only other things of interest about the room were the spray nozzles and pipes across the ceiling, and the drain in the floor. Bryn considered that, and the shiny, slick walls.

This place was designed for easy cleanup.

Stay calm
, she told herself. They’d taken her clothes. She was in a baggy, thin coverall, snaps up the front, that rustled uncomfortably with every movement. It, like she, was disposable. There was a number printed on the breast of the coverall: 00061.

Bryn’s legs suddenly folded as the reality of it overwhelmed her.

They were leaving her in here to dissolve, under the merciless stare of that camera. Nobody was coming to help her. Nobody would care. She was 00061, not a person. She was a dying lab rat. Once life left her rotted remains, they’d flush the room, disinfect, and throw her bones in some incinerator somewhere.

She’d just vanish without a trace.

Get up
, she told herself.
Get up and fight
.

But there wasn’t anything or anyone
to
fight. She couldn’t fight for her life. She didn’t have one. Without the shots, she had no chance at all.

McCallister
—

She couldn’t count on him, not anymore. Fideli was out of the picture; McCallister was missing, maybe on the run. She had no allies here, no help, and no hope.

She didn’t really care. The bleakness of the situation was overwhelming.

She did, just because it was something to do besides lie down and die.

A careful inspection of the room didn’t make her feel any better. There was a door, but it opened only from the outside; there wasn’t even a hint of a handle or hinges in here. Bryn tried the drain, but it wasn’t nearly big enough to fit her head through, which meant it was useless for escape purposes, even if it didn’t narrow below the floor. Plus, a nightmare crawl through a drain full of the decomposing tissues of numbers 1 through 60 … No. That was definitely a last resort.

The glass was ballistic quality, and she had nothing to use to break it in any case. Battering her fist against it would only snap her own bones.

As she stared out, she realized that she
did
have a view, after all—of another room, identical to this one, except that it contained a fixed metal table with thick restraint straps.
I guess I didn’t fight hard enough to rate that
, she thought. Bryn wasn’t sure whether she should feel happy about that, or disappointed, but all that fell away as a briskly walking figure suddenly crossed her field of vision outside.

“Hey!” Bryn yelled, and slapped the glass. “Hey!”

It wasn’t one person, but three—two blue-jacketed security men, and a third person being escorted in. He looked nervous.
Very
nervous. Tall, good-looking in that bland
GQ
way; he was wearing suit pants and a crisply ironed white shirt, a snazzy tie, suspenders, but no jacket. She couldn’t hear him, but he was talking to his guards, trying vainly to pull away. He had a Pharmadene ID hanging from his belt, one with a green stripe; one of the guards took it, ran it through a scanner, and put the ID in his pocket.