Simon tried to shut the link down, but Tens kept it open. I watched as he locked Simon’s link wide, and then reached through it, and locked the man inside his own skull. It would have been funny if I didn’t hurt so much. I just stayed on the floor of the implant and tried to straighten out my thoughts.

  The Tens in my implant, looked down at me.

  “Mack’s waiting,” he said, and I whimpered.

  Tens was implacable.

  “I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  I stared up at him, trying to form a coherent string of thought, and then he picked my virtual ass up and threw me out of my own head.

  Mack was tearing his way into the box, when I opened my eyes. I took one look at his face, and all I wanted to do was run. Chained as I was, I couldn’t. I couldn’t even find the words to ask for mercy.

  Fortunately, I did not need to.

  “Stay still, Cutter. We’ll have you out of there in a minute.”

  “And then you’ll hand her over to me.” Delight’s voice snapped past him, and I felt my eyes go wide.

  I felt my mouth move, but my voice didn’t want to work. Mack ignored the effort, just reached into the box and hauled me out by the chains.

  “Stars above, girl. You sure know how to piss folk off,” he said, and curled me into his arms, so he could still fire his blaster, but didn’t need to pass me over to anyone else.

  Oh, good…

  I wondered how we were going to get back to wherever the ground floor was, but Mack and Delight had that covered. Silver light flared and we teleported out of there, as soon as Mack said ‘Now’.

  When we hit the teleport deck shipside, the world skipped around me, and I thought I was about to be beamed out again, but when the shuddering stopped, I was still there.

  Delight, on the other hand, was not.

  Mack carried me down to medical, and dumped me in an examination room.

  “Call me when you’re done,” he said to the waiting medic, then fixed me with a very stern gaze. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Doc looked down at the chains and cuffs, and raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t’ suppose you have the key?”

  I shook my head, and Mack’s negative floated back from the corridor.

  “Nope. They’re souvenirs.”

  “I’ll go get Tens.”

  Exhaustion crashed through me. I wasn’t sure what Mack’s game was, but I knew Delight wanted me dead…and that meant Odyssey was done with me. That alone should have made the escape attempt worthwhile. Instead, I worried about what Mack was going to do next…and regretted Abby’s loss of the auction.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “We made her a better deal,” Tens’ voice made me flinch, and the doctor laid a hand on my shoulder.

  That made me flinch, too, but Tens left him no room to comment.

  “She gets a cut of what we make on the info that was in your skull, and Odyssey doesn’t make her company’s life difficult wherever it finds them operating.

  Well, that was one way to wreck a friendship. My heart sank, and then Tens took hold of one of the cuffs, and I yelped.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, apologizing for pulling away, but he wasn’t listening; he’d pulled a small spray can from his tool pouch, and was carefully applying it to the cuff. I sucked in a hasty breath, and held it, trying not to make another sound, as unbearable cold radiated out of the metal and into my wrist.

  “Doc,” he said, and the doctor came over to help. Between them, a solid metal frame, and a small ball-peen hammer, the cuffs came off—and I can’t say I enjoyed the process, but nothing of mine got broken, and I was content enough with that. What I didn’t like was the way I seemed locked out of my implant.

  Tens must have caught me poking at it, because he looked at me.

  “We need to take it out,” he said, and I shook my head.

  He frowned.

  “Simon left a bomb inside it. It’s coming out.”

  This time, his tone brooked no argument.

  I just ended up staring at him, and my expression must have said it all.

  A bomb?

  “Don’t worry. We’ve put it on ice, but you’ll need to sleep for a while. Just as soon as Doc’s checked you out.”

  If I hadn’t been feeling like I’d been run over by a bus, and then thrown off the thirtieth floor of Simon’s building, I might have argued. It made Tens frown, just a little bit.

  “Doc. What did you give her?”

  “Nothing, yet. Why?”

  “Because there is no way known she’s ever this quiet.”

  Doc looked at him.

  “You ever been hit with a tangler from inside your implant?”

  Tens shook his head.

  “Well, this is a perfectly natural response. She’ll come good. Couple of days’ time, you’ll be wantin’ me to sedate her, again.”

  Well, that was good to hear. I wondered what I had to do to actually have Tens make that request. Because that’d be as funny as Hell. Tens must have read the thought, in my face.

  “Yeah, girl. You’re real entertainin’.”

  That might have been the case, but the next few hours were not at all amusing. The implant came out, and a new one went in. If I’d been conscious, I would have argued, even though it wouldn’t have done me a single iota of good. I was in Recovery when Mack came to see me.

  “Odyssey wants you scrapped,” he said, no preamble, no ‘Hello. How’re you feeling?’. Nope just straight-to-the-point-Mack. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I hid behind rude.

  “So?” I figured he’d get to the point soon enough.

  I watched as he raised both eyebrows.

  “Well, at least you’re feeling better.”

  That wasn’t exactly how I would have described it, but if he meant I didn’t feel shut out of my body and head any more, then he was right.

  “They tried to port me out,” I said, referring to the shudder I’d felt when he’d brought me back on board.

  Mack didn’t try to deny it.

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  “So, I couldn’t offer you a job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they—”

  I cut him off

  “No. Why do you want to offer me a job.”

  “You got skills I can use.”

  “So, why ask?” and I watched his eyebrows beetle down to a frown.

  He stared at me for a long minute, and I stared back. To be honest even this much of a conversation had exhausted me, and I really wanted to be someplace else. I was starting to drift when he spoke.

  “It didn’t work out so well for Odyssey when they didn’t,” he said, and I felt my lips twitch.

  Not as stupid as he looked, that man.

  His frown deepened, and I wondered if he was hooked into the new implant, and could hear my thoughts the same way he’d been able hear them in the old one. If he was, he didn’t show it, so he was definitely not as stupid as he looked. He was still frowning, so I decided to put him out of his misery…at least, for now.

  “Let me think on it.”

  He was shaking me as I drifted under.

  “Cutter!”

  I figured he’d be there when I woke up, and, more importantly, so would I.

  We could talk then.

  “Cutter!”

  And then I heard Tens was laughing inside my head.

  They’d made the same arrangement with this implant as they had with the old one—and Tens had always loved it when I pulled Mack’s chain.

  Bastard.