Page 132 of CHOICE Lover
He shrugs.
“Fine. I guess it will remain a mystery.”
Silence passes between them for a while when he finally speaks. “You’re my greatest achievement.”
Her head snaps up. “Huh?”
“I don’t believe GROW ever meant to resurrect people. It was an accident. But what I did—Res6 gave me a challenge: prove CHOICElover could never make the same mistake GROW did. He, as always, had an ulterior motive—to keep an edge on the competition. All the companies are hunting for the next wave of LifeLike advancements. Though maybe he was thinking about his brother the whole time. We’ll never know. To me, the why wasn’t important. The science fascinated me, so I threw everything I had at the problem. I figured if I knew how to do it, I’d know how to prevent it from happening. Any advancement would be a bonus.
“I brought you back to life. It’s unprecedented. Probably one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs the world has ever seen, and I can’t tell anyone about it. Your existence is illegal. You should belong to me. Instead, he kept you for himself. Then, to add to the insult, he barely acknowledged what I did.” Lextr glances away. His jaw flexes as his stare bores a hole into the wall.
An annoying pang of empathy hits her in the chest. It sucks because everything he’s saying makes perfect sense. She can completely see Res6 overlooking the praise and approval that this man so clearly craves. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
On the other hand, he just confessed he thinks she should belong to him, which is insane.
“I even tried to help him bring back his brother. That’s why I felt justified in taking the specimens for my side project. When he was parading around town with a reincarnate, who cared that I was renting manupartners out for events to make a little extra money? It felt good to be the one getting attention for a fun new business for once—even if it was only through back channels. I felt he owed me that. I didn’t think he would fire me.”
“I think he fired you because you threw his brother in his face and called him a hypocrite,” she points out.
“We worked together for fifty years. He threw it away after I confronted him with a truth he didn’t want to hear. If that doesn’t give you a clue about his character, I don’t know what will.”
They both look away, letting silence fill the space between them. Lextr’s words play on repeat in her mind. Is there a chance she’s mistaken? That one small thing can go wrong, and he’ll just throw it all away. She’s a dangerous variable in his world. CHOICElover must be very attractive to him by comparison, considering he can control it.
But he’s changed. Or he is changing. He’s not the same man he was when she woke up in this world, or even when he fired Lextr. She’s already making an impact, and it started with just one person. The man she loves. The man she loves who doesn’t know it because she got so caught up in the moment, she missed saying it. God, why did she do that? What if she doesn’t survive this, and she never told him how she feels?
After everything he said, after his bravery—the risk he took offering his heart to her—and she might die without ever letting him know that he’s on the right track. That he’s worthy of love too. She knows it’s true to the depths of her being because she loves him.
She’s processed so many emotions since she received his letter less than twenty-four hours ago, not to mention the trauma. Maybe she’ll just take a nap, and when she wakes up, he’ll be here to rescue her.
The tile is cool against her bruised cheek, offering momentary relief before the ache sets in. He’s going to save her. He’s going to give them the information, and they’re going to release her. Right as her vision is about to blur, she notices a long, taxicab-yellow hair right in front of her nose. She picks it up, bringing it to eye level for inspection. She grins.
“He’s different now, Lextr. He’s going to save me.” Lextr glances up, and their eyes meet. He shakes his head, but she continues. “That’s what heroes do.”
46 – The Countdown
Res6
“Can I get a status on the decoy file?” Wanda asks.
Sable leans back in her chair. “He’s having trouble with the PhantomByte program since there are so many file types. Once they’re unpackaged from the container, the data seek protocol isn’t able to sniff each of them out. It’s requiring him to bury a new VeriSync signature in each file the Splinter Module can find.”
“Enough with the technobabble. Speak plainly,” Wanda commands.
Sable takes a deep breath. “It’s not working.”
Res6 bolts upright. “Not working? Just send the real files and be done with it.”
“Sorry. Itwasn’tworking. He’s almost done. Then he can run it through the Symul-a-tron—I mean, he can test it. Once we confirm it works, we’ll be good to go.”
“I don’t like waiting,” Res6 says, getting to his feet.
“Well, I don’t like the idea of handing them over your data. Who knows what they might do with it before we can stop them?” Wanda argues. “Let’s give him another half hour.”
“That’s what you said half an hour ago.” A few hours ago, he put a large digital clock on the particle pane. It displays a bright red 07:18. “What if they change their minds and hurt her?”
Wanda shakes her head. “There’s been nothing in their communications to suggest they’ll retract their offer, and our professional hostage team is standing by to collect her as soon as she leaves the building. We have a team in the building if they flinch.”
“Can’t they just raid them and be done with it?” he asks.
