Synthetic Dreams (11 page)

“You’re sure?”

There was a hint of uncertainty in his tone, reflecting in the tension around his eyes. He wasn’t handling her transformation to a man any better than she was.

She wished the thought could make her smile, but her belly was sour. “He’s
gone,
Paul.”

“Son-of-a-bitch.” His curse was soft, bitter. He pressed his lips together and straightened his shoulders. “We have a meeting to get you to, sir.” He fixed the knot on his tie and tugged down his jacket. He stepped from her path. “After you.”

Vyn pushed her fingers through her hair. She hadn’t walked as Goodman before and the way his hips moved, the length of his legs, his upper body strength, and most of all the disconcerting weight of his cock filled her thoughts. Damn thing kept…moving. “I have a dick.”

“I was trying very hard not to think about that.” Paul winced. “Sir.”

She had to keep her mouth shut. She was certain Lucas March-Goodman didn’t randomly announce such things. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise, sir.”

Vyn focused on her stride, ignoring the odd weight in her trousers. She could feel her way to the conference room, though she’d never experienced the locked-off areas of the Mind. The technology cut into her skin guided her. What the Goodmans had created in her was almost magical. She could feel it now that she was in the Mind proper with the perfection of the simulacrum wrapped around her. Something of her flesh—something they’d grown from her own body—permeated the virtual world, moving, resonating within her.

She provided the security for every square centimetre on a quantum level. Distance away from the servers generating the Mind had never been a problem. A threat forced her, and the false her, to react as one, creating the simulacrum to protect the system from danger.
Ouroboros.
A dragon wrapped around itself. An endless, impenetrable loop. She might have admired the genius of the Goodmans, if they hadn’t destroyed her life.

She stopped at a pair of large wooden doors. Her head bowed and the solid thud of a stranger’s heart beat in her chest. Her nerves strained, her grip on the image of Lucas strong. The Goodmans had made her. She wore them well. Still, panic ate at her.

The corridor was shielded from the room beyond, so she risked questions. She had no love for any of the Goodmans, but Ossian had forced her to kill one of them. “Why is he doing this? All this show? The man who was risking security with his deal is…gone. He caught the agents, can hold them until their bodies wither. He could do the same here.”

“He wants to break something in the Corporation. I don’t know what. But a senior security officer and a rival CEO? It could bring it all down.” Paul stood at her shoulder. “The event will be witnessed by both boards. Maybe that’s what he wants.”

“You’ve attended here before.”

“Once or twice.”

A wry smile cut over her mouth. “You’re very high-level security, aren’t you Paul?”

“Yes, I was.”

Vyn glanced at him. The soft light from the ceiling lit gold in his eyes. She wanted to survive this and she wanted him at her side, but the knot in her stomach didn’t believe they
could
survive. Ossian was playing them from every angle. And the Tydeus Group would most certainly have claws in the security, claws in her. Ones she couldn’t begin to suspect because Lucas had been selling off information. Rescuing Liam had given her a stupid burst of overconfidence. It was a little late for that reality to hit.

“So he wants the Tydeus people to see a senior security officer take out their CEO.” She frowned at the realisation that protocols existed in the Mind for just that action. “And you already have permission to do it.”

Paul nodded. He gave a quick wave of his fingers and a personal opaque screen shimmered before him. His fingers moved quickly, tapping out information before another wave closed it.

Vyn lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m dumping my houses, my Goodman stock. I don’t want to be sucked into the implosion.” He gave her a hard smile in return. “I like being rich.”

She let out a laugh. “Always prepared, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

Vyn paused. Her heart hitched up, beating too hard, her skin itching. It had nothing to do with the simulacrum. Goodman was a perfect fit. She turned to face Paul. Fear burned hot. He’d prepared for a future. But he knew as well as she did how completely fucked their situation was. Her shoulders dropped. “We’re not getting out of his alive, are we?”

“Honestly?” He held her gaze, calm and resolved. “No.”

“Then I have to do this.”

Her hand framed his jaw and she leaned in, covering his mouth with hers. He didn’t resist. Even as her own palm felt large and thick on his cheek, the pads of her fingers too smooth. As a stranger’s tongue slid over the hard line of his teeth and the rasp of her bristled jaw and chin met his. Paul tasted the same. Delicious, hot, and the incredible pleasure of something so simply
him
sank through her flesh.

Her suddenly hard and painfully aroused dick jerked her back. She froze and her face flushed. The simulacrum of Lucas worked
too
well.

Paul wiped his mouth, a slow deliberate action, and closed his eyes. “I may have nightmares for the rest of my short life.”

“Paul…”

“Vyn.” A soft laugh escaped him. “It’s fine.” He straightened her tie and brushed a quick hand over the shoulders of her jacket. “Ready?”

She pulled in a breath, still tasting him on her lips and tongue, mixed with Goodman’s own scent. She wasn’t ready. She lied anyway. “Yes.”

“Good. We go in, you buy me time, I enact the protocol and you try to get us out. The minute Mylonas goes down, it’s going to get fierce. They will have their own security, equal to my skills, my access.” He didn’t look at her. “And access to you.”

“Understood.”

“All right then.” He waved a hand at the wide doors. Hinges groaned and the doors parted. “Good luck.”

“To us both.”

The conference room was a vast space, open to the sky under a great curve of glass, with the sun just climbing up from the flat horizon into a cloudless dawn sky. Clean air wrapped around her, unlike any she had ever tasted, sweet and warm…

Vyn remembered who she was and strode towards the knot of people on the far side of the open room. The simulacrum of Goodman fitted her to perfection and she let it have some rein, allowing the man’s natural rhythm to take over. She had to look like him, just for a short while before everything went sideways. Though how she was going to distract the Tydeus CEO was beyond her. She had to try. Paul was already drawing in the disparate threads that could fracture and destroy her mind.

“Ms. Mylonas.”

A woman in her late thirties broke from the group. Tall, slender, her stark business suit a contrast to the touches of glamour gliding her body. Perfect, almost seamless, it tightened her skin, added the chestnut lustre to her hair, brightened her sensual smile. “We decided on Dia. And you kept me waiting, Lucas.”

Vyn met her smile. She was glad the skin that covered her had some disconnection from her own as tension held her. Goodman had slept with her. Sleeping with the Tydeus CEO had been a part of the negotiations. She directed a sharp curse back at Ossian for throwing her into a snake pit, but she did have her chance to buy Paul time. “Dia—” she let her smile slide into something warm, smooth and seductive, “—I apologise.”

The woman’s gaze flicked to Paul, who stood silent and solid at her shoulder. “I saw your kiss, Lucas.” Her head tilted and the heat in her gaze broke the sudden burst of panic about to engulf Vyn.
Saw,
not heard. Her sense of the place, the way her skin interacted with the virtual world, hadn’t given her any idea that Dia had access too. “He seems biddable. And he’s pretty. I say we include him in our games.”

A dark, hot curl of what Vyn could only label as jealousy burned in her chest. The unexpected sensation of wanting to punch the woman itched across her knuckles. She had to ignore it. The more Dia was focused on sexual athletics, the less she would be focused on the slow flame that Paul pulled in via the protocol.

Vyn let her gaze slide over Paul. Guilt pricked at her for treating him like meat. “What would you suggest?”

“I have heard rumours…” Dia traced her fingers along the edge of Paul’s jacket lapel. “You have another level, another Hall in the Mind, above and separate from the ones we’ve already shared.”

Had Goodman had
any
interest in commerce with this woman? Or was it all about hiding sex under the convenience of a series of meetings? Perhaps. Though Ossian had said that Fomorians were vanishing…then again, Ossian—Hugo—was a lying, two-faced shit.

Vyn pressed for information from the system, asking short, silent questions, but not wanting too much depth. She’d grown up in the executive band and they had always tried to ape the excesses of the First Family. What she knew from that time still made her skin crawl.

There. She found it layered under locks, a place that Dia hadn’t accessed. Her stomach sank. Could she expect anything
less
from the Goodmans? She dropped her voice, leaning in to brush her mouth over Dia’s ear. She tasted skin, lightly scented with jasmine. “Ah, you mean the Hall of Tiberius?”

A delicate flush highlighted Dia’s cheeks. Whoever had created her glamour was a true artist.

“And you believe you’re ready?”

The pulse at Dia’s throat jumped, her fingers gripping Paul’s lapel. He didn’t move, didn’t flicker. Was he used to witnessing these situations? Vyn’s stomach twisted. Had he played his part before? The Hall of Tiberius was a depraved place, even for the Halls, and the Tydeus CEO was excited at putting him at its heart.

“Others can be satisfied with the lesser Halls, but I agreed to this last meeting for
precisely
this, Lucas.”

Vyn lifted an eyebrow, holding her darkened gaze. She had to ignore the bile wanting to choke her. She was buying Paul time. She could feel it, the invisible threads of the protocol weaving around the woman. Her heart thudded. “And what would you like?”

Dia’s attention returned to Paul, a sharp little smile cutting her mouth. “I want to practice on him.” She pressed herself against him, one hand snaking down his side to grip his backside. She squeezed and Paul’s expression didn’t flicker. “I’ve heard rumours, of how the Hall is…powered. How it holds its darkness. And if we are to continue our affiliation, I must experience
everything
your company has to offer.”

The woman knew about the vanished. Ossian had said that Goodman was trading out the Halls. The Mind was their main product, after all. But the organic technology carved into her skin, the horror of the vanished trapped under the tower, their personalities and creativity feeding the virtual depravity? He’d been an idiot to trade access to those too. She wondered what Dia was offering in exchange for something so powerful. Two generations of Goodmans had protected the secret carved into her skin. Dia would use what she learned to destroy the life of another child, rip the thoughts from those who moved against her. And for a long second, she didn’t feel guilty about what she had done to the real Goodman. Or what they were about to do to Dia Mylonas.

Vyn’s heart hammered. It was almost time. The threads thickened. She could feel them weaving around Dia, whips of fire and the promise of pain. She grasped for a way out, chasing information, pulling it to her, aware that she couldn’t feel, couldn’t see the movement of Dia’s people. She had to cling to some belief that they would get out alive. “He’s all yours.”

Dia’s mouth, almost level with Paul’s, hovered over his lips, her teeth shark-bright. She pulled his bottom lip, hard. A spot of blood stained his skin…and then he took her mouth.

Vyn froze. She had firsthand knowledge of that mouth, the wanton power of it, and wanted a lot more. Seeing him…devouring another woman stabbed at her. She told herself this was a part of the deception, she knew it, seeing the threads almost opaque around Dia’s body. But the sounds of pleasure the woman made…

They changed. Paul fisted his hand in her perfect hair, swallowing screams, Dia’s fingers clutching at him. Her brown eyes widened, and pain pushed her veins into darkened lines against her skin, breaking the perfection of her glamour.

“Madam!” One of her security officers surged forward.

Paul ripped his mouth away. He spat. “Get us out of here.”

In the next heartbeat, Dia Mylonas was gone.

Vyn stared at the space the woman had occupied. Dia was dead. Ripped from the Mind, as she had dragged Lucas from the upper tier.

Paul leapt forward to meet the Tydeus guards. He was a blur of fists and kicks, preternaturally fast, using the access he had to the Mind to shatter the thoughts of the guards, shock them, defend her.

Her brain kicked into gear. Now she had to play her part. Vyn yanked at every connection she had, fighting to break them out of the Mind’s grip. Something blocked her, ran fire through her flesh and trapped her, them. Her body ran with pain. She would not die. A hard smile cut her mouth. She had a
date.

Vyn dropped to her knees, agony rippling through her flesh. Her thoughts clouded. It was impossible. All access had been denied her by Tydeus blocks. They had their claws deep.

She caught Paul’s eye, a blistering moment of realisation passing between them. It was over. He couldn’t win against them and neither could she.

There was only one final thing she could do. One thing that would end everything for the upper tier and the Halls. She reached for the minds of the vanished, felt their frozen thoughts caught between one neuron firing and the next and the power of that one pulsing moment. Her will surged. And she freed them, fracturing the Hall of Tiberius.

The screams of hundreds swept over her, lost, terrified, falling into her, until she was drowning in the waking minds of the vanished. Her last thoughts—weak, desperate—enveloped Paul, held him close as agonising fire dragged her down.

Chapter Eleven

Vyn jerked upright, a cry exploding from her. Her heart hammered. The warm, metallic air wrapped around her, choking her, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t pull in a fresh breath. The fire in her chest was almost overwhelming, the strained heaving flashing more panic through her.