Laura Gilman - Burning Bridges

“We had to replace the first two sets,” the tech replied, “but once she realized that we’d insulated the main boards, she stopped wasting her time. Bethy’s a smart one, she is.”

“Yes. Very smart.” Hackins looked through the glass at the subject, thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

“This insulation allows you to stop their magic?” the director asked the technician.

“Sir. Not exactly, sir. It merely routes it through several layers, slowing it down with each turn. If she really wanted to do damage, she could, but we suspect that it would burn her out to generate that much energy.”

“You suspect?” The man’s face went still, and the tech and Dr. Hackins both felt the temperature of the room drop significantly with his disapproval.

“Despite our resources, there is still a great deal about these Talent that we do not understand,” Hackins said. “That is why the work is progressing more slowly than anticipated. A wrong step, a push too hard, and we burn them out before the desired result is accomplished. But if this new procedure works, we should be ready for the next level quite quickly.”

“She will not balk at commands?”

“She would be incapable of distinguishing between our wishes and her own,” Hackins assured him.

“Excellent. On with your work, then. Gareth, you said that you had the remains of the other subjects on storage? I would like to see the results of the autopsies.”

“Of course. This way, please.”

The two men exited out the door at the other end of the control room, abandoning tech and subject without a backward glance.

Left alone with his work, the tech’s shoulders sagged slightly in relief. He was very good at his job, but the ratio of failures in this project had been higher than anticipated, and the Boss was not a man you wanted to disappoint. Ever. Especially not when you were in his direct line of sight. The head of R&D was a fair man, nobody ever said he wasn’t, and a good man to work for, if you pleased him, but he had no tolerance for anything he considered sub-par effort.

A tapping noise drew his attention to the other side of the glass. “Loosah,” the girl managed, her face stretching into something that might have been a snicker, as though she had read his mind. “Sssssuckbutt.”

Snarling in response, the tech tapped the button again, and electricity surged through the electrodes attached to her skin, rocketing through the nerve endings—and the extra channels that made her a Talent, overloading her core into painful quivers that wasn’t quite what her kind called overrush, when the core exploded into the rest of the body, but close enough to give her a taste of what it might feel like.

Her body arched off the padded chair, her upper torso shaking in a scream that didn’t escape her throat. Muscles in her arms corded against the restraints, trying to break free, and the monitors in front of him red-flagged as her current reached out, trying to find him, destroy him.

“Don’t struggle so much, Bethy,” the tech advised in a mock-sympathetic voice, watching as the monitors subsided out of red into yellow. “Like we’ve been telling you all along, it doesn’t hurt if you don’t resist it.” He paused, then pushed a lever up a notch. “Unless of course I make it hurt.”

The girl shuddered again, but the monitors stayed within the yellow range. Her lips pulled back again, this time clearly in a grimace, but she refused to give him the satisfaction he craved. She could clearly feel the things they were doing to her brain, was aware of the insinuations, the subtle suggestions they were whispering to her, feeding into her through every pulse of current around her. But Bethany was more than stubborn. She might have taken employment, against her mentor’s advice, with the men who had betrayed her, strapped her into this chair and tried to use her for their own purposes. But she was Talent. She was Cosa. She would not break.

She would not betray her family.

Wren stared up at the ceiling and wondered what idiot had first decided that sheep were a soothing image. Sheep did not, in her mind, equal sleep.

The dark paint on the walls and the heavy curtains on the window were usually comforting, making her bedroom a restful hideaway, conducive to sleep, sleep, and more sleep. Tonight, the combination made the room feel like a coffin. Wren stared at the ceiling where dark shadows rested and tried to understand why.

It was too quiet, she finally concluded. That sounded like a cliché but it was true: Wren was so used to the constant rumble of traffic coming down the avenues, the hum of news copters and Coasties off the river, the thud-boom of construction, and the ever-present counterpoint of horns…even at night, there was enough motion to justify the city’s claim to never sleep. But the recent snowfall was also muffling the usual nighttime sounds. And without it, she couldn’t sleep.

Unfortunately, her other option: wake Sergei up and make him suffer with her, would require actually waking him up. And that, she was discovering, had been easier when it involved a phone call rather than rolling over and poking him. Not because he would be annoyed with her, but because he was just so damn cute when he slept. The stern features that worked so well in his Business-guy persona relaxed and softened, and his ruthlessly groomed hair fell into his face, rising and falling with the exhalation of his breath.

She watched him for a few moments, as best she could in the dim light. It was rare to see him this relaxed: the past few months had both of them all tied up in knots, between the Council’s power games, the vigilantes, and the threat of some shadowy power behind that bigoted organization, directing and arming them….

And now, the added stress of the three-way negotiation between lonejacks, fatae, and Council was making her stomach ache, and putting new lines between Sergei’s eyes.

The next round of that particular joyride was this afternoon, and she needed to be well rested, on the top of her game, not exhausted and fretful. And staring at the ceiling, listening to Sergei snore, wasn’t going to get her there.

Wren slid out of bed, shivering as her feet hit the carpeting, and grabbed her robe, wrapping it around herself before turning back to tuck the quilt around her partner’s still-sleeping form.

When in doubt, act. When outnumbered, run. When insomniac, obsess. It was a simple creed, but one that worked for her. Without turning on any lights despite the 2 a.m. darkness, she padded down the hallway to the kitchen, pulled out a can of diet Sprite and a half-eaten package of Oreos cookies, and padded back down the hallway to her office. Once the door was closed behind her, she flicked the overhead light on, blinking at the sudden illumination. “Ow.” Another flick, and the hum of her computer started up. Sitting in the chair, the soda placed carefully away from the mess of wires and electronics, she reached in and grabbed a cookie, crunching down with gastronomic satisfaction. There was nothing better than the gritty-and-creamy combination of crisp cookie and sludge filling.

Her computer came alive, running through screens until the familiar icons appeared. She pulled up the tabbed files for Old Sally, and started reading through the last known sightings, both verified and alleged, for the bad-news-bearing bansidhe. There hadn’t been anything to add to the file in almost three months, but it was entirely possible that her sleep-deprived state would see something, or make some connection she hadn’t before.

It would be nice if her job was all adrenaline and action, but, regrettably, more and more it seemed to be all about the paperwork. Wren didn’t know if it was because Sergei was giving her more to do on that side, or she was just getting jobs that required more than a blueprint and a prayer—or if it was the fact that she was so frustrated all the time that was making her feel like the job wasn’t fun anymore.