Xenofreak Nation (26 page)

Padme pressed her lips together. “The cerebellum, which as you know controls motor function, is the only structure in the brain thus far that accepts nanoneuronal implants. No one has ever been able to influence higher functioning. But the cerebellum has other functions…cognitive functions.”

Scott struggled to understand her meaning. “And—you can affect those?”

“To some extent. Nanoneurons are infinitesimally small, therefore they are limited as to how much programming they will accept.”

Scott wished there was another chair for him to collapse into. As unbelievable as it was, Padme was talking about mind control. “What cognitive functions are you referring to?”

“It’s how Fournier keeps his people loyal,” she said. “We can manipulate the two most basic emotions housed in the cerebellum: pleasure and fear.”

She turned to her holo keypad and typed something. Then she stood, grasped his shoulders and guided him to her chair. He obliged her by sitting, but as soon as he did, she shocked him by climbing onto his lap and straddling him. He said, “No,” and his hands closed around her waist to lift her away, but she reached out and tapped a holo key.

He barely had time to register that she’d activated something in his brain before she kissed him and his body responded against his will with a rush of desire.

Chapter Forty-five

Just as Bryn was pulling out of the garage, a black sedan parked itself at the end of the driveway, effectively blocking her from leaving. Agent Yang got out and strode up the walk. Bryn rolled down her window.

“I won’t delay you for long,” Yang said. “Just need to serve this warrant. We have to go through your father’s things.”

Bryn took the folded document and tossed it onto the dash. “Great. Feel free. Can I leave now?”

Yang waved to the driver of the sedan, who backed up. Bryn pulled out and headed straight for the bank, where she deposited the check. The funds wouldn’t be available right away, but she’d planned for that by doing something unprecedented—taking her father’s emergency credit card from its hiding place in his desk drawer.

She drove to the mall and bought four bra and panty sets, a hip-length leather jacket, a pair of low-heeled boots, sunglasses, and a great bomber hat that covered most of her quills. When she walked into the food court, she felt like a dark Amelia Earhart. She bought a freshly baked cinnamon bun, but after a couple of bites the gooey, overly sweet confection turned her stomach. She closed the box; maybe Carla would eat it.

Summer was ending and families crawled the mall searching for school clothes. Everything around her was normal, and yet she felt like she was on an alien planet. She halfway expected to run into one of her friends, and thought about walking over to the public holophone by the information desk to call Maria. She decided against it; it would take too much energy to answer all the questions her best friend was sure to ask.

On the way out, she stopped by her holoprovider’s booth to pay her past due bill and found herself exchanging her basic phone for a state-of-the-art holophonepad and full service Internet. Once her new holophone was up and working again, she found she had over two thousand texts and emails. She read the first ten or so before concluding that most of them were from strangers who’d seen her story on the news and somehow gotten her email and text information. She deleted them all.

When she got to the apartment complex, Carla came downstairs and showed her where to park.

“I know this place looks iffy,” Carla said as she helped Bryn haul her suitcases and bags from the mall up three flights of stairs, “but there’s a pretty aggressive neighborhood watch.”

She unlocked her apartment door, and as they walked into the living room, asked, “By the way, do you have my gun?”

“No,” Bryn replied, dropping the bag with her new lingerie on the couch and setting her suitcase upright next to it. “Scott took it.”

“That’s good to know,” said a male voice from behind her.

Bryn spun around. So much for the neighborhood watch. Kareem stood in the doorway to Carla’s bedroom. He wasn’t holding a gun himself, but she suspected he had one on him. He looked at Carla. “Shut the door.”

Carla slowly complied. “Who are you?”

“Bryn knows,” he said. “I’m a very ticked off guy who’s got some questions.”

“I don’t know where the panda is,” Bryn said.

“Oh, I think you do.” Kareem sauntered further into the room.

“How did you know I was here?” Bryn asked.

“Same way I knew the panda was coming in at Coney Island. Got an anonymous call.”

That didn’t make sense. Bryn hadn’t told anyone where she was going. “I really don’t know anything. Couldn’t you tell I was practically a bystander? I had no idea we were even bringing a panda to shore. I thought it was drugs or something.”

Carla had moved to stand next to her. “Since you’ve broken into my home,” she said. “I think introductions are in order.”

“This is Kareem Williams,” Bryn said. “Commander of the ARA.”

“Well, Mr. Williams, can I get you something to drink?” Carla made a move for the kitchen, but Kareem held up a hand.

“That’s very hospitable of you, but I’d rather you stay where I can see you.” He turned to Bryn. “Whoever left that message was right about the panda in the first place, so it’s logical to assume they must be right about you knowing where it is now.”

“I don’t. I swear. Do you still have the message? Can I hear it?”

Kareem pulled out his holophone and tapped. A generic text-to-speech robotic male voice said, “If you want the panda back, you can find Bryn Vega at her godmother’s house in Brooklyn at 1602 Saint Martindale Drive, Apartment 304.”

“Godmother?” Bryn asked, turning to Carla.

“Well, yeah, of course I’m your godmother.” She shrugged. “Don’t you remember?”

Bryn shook her head; it had been so long ago. “How did the caller know, when I didn’t even know?”

A look of dawning realization swept over Carla’s face. “I told Lupus and Padme. I had no choice, Honey. I spilled the beans about everything that happened. About you coming to see me, about what your father did, about Cougar helping us escape from Nosferatu. Lupus was furious about the cops crawling all over the place.”

“Yeah, but Lupus wouldn’t have sent that message,” Bryn said, “so it had to have been Padme. But how did she know I’d be here? She’s the one that took me to the psychiatric center.”

Carla snorted. “She knew they wouldn’t hold you after the truth came out.”

“None of this makes sense!” Bryn exclaimed. “Why sic Kareem on me?” She looked at him and said, “No offense.”

“None taken.” Kareem had sat on the arm of the couch and was listening intently as Bryn tried to figure out what was going on. “Maybe whoever called me,” he said, “doesn’t know that you and I are acquainted. Maybe they assumed I’d shoot first and ask questions later.”

“What I don’t get,” Carla said, “is why Padme would call the ARA to steal the panda in the first place.”

Bryn stared at Carla, thoughts spinning. Why had Padme done it? Bryn sat on the couch and dropped her face in her hands, rubbing her temples and wishing Scott was here. Chances were he’d know what the Pakistani girl was up to. But Bryn had overheard Shasta Fox say Scott was ‘off the grid,’ which she assumed meant the XIA couldn’t contact him.

“I don’t care why this Padme tipped me off,” Kareem said. “And I believe you when you say you don’t know where the panda is, because I don’t see why they’d tell you something like that. I do think you know where I can find the sons-of-bitches who hit us last night, though. Security tapes were too grainy to make anyone out, but we got a description of one of them; my girlfriend shot him.”

For a brief, panicked moment, Bryn thought he meant Scott. But Kareem scowled and said, “He had a wolf face.”

Lupus had been shot. Bryn met Carla’s eyes, pleading. “Scott wouldn’t take him to a hospital, right?”

“Right,” Carla said cautiously.

“What if Scott’s in danger?” Bryn asked. “What if Padme is setting him up for something?”

“Oh, no,” Carla said, throwing her hands in the air. “They’ll kill me if I tell you where the clinic is.”

Kareem had been so polite and mild thus far that it surprised Bryn when he pulled a gun from his waistband.

He said, “And I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

Chapter Forty-six

The force of Padme’s kiss pushed Scott’s head against the back of the office chair. Her cow ears swung forward and brushed his cheeks. He tried to stop her, but the nanoneuron program was doing one hell of a job stimulating his brain into thinking he really, really enjoyed what she was doing. She pulled away briefly to yank her shirt over her head then grabbed his hands and placed them on her back, saying in a thick voice, “Scratch me.”

Scott found himself obeying—his claws came out and he started to rake them down her exposed flesh—but an image intruded into his mind; that of Lupus hurting her that day on the couch.

He desperately did not want the pleasure to stop, but knew if it didn’t he’d be lost, so he did what he always did when a program was doing something he didn’t want—reached out and hit the escape button on the holo keypad. Immediately the intensity lessened.

“No!” Padme tried to get to the keypad, but he lifted her up, squirming and kicking, and set her down a few feet away. He blocked her way as she stood there with her small chest rising and falling under a plain white sports bra.

“You bastard,” she said, hands clenched in fury at her sides.

Scott did some very fast thinking. She was angry, but he could see that she was hurt, too. He took half a heartbeat’s time to flagellate himself for not having picked up on it before. She’d hidden her regard pretty well, though, so the blame wasn’t all on him. If he rejected her outright, there was no telling what the repercussions would be. All she had to do was lie and tell Lupus he’d attacked her, and Scott would join his predecessors in the river. He chose his line of attack carefully.

“I’m all for getting close to you, Padme, but do not mess with my brain.”

The fury evaporated, and he saw a look of tentative hope cross her face. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

He picked up her shirt and handed it to her. She held it wadded up against her chest and said, “I guess I—I forgot how normal people do it.”

He knew she didn’t want his pity, but he had to keep her talking, get her mind off seducing him or he’d have to follow through. And he didn’t want to.

“What happened just then, was that my nanoneurons?” he asked.

She gave him a wan smile and pulled her shirt back on.

He looked at her monitor. “So the programming can make someone feel pleasure out of nowhere?”

“Or fear.”

“Is that what happened to Abel?” He was taking a chance bringing Abel’s death up. He had inside knowledge from Shasta that Abel died from an apparently natural death. If Fournier had activated Abel’s nanoneuron programming to flood him with fear, had that been what triggered the heart attack?

“Yes. Abel knew too much and since he hadn’t gone through Fournier’s loyalty conditioning, he was a liability.”

“Loyalty conditioning?”

She nodded. “Pavlov rang a bell every time he fed his dogs. Eventually they drooled at the sound of the bell alone. Fournier induces pleasure or fear in a subject in tandem with a stimulus. Eventually, the stimulus itself begins to produce the pleasure or fear.”

He thought about what she’d done to him and suddenly had no doubt that if he hadn’t stopped her, he’d be well on his way to drooling every time she wanted him to ring her bell.

“As mind control goes, it’s obviously not practical,” she said. “He chooses his subjects carefully because it takes some time to train them.”

Scott frowned. “Are you ‘trained?’”

“No. If I were, I’d be debilitated with fear just for telling you this.”

“Am I scheduled to undergo conditioning?”

Her face gave it away and he said, “So you tell all the subjects what’s going to happen before you brainwash them?”

A shuddering sigh escaped her. “You’re different. I care for you. I don’t want to see you become like Lupus. He was Fournier’s first subject. It took weeks to break him. He used to be a decent guy. Now his nanoneurons reward him every time he’s cruel.”

She’d once described Scott as a decent guy.

“And I’m the one responsible,” she continued, “not just because of the program I helped create, but because I have this.” She held her arms out to indicate the control room. “I can find out anything about anyone.”

“Yeah, I was pretty impressed with the stuff you dug up on the ARA.”

“I’m the one who exposed Lupus’ true identity. He did not choose to wear that wolf face. I protested and Fournier gave me to him. Made him enjoy hurting me.”

Lupus’ true identity? With blinding insight he realized there was only one thing she could mean by that. Lupus was one of the XIA agents who’d gone undercover and disappeared without a trace.