Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(118)

Caro dragged herself up to her feet, fighting for balance with her hands fastened behind her. Her footsteps sounded eerily loud in the echoing room. The rickety chair wobbled as she sat.

Mark opened the aluminum carrying case and looked at the GodsEye helmet, cradled in its nest of molded foam. “Proud of yourself? Inconveniencing me like this is a real accomplishment.”

For a moment, Caro searched her mind for something to say that might influence him one way or the other. The urge drained away into nothing.

No point. He meant to hurt them. His hint that she could change the outcome was just another kind of psychological torture. No reason on earth to play along.

She shook her head. “I just wanted to live,” she said.

He slid his fingers into her hair, digging in deep. “I wouldn’t have hurt you. Not if you’d been a good girl, and did as you were told.”

“You killed Dex Boyd,” she said. “I saw you do it.”

His fingers twisted in her hair, tightening until she gasped with pain. “Yes, but that was your choice,” he said. “If you’d agreed to open that safe when I asked you to, I wouldn’t have been forced to kill Boyd. Or Tim Wheaton. Those deaths are on you.”

“No,” she said. “No, they are not on me.”

“Are you arguing with me, Caroline?” Mark’s voice was poisonously soft.

Huh. Dead end question if she ever heard one. “Can we just get on with it?”

He shoved her chin up, and poked at the scabbed wounds she’d gotten from Metalmouth’s knife. “So Carrerra tickled you before Stone showed up? I didn’t authorize him to do that. I would have punished him, but Fuckboy here beat me to it.”

The door opened, and the female slave soldier entered, maneuvering herself through the door with Hannah’s limp body loaded on her shoulder.

She walked over to them, and let Hannah slide to the floor in a crumpled heap.

Asa jerked his head around to look, dislodging the slave soldier. The guy whacked him with the gun butt. Once again, Asa made no sound.

Mark used his foot to turn Hannah’s limp body onto her back, studying her before he turned back to Caro.

“Midlanders,” he said, in a tone of discovery. “I’ll be damned. How the hell did they find you?” He stared down at Asa. “And you. Noah’s brother? I thought you looked familiar.” He laughed. “Bonus! When she wakes up, it’ll be playtime!” His laughter cut off suddenly, as if he’d flicked a switch. “But first, the safe.”

He placed the helmet on Caro’s head, positioning the sensors over her forehead and temples, and stroked her hair tenderly off her cheek. “It’s decorative, on you,” he said. “An empress with her crown. A high priestess with her headdress. Beautiful.”

She recoiled from his caressing touch. “Stop it.”

Mark’s hot blue AVP gaze looked right through her, but the effect was the exact opposite of when Noah did it. It reduced her, made her feel shivering and small. She wondered if he were reading her sig, like Noah did.

He had to be. He had the same mods. She had to keep her thoughts and plans small and emotionless, floating on the outskirts of her mind. Nothing happening in there but fear. Fear blanked out everything.

No need to fake it.

She felt the tickling hum in her ears as the helmet was activated. Mark loomed over her, hungrily. “Step back,” she told him. “I can concentrate better if you do.”

Mark chuckled. “Nothing doing, bitch. Make an effort.”

It felt strange, to work with the GodsEye interface after eight long months. She struggled to compose her mind to the necessary initial stillness, and closed her eyes, trying to reduce sensory input. The blazing red light, the rancid smell of Mark’s sweat. Her own rapid breathing and quick, thudding heartbeat.

“Zero the mechanism for me, please,” she said quietly. “Green button on the bottom of the control rod.”

“It’s zeroed.” Mark sounded peeved. “It’s ready for the sequence. Do it.” His voice vibrated with anticipation.

Caro pulled Lydia’s training sequence out of her memory. Ten years of intensive practice had made her an expert in manipulating the Inner Vision software. She could control the shape of her brainwaves with more sureness and accuracy than anyone alive. She also knew how to exceed program parameters, trip the security, and blow up the safe, completely incinerating the contents.

Theoretically.

She’d never actually done it, since GodsEye equipment cost in the millions. She might well be committing suicide. But there were worse ways to go.

There were five images in the training sequence. The GodsEye’s recommendation for a permanent combination was ten images. One, a snowy field with a knobbed and ancient oak tree in the middle. Two, a red half open rose. Three, a school of silvery tropical fish. Four, an eagle diving for its prey. Five, a mushroom cloud.

She blasted emotional energy into the last image. Her terror, her crushed hopes, her love for Noah, goosing that witch-hat brainwave spike up, up, up, off the chart—

Boom.

The blast wave flung her halfway across the room. When she struggled up to look, Mark was sitting up too, his face blackened and bloodied. His expression was empty with shock, which quickly turned to fury. He got up, swaying, and stared at the safe, which now hung open. Stinking black smoke billowed out of it.