9
Reggie stared at the corpses.
The team he’d sent to intercept Parr and Ranieri lay on the ground
amid the garbage. Multiple witnesses milled around, talking
excitedly into their cell phones. Cops were on the way, to catalog
his error, put it on public record.
He was fucked. He pushed away the
staggering finality of it, used DeepWeave Contingency 5.5.2 to calm
and focus him, but the effects were muted. He knew what he was
supposed to be doing, but he didn’t move. He just stood there,
paralyzed. Staring at the lifeless chunks of meat that had once
been Martin, Tom, and Cal.
Cal had been from his family training
pod. Like Nadia. A brother to him. Tom and Martin were younger, but
Reggie studied with them both, sparred with them, worked with them
ever since they’d been initiated as operatives. They were gifted
with abilities normal people would take for superpowers. Now they
were wasted. Bruno Ranieri had butchered them, and that sneaky
little cunt Lily Parr along with him.
He wished that Nadia had shot them,
but he’d told her to bail, rather than risk her dying, too. They
hadn’t been prepared for Ranieri’s prowess. Nadia was good, but she
would not have prevailed if Tom, Cal, and Martin had all fallen,
not unless she’d used a firearm, and King had said explicitly not
to kill them yet. Reggie stared at the bodies. So angry he could
not control the shaking. Contingency 5.5.2 wasn’t
working.
Police sirens wailed in the distance.
They were going to find him here, demand a statement, explanation,
identification. He could not stay. Too late for damage control. He
should spirit away the bodies, but blood was spattered everywhere,
he had no idea whose. What an unspeakable mess. Someone would have
to stretch out on the altar of responsibility and watch the knife
plunge down. Guess who.
He had to move. He could not be taken
into custody. His programming would not allow it. His own special
series pod had undergone an experimental preventative imperative
programming sequence. In a scenario like a police interrogation, he
would die of convulsions in less than a minute, his body ripped
apart from within.
King had deleted that element from the
programming schedule with the subsequent pods, judging it too
dangerous, and possibly wasteful. But for Reggie’s pod, the deed
was done. There was no undoing DeepWeave once it took.
He watched the idiots on the scene,
wishing he could kill them just for the looks on their faces. Fear
and shock foremost, but beneath it, excitement, unholy glee. An
older woman indulged in an attack of hysterics. A younger woman
tried to calm her. Attention-mongering bitches. Like they cared
about his brothers. The hag was emotionally masturbating in public,
for the fun of it. Normal people disgusted him. Their lack of
discipline. Untrained animals, pissing on the floor. No idea what
it meant to be born to serve, dedicated to the highest principle. A
honed, deadly instrument in the hands of his god.
Of course, it was not their fault.
They didn’t have the benefit of meticulous selection and decades of
DeepWeave programming to unlock their potential. idn’t have the
grooming of a great genius. All they had was what grew wild in the
weedchoked gardens of their stunted brains. The mental equivalent
of dandelions, thistles, and ragweed.
Kill them
all, the little voice whispered. Just kill all the witnesses. Kill, kill, kill. Keep
killing as they come. It was the only thing that
would give him relief. He’d give that squawking old bitch something
real to squeal about, and then make squealing turn into sweet,
sweet silence.
But it was too bright. Too late. There
were too many people present. And the sirens were getting louder.
Move.
Still couldn’t. Some glitch in the way
DeepWeave interacted with his emotions. Not the fault of King’s
programming, of course. Never that. The intrinsic imperfection of
human beings was the problem. That was why so few of them survived
the culling process. And even the chosen few who did were never
perfect. One of King’s great sorrows.
Shame galvanized him, enough to make
his hand move. He stuck it, stiff and shaking, into his pocket.
Pulled out a sheet of transdermal emergency patches. Calitran-R35,
specifically calibrated for his body to damp down any faulty
processing of excess emotions. He peeled one off, stuck it on the
inside of his wrist, where the skin was thinnest.
The relief was immediate. In seconds,
the rictus softened. He backed up, gaining coordination with each
step. Turned, and took off at a lope back toward the car he’d left
parked on the next block.
Reggie started the car, drove to the
house he’d been instructed to use, which was only ten minutes away.
He parked the car on a side street, not bothering to lock it. In
fact, he left the keys in the ignition. He would not be using the
car again. It would not be recovered. It was untraceable, as was
the vehicle the team at the diner had used. He should probably call
Nadia, he thought, vaguely.
But why? It was over. Too late to try
to take control. He was over the cliff. Falling straight down. He
caught a glimpse of himself in the beveled glass panes in the door,
surprised to see that he looked much as he always did. Swarthy,
good-looking. Curly dark hair, chiseled features, dark eyes,
dimples even when not smiling.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to
see. A naked skull. A rotting corpse. Nothing at all. Yes, that was
it. He was nothing. All his identities forged, all his passports
false. Only for King did he exist. Only the name King had given him
defined him. And now he was nothing. No one at all.
Grief gripped him. Cramps were
beginning. He rummaged for more Calitran, stuck another patch next
to the first. It summed up to a dangerously large dose, but it
hardly mattered now.
He went up to the master bedroom, and
slowly, methodically began to take off his clothes. He pulled off
garments and folded them with meticulous care until he was entirely
naked.
He folded back the coverlet and sat
upon the smooth white sheet, placing his smartphone on one side,
his Sig 229 on the other. A small, faraway part of his mind
scuttled like a rat in a maze, making and discarding far-fetched
plans. Running away, buying a new identity. He spoke fifteen
languages fluently. He could go anywhere and sell his abilities to
the highest bidder. Live as free as a bird, as rich as a
king—
The King. Everything led back to King.
His idol. His god.
Cramps jerked his abdomen. Tears
poured down his face. He couldn’t live without King’s approval. The
part of him that hungered for freedom wasn’t strong enough to send
an electric impulse to his muscles. It was just a ofy, idle
thought. Blasphemous flickers on the edge of his consciousness that
made him feel guilty and unclean.
He tried to clear his mind. To wait,
with dignity and serenity, as befitted one of King’s elite
operatives. But the grief was agonizing. He doubled over, began to
rock. His throat tightened until the moaning coming out of him
became a breathless, keening wheeze.
It felt like hours, but it wasn’t more
than four minutes before the phone buzzed, spinning on the sheet
next to his thigh. There was no question of not picking it up. Just
the mere flash of such a heretical thought through his head sent
splinters of agony through his skull.
Reggie flipped open the delicate,
flexible fold-screen, quadrupling the viewing field. King’s
benevolent face filled the screen. The sight of him triggered a
longing that made Reggie cry out loud.
Shame followed the outburst. King was
displeased by uncontrolled emotion, even devotion. They all
struggled to control it.
“Well, Reginald?” King’s soothing
baritone, sparkling with velvety harmonics, stroked Reggie’s nerve
endings like silk. Reggie shuddered as emotions ripped through him.
He steeled himself to be strong, to face the end with dignity. It
was all that he could offer King now.
Even in failure and despair, one had
to hold oneself to standards.
Reggie opened his dry mouth. “Ranieri
and Parr fought off the team I sent to subdue them,” he said.
“They’ve escaped.”
King’s eyes widened. His silence
filled Reggie’s mind, widening, spreading with each second, like a
pool of blood from an opened artery.
“And the team?” The sharp tone in
King’s voice made Reggie jerk as if he’d been slapped. “Their
status?”
“Martin, Cal, and Tom are dead,”
Reggie said. “Nadia is still alive.” There was hardly any point in
drawing in more oxygen, but his lungs did it anyway. His body was a
dumb machine, grinding stupidly on.
“The bodies? You recovered them?”
King’s eyes glittered.
Tears ran down Reggie’s face, but his
programming did not allow him to blink in King’s presence. His
pupils dilated automatically at the sight of his maker. “No,” he
began. “There were eight witnesses. Police were arriving
momentarily. I heard the sirens. I would have had to—”
“Do not presume to explain yourself to
me.”
Reggie flinched as if stung by a
flail.
“You know what happens now, Reggie?”
King said. “Your poor decision making has lost us three operatives.
Four, including yourself. It has exposed me. This is unacceptable.
Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Reggie’s voice cracked. “I
understand.” Tears blinded his eyes. He dashed them away so that he
could see that beloved face for the last few moments allowed to
him. Even when King’s eyes blazed with disapproval, he could not
look away. The cramps were so intense, they were tearing his
muscles loose. Crushing his organs.
“Prepare yourself.” King’s stern voice
was unrelenting. “Hold the phone up, so I can see
you.”
Reggie did so. King began to recite.
The text was in ancient Greek, a passage from the
Iliad. Reggie’s body
shook. Tension built with each phrase. The culminating line made
something give way inside him.
He relaxed, thinking of nothing. A
blank slate, awaiting orders.
“Pick up the gun, Reginald. Put it in
your mouth.”
He did so without hesitation.“Fire,” King said.
Reggie kept his eyes fixed on the
beloved face as he pulled the trigg—
Detective Sam Petrie stared at the
last of the bodies as the transport company guys hoisted it onto
the gurney for its final journey to the medical examiner, and tried
not to breathe. The combined effluvia of fermenting garbage and
recent death was potent.
The criminalists were still busy
collecting and logging evidence. His friend Trish was one of them.
She was organizing for the blood-smeared batons to be taken to a
drying locker, and filling out all the form 49’s to get the blood
samples analyzed for DNA.
This was a weird one. Three big guys
armed with knives and guns had inexplicably opted to use batons to
defend themselves while an unknown assailant or assailants had
beaten them to death, apparently using only bare hands. This
pending forensic analysis, but Petrie had a feel for it. He was
sure.
Two batons were bloodied. Blood was
splattered over the asphalt. One man’s neck was snapped, one’s
larynx was crushed and collapsed, and the third’s skull had been
bashed in. No witnesses.
Whoever did it had to have been
immensely strong, huge, and/or hopped up on a performance-enhancing
drug. A drug deal gone bad?
One thing it probably wasn’t was a
hardened professional. Not with vomit spattered everywhere. Vomit
said raw beginner. But what raw beginner killed three big guys with
his bare hands? Why hadn’t the three big guys defended themselves
with the guns, or knives? Very X-Files. A pack of aliens? A suckermouthed
sewer monster? Yeah. Right.
The team of criminalists were wrapping
it up. Trish, a petite blonde with a thick tawny braid hanging down
over her police jacket, ducked beneath the yellow tape and jerked
her chin in the direction of the diner. “Coffee?” she asked. “Got
called too early to get my caffeine fix.”
“Don’t you have to go back to the
crime lab?” he asked.
“Nah, I’m not on the primary team
today,” she replied. “They just needed some extra bodies.” Her eyes
flicked to the gurney being rolled up into the transport company
vehicle. “Warm bodies, that is to say. So? Coffee?”
“Yeah, sure.” He could use some
coffee. He followed her around the corner and back into the diner,
which was a mishmash of bright chrome, pink plastic, and weird art.
Garish landscapes, strangely interspersed with austere, Japanesy
pen-and-ink nature drawings.
Petrie had left his partner, J. D., to
interview the employees of the diner, all of whom looked shaken.
The cook, Julio, a grizzled Hispanic guy, was behind the counter,
propped on his elbows. The waiters sat on counter stools; a big,
balding blond guy hunched over his coffee and a thirtysomething
redhead with Pocahontas braids, crying noisily while instinctively
propping up her bulbous cleavage with her elbows.
Julio poured them coffee without being
asked as they approached the counter, and shoved a plate of
pastries their way with ill grace. Trish took a cruller and bit in,
sighing with delight.
“He took off at about a quarter to
five,” Julio was saying to J. D. “ ’Bout fifteen minutes after Sid
and Leona here finally dragged their asses in here, half an hour
late. As usual.”
Sid slanted Julio a dark look, but
Leona, the Pocahontas chick, didn’t seem to notice the dig. “I
cannot believe that was happening right next to me!” she lled.
“Murderers, right on the other side of the wall! What if I’d gone
out the kitchen door? I could have gotten killed!”
“Who took off at a quarter to five?”
Petrie asked.
“Bruno Ranieri,” J. D. told him.
“Grandnephew of Rosa Ranieri, the lady who owns the place. She’s up
in Seattle right now, visiting family. He was working night shift.
Left probably right before it happened.”
“You talked to him yet?” Petrie
asked.
J. D. shrugged. “Not answering his
cell, or at home. His other work number is still after hours. I
left messages everywhere.”
“ ’Course he’s not answering,” Sid
said. “He’s with that girl.”
J. D. and Petrie both whipped their
gaze around. “What girl?”
“The girl he left the diner with,” Sid
explained. “She’d been here when I came in to work for the last few
nights. This morning, she gets up and leaves with him. Something
tells me he’s not gonna answer his phone for a while.” He waggled
his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t, if I was him.”
J. D. and Petrie exchanged glances.
“Who is she?” Petrie asked. “Do you know her name?”
“Nope. She was hot, though. Black
hair. Glasses. Nice tits.”
“Don’t be gross, Sid,” Leona roused
herself to snap. “God, I wish Bruno were here. I’d feel safer if I
had a black belt ninja type like him around right
now.”
Petrie studied her. “Who’s a black
belt ninja type?”
“Oh, Bruno’s amazing,” she said,
mistily. “He’s got, like, these muscles that just go on and on, and
he does kung fu, like what you see on TV. Kev does, too, but he’s
older, and he’s taken.”
“So Bruno Ranieri is a trained martial
artist?” Petrie said.
“Leona!” Julio hissed. “Stop being a
goddamn cow!”
Leona’s eyes got big, her gummy lashes
fluttering as her gaze darted from here to there. “Oh, my God,” she
squeaked. “You don’t think that . . . oh, my God, no! No way! Bruno
would never . . . he’s, like, only the sweetest guy in the whole
world! He would never—”
“Don’t get upset,” Petrie soothed. “We
just want to get all the facts. So, this Kev you mentioned. This is
another Ranieri? A relative?”
“Sort of,” Julio said reluctantly.
“Adopted. His last name is McCloud, now. Used to be Larsen. Long
story. But you can forget about him. He’s out of the country,
traveling with his girlfriend. Australia, New Zealand, someplace
like that. So leave him be.”
“I don’t mean to bug anybody,” Petrie
said mildly. “But can I have the phone numbers? Rosa Ranieri,
Bruno. Kev McCloud, too, please.”
Julio roused himself, grumbling, and
went to the phone on the wall near the kitchen entrance. He tore
off a scrap of paper that had been taped to the bottom of it,
slapped it down on the counter. “Home, work, and cell for Bruno.
Home, cell, and all the McClouds’ numbers for Rosa. And this one
here’s Kev’s cell number. But he’s gone.”
Petrie slid the slip of paper into his
pocket. “Thanks.”
“This is Bruno, right? Nice.” They all
turned at Trish’s voice. She was looking at a framed magazine cover
that graced the wall over the dessert counter, sipping her coffee
and gnawing her cruller.
“Yeah, that’s Bruno,” Julio said
reluctantly.
Petrie strolled over. Aod-looking
dark-haired guy flashed a charming, dimpled smile at him from the
cover of the Portland
Monthly.
“I remember this cover,” Trish told
him. “The guy is megacute. Most eligible bachelor? Yum. I’d take
him.”
Petrie leaned closer. “Wait a second,
I’ve seen this guy. He was mixed up in that weird shit that came
down in Beaverton last year, right? When that billionaire got
offed, what was that guy’s name?”
“Parrish,” J. D. supplied, joining
them and staring at the photo. “None of them ended up being charged
with a crime, though.”
“Huh,” Petrie muttered, staring at the
guy’s very white teeth, all of which were prominently featured in
the picture. “Interesting.”
Trish’s phone buzzed, and she whipped
it out. “Yeah? . . . Uh-huh . . . no shit . . . yeah, OK. I’ll be
there right away.” She dropped the phone into her pocket, rolling
her eyes. “Duty calls. Suicide, over on Wygant. Some clown blew his
brains out and managed somehow to set off some kind of explosive
device and shoot out the neighbor’s bedroom window at the same
time. Big mess.”
“Wow. Takes talent,” Petrie
observed.
“Big-time.” Trish kissed her
fingertips and pressed them to the glass over the magazine cover.
“Bye-bye, dimples,” she crooned.
“You do know those are just a
genetically inherited defect in the underlying facial muscle
tissue, right?” Petrie told her.
Trish popped the last bite of cruller
into her mouth and chewed it, her face blank. “Come
again?”
“Dimples,” he explained. “It’s just a
bifid major zigomaticus. The muscle attached to your cheekbone.” He
indicated on his own face.
Trish gave his cheek a condescending
pat. “Aw. You’re just jealous because you don’t have any. Don’t
worry, Sam. You’re still cute.”
“It was just an observation,” he
called after her.
She turned and winked at him. “Bruno
didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s not possible. Those bifid
zigomaticus are just too adorable.”
The bell tinkled as the door fell shut
behind her. Julio let out a grunt in the sudden silence that
followed. “Women,” he said.
The image on the view screen spun and
blurred. The device came to rest sideways, showing a partial view
of Reginald’s big toe. A rivulet of blood trickled down between it
and the second digit.
Neil counted the seconds until the
picture disintegrated.
That was that. When Reggie’s heart
stopped, the device erased itself, and detonated. A small
explosion, just a safety feature to ensure that the coms were
thoroughly destroyed and never fell into the wrong hands. He used
it with only his own personal operatives.
The feature had never been put into
use before. This entire scenario was unprecedented. King had
considered his mature, trained adult operatives to be 99.9 percent
infallible.
Bruno Ranieri represented that .01
percent of uncertainty. It should hardly surprise him. But Bruno
had never had the benefit of decades of intensive training, nor
long-term DeepWeave. Neil had written the boy off long ago as an
evolutionary dead end. More trouble than he was worth, considering
his pit bull relatives.
But he’d managed, in his own crude
way, to become exceptional.
King was furious. At Bruno, for
slaughting his agents. At Howard and Lily, for lighting the fuse.
At Reginald, for being his shining star, and then daring to fail.
It was dangerous to get attached, but he was only human. And Reggie
had been special series, too. That entire pod had been the very
first of his special series, and with their natural genetic
advantages, he’d always expected a bit more from them.
Neil had no choice but to terminate
Reginald’s life. He had to be rigorous, or what message would he
send to his other operatives? He could undermine their
psychological stability and destroy them all.
Zoe was huddled on the floor, still
naked and gasping. He felt an urge to kick her until she was quiet.
He controlled it. One did not kick a finely tuned machine worth
tens of millions.
He could understand her being upset,
but for God’s sake, she hadn’t even been podmates with the dead
agents. Neil fostered the development of familial feelings, raising
his trainees in small family groupings. Experience had taught him
that family bonding fostered intellectual and emotional health as
well as esprit de corps. But Reggie, Cal, Martin, and Tom were
years younger than Zoe. She’d never even been assigned with them.
No, she was just carrying on. As usual.
Anger piled up on anger as he pondered
the logistical nightmare he now faced. He’d already leased
Reginald’s services over the next two years to the Amesbury Group,
a wealthy multinational corporation, for a staggering sum of money.
Now he had to renegotiate the contract. Failure would mean a loss
of revenues of well over three hundred million over the course of
the next two years alone.
First, basic housecleaning. He punched
Nadia’s code into his com. She responded instantly. “Yes,
sir?”
“What is your position?” he
demanded.
“I’m driving on Airport Way,” she
said, her voice very subdued. “I was waiting for Reggie to give me
further—”
“Reggie is dead,” he said
harshly.
Nadia let out a thin squeak, then a
strained silence.
“Nadia?” he prodded. “Are you
there?”
A wet sniff and a wobbling voice.
“Awaiting orders, sir.”
His teeth ground. Nadia, too.
Nauseating. But Nadia at least was justified in being devastated,
having lost two podmates in one blow. The fourth of their pod
quartet, another female, had been culled ten years ago, at the age
of fourteen. Only Reggie, Cal, and Nadia had made it.
Poor Nadia. Bereft of her pod. So sad.
But that was no excuse for wallowing in self-pity. “Go to the house
on Wygant Street and dispose of his body,” he ordered. “I want no
trace of him for the authorities to find. Not so much as a hair or
a skin flake.”
“Sir, ah, how do you want me
to—”
“Be creative,” he snapped. God, was no
one displaying any powers of independent cognition today? “Use
acid, use the food processor, use the garbage disposal, use
whatever you want! Just be thorough! It’s bad enough that all the
others are headed for the morgue!”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Ah . . .
sir, are you . . . am I . . .”
He sighed, sharply. “No, Nadia. You
are not in disgrace. You followed your team leader’s orders. He was
the one at fault, and he has paid for the error in full.
Understood? Now go do as I said.”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Thank
you.”
He wished that Nadia had had the
initiative to defy orders and put bullets into Parr’s and Ranieri’s
brain stems on the spot. But he could hardly fault her for doing as
her team leader had directed.
Zoe’s snorting and whimpering grated
on him. She needed aggressive behavioral modification and changes
in her meds. To be fair, he had perhaps overdone it in the sexual
rewards. To show off for Michael, he’d basically inflicted a
twenty-minute orgasm on the poor girl. She could barely stand up.
It would be no wonder if her brain chemistry was somewhat
altered.
It occurred to him, staring down at
her, that Zoe might do for Reginald’s contract, assuming they would
accept a female. Zoe’s skills were formidable, and her flaws were
easy to downplay. He gazed at her dewy, writhing body. Zoe could
offer frills to the Amesbury Group CEO that Reginald could not. At
least not to this client, who favored women.
King had been acquainted with Michal
LeFevre, the CEO of the Amesbury Group, for years. In spite of
LeFevre’s three hundred pounds of quivering bulk, his greasy
comb-over, liver spots, and his seventy-four years, the man had an
insatiable appetite for beautiful young women.
King wondered if the man knew how it
would feel to have the young woman’s passion be unfeigned, the
orgasms real. If LeFevre had Zoe’s DeepWeave sexual imprint
commands, he could experience that wonder firsthand. Zoe would be
his adoring slave.
LeFevre would never be able to refuse.
In fact, King might even up the price. He’d never factored his
operatives’ sexual programming into his contracts. It was risky,
uncertain, and he preferred to keep the Levels Eight, Nine, and Ten
mortal control commands, such as the one he’d just issued to
Reginald, strictly to himself. But Zoe might not work out in the
long run anyway. Her overheated sexuality and helpless sobbing
hinted at deep inner instability. It might be best to use her up
all at once. Recoup what he could of his investment. Cut his
losses.
But first, Zoe would rid the world of
Lily Parr and Bruno Ranieri.
Fury flared afresh. Reginald, Cal,
Tom, Martin. Four of his mature male operatives. Two from the
special series. It was a staggering loss.
Watching Reginald blow his own brains
out had not even begun to soothe his anger. He only wished he could
kill that incompetent piece of shit more than once. King looked
down, noticed that he was erect. Anger often had an energizing
effect on him. He stroked his penis thoughtfully as he approached
the sobbing woman on the floor.
But Michael had left scarcely ten
minutes before, sweaty and spent, and Zoe had not even washed. It
would be unhygienic.
The com buzzed. Nadia. Too soon to be
reporting on the successful completion of her task. Which meant
there was a problem.
“What is it?” he barked.
“Sir, I’m outside the Wygant Street
house,” she said. “The police were here when I
arrived.”
King was so appalled, he had nothing
to say. “How . . .”
“It seems that the bullet Reggie fired
went through the bedroom window.” Nadia’s voice was apologetic. “It
also went through the bedroom window of the neighbor’s house across
the street. The woman who lives there called the police. She’s
being treated by the EMTs for cuts from the broken glass. They’re
wheeling Reggie’s body out now.”
King closed his eyes. His blood
pressure was climbing, his ears roaring. Reggie had managed to fuck
up, even in death.
“What do you want me to do, sir?”
Nadia’s voice swam through the haze of red with a few seconds of
delay. “Sir? Are you still there?”
“ to headquarters. I’ll send you a new
team leader tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. I am so—”
He cut off the connection,
uninterested in whatever else she had to say. He nudged Zoe with
his toe. “Get up.”
She gazed up, tear-blinded, nose
running. “But, sir, Reggie—”
“Shut up, and get on your feet. Or are
you too emotionally destroyed to take Reggie’s place as team
leader?”
Zoe gasped and scrambled to her feet
with gratifying swiftness. “I’m ready,” she said, her voice
suddenly clear as a bell.
Finally. The attitude he liked to see.
“I want Parr and Ranieri gone. Vanished. No trace. No witnesses, no
publicity, no bodies. Fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stared at her, panting with rage.
On impulse, he swept the table clear. Dessert plates, coffee
service, wineglasses, burning candles, all crashed to the floor. He
wrenched his pants open, shoved Zoe back against the table. She
draped herself back eagerly, opening wide.
It was a relief at first, but after a
while, the pounding began to bore him. Zoe’s moist, quivering body
was so wet, so eager, so yielding. She perceived his brutality as
pleasure. If he lashed her with a whip, she would beg for more. He
needed resistance tonight. Conquest.
He was losing his erection. It made
him want to strangle her.
He pulled away, leaving her
whimpering, on the verge of her fifth orgasm. And he had not even
used the programmed phrases to elicit them. This was pure
spillover. Innate sexual heat and emotional excess. Typical of Zoe.
Dirty little slut. “Get dressed,” he ordered her.
She jerked up onto her elbows. “But I
. . . but please, can’t I—”
“No.” He buttoned his pants, did up
his belt. “You’ve had enough for tonight. You must earn your
treats.”
“Yes, sir.” She struggled into her
tight dress as he entered commands that would give her a higher
level of access to relevant files.
“Go wash,” he said. “The car will be
waiting in twenty minutes to take you to the airport. Study the
files en route.”
Zoe was looking confused. King
manufactured a smile to settle her nerves. “If your assignment is a
success, we will dine again, and I will give you a full Level Ten
reward sequence. The whole thirty verses.”
Her eyes went wide, dazzled. “Oh,
sir,” she whispered. “Really?”
It was a bit iffy to overuse sexual
rewards. In fact, such an overwhelming experience could actually
damage her. But sex seemed to be Zoe’s most powerful motivating
force. And matters were very urgent.
“I’ve never given the whole sequence
to any of my agents before,” he said throatily, stroking her cheek.
“But you, my lovely Zoe, are special. A real treasure. So finish
this business. And hurry back.”
Zoe scurried to comply.