to the stomach, chest, and face. More blood splattered the walls of the plastique cube, and feral growls shook the entire construction.
As Marcellus watched it all unfold, he felt like he was trapped inside a cell of his own. Alone. Isolated. And terrified. He wanted to scream, to make it stop, but his voice was lost and useless, locked behind a sheet of impenetrable plastique. Somewhere beside him, he heard Alouette let out a muffled gasp.
Marcellus glanced at Dr. Cromwell, Lady Alexander, and Dr. Ward. They were all focused on the cube, their faces relaxed and placid despite what was happening in front of them. But Marcellus suddenly realized that the other scientist, the gray-haired Dr. Collins, was not looking at the subjects. His head was upright and facing toward the plastique wall. But his eyes were trained downward, as though he couldn’t bring himself to watch.
“Once General Bonnefaçon was able to supply us with the original blueprints of the implants,” Dr. Cromwell was now saying, his calm, measured tone a disturbing contrast to the vicious snarls coming from the cube, “reversing the direction of the neuroelectricity to manipulate the subjects was fairly straightforward.”
Implants?
The word tumbled violently around Marcellus’s mind. What was he talking about? What implants?
“We’ve spent the majority of our time and resources developing the technology to not only control the power-supply field, but also to fine-tune its coordination, to assure accurate and precise results.”
With a swift punch to the stomach, the smaller man went down, dropping to the ground like a sac of rocks. The other man took a menacing step toward him, glaring down at his opponent the entire time. He reared his foot back, ready to deliver a devastating blow.
“We are now pleased to report, after many tests, that we have finally perfected the algorithm and fully calibrated the voltage flow.” Dr. Cromwell nodded to Dr. Ward. “Back down to zero, please.”
Dr. Ward slid her finger across the screen of her device and, like a broadcast being paused in the middle of the playback, the tall man halted mid-kick. Then, a moment later, he lowered his foot and began to back away from his opponent.
Implants.
Neuroelectricity.
Power-supply field.
All of these words sat at the periphery of Marcellus’s memory, just out of reach. He pressed a fingertip to his temple, as though trying to squeeze them all back into place.
“As you can see, with our newly designed operating system, we now have total control over the subjects.” Dr. Cromwell turned back to his colleague. “Back up to two point five, please.”
The reaction was almost instantaneous. The man on the ground leapt to his feet and hurled his body across the cube, attacking his opponent with a fresh, renewed enthusiasm. His eyes flashed with fury, his mouth twisted in an angry snarl, and his hands clawed at the air.
And that’s when Marcellus noticed something he hadn’t noticed before. In the tumult of the fight, the man’s sleeve had ripped almost clean off, revealing …
Marcellus stepped up closer to the plastique, squinting under the bright lights of the lab.
Was he seeing that right?
No, he couldn’t be. It was impossible.
But there it was. As clear as day. A small, rectangular screen embedded in the inside of the man’s left arm.
An implant.
Marcellus’s head throbbed as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. But it was Gabriel who got there first.
“He has a Skin,” Gabriel breathed. His voice was smaller and thinner than Marcellus had ever heard it.
But he was right. Marcellus’s gaze whipped to the other man, who was fighting back, arms swinging wildly, fist connecting everywhere. But possibly the most disturbing sight of all was his sleeve that had been just barely pushed up, revealing the short edge of another screen.
“Furthermore,” Dr. Cromwell was now saying, “we have built in the ability to manipulate the subjects in any possible configuration. The application is completely customizable. You can group subjects manually or filter by similar characteristics such as age, gender, location, etc.”
But Marcellus could barely hear him anymore. He was far too focused on the glowing screens embedded in the men’s arms.
It’s impossible, he thought again.
No one on Albion had a Skin.
They were a Laterrian technology. Developed over five hundred years ago to keep the Third Estate in line. Small, multifunctional implants powered by …
But just as the thoughts began to coalesce in his mind, just as he started to realize what all this might mean, Dr. Cromwell said, “And now, maximum voltage at five point zero.”
Marcellus heard the