“Damn it,” I said. I could force it open, but then what if the door wouldn’t stay closed?
Lucas dug into his back pocket and nabbed his wallet, reaching in and pulling out Tim’s credit card. He pushed me aside and jimmied the lock. Once inside, we were safely surrounded by stacks of printer paper and old Xerox machines. Lucas stood by the door, blocking the path in case a librarian suffered a sudden toner emergency.
“What’s going on?”
Before I could reply, blue light erupted from my finger, startling the both of us.
Signal: Transmission in progress.
The numbness in my hand descended over the rest of me.
Transmission: Initiate.
The light burst from my finger, like water from a hose, to form a three-dimensional picture. Two figures streamed into existence, only an arm’s length away. One of them came into focus. The color and vapor version of Holland looked so real that I could almost feel his gray eyes crawling over me.
“What the hell?” Lucas choked out.
I understood his shock. I’d felt the same way when I saw this happening to Three a few weeks ago. But my feelings—both emotional and physical—were oddly suspended in this moment, and my sensors cued me in as to why.
All properties at maximum capacity.
Diverting energy resources to avoid overload.
“Hello, Mila.”
Under normal circumstances, the sound of Holland’s voice would have made me shudder. But nothing about this moment—or my life—was ever normal.
“How is this happening?” Lucas said. “Was he able to locate you through my laptop?”
I wished I knew how to answer him. Three had lied to me. She’d told me I didn’t have this capability. Yet here I was, a puppet in Holland’s hands once again.
“This won’t be quite up to the experience we had last time, I’m afraid,” Holland said in his condescending drawl. “Three was wired to transmit live video and sound. But your functionality in this area is very basic. Unfortunate, because that means I won’t know what you’re up to. I’ll just have to make up for that deficit with my message.” His smile was slick and satisfied. Triumphant.
For a split second, I felt triumph of my own. It seemed that Holland had been unable to track me, that he remained clueless about his nephew’s role in helping his prized creation plot against him. For now. But my relief vanished as quickly as it came, leaving only awareness that Holland could infiltrate my body without my permission.
Violated. Unsafe. Dirty. Those three words drifted through my head . . . ready to pounce once my feelings kicked back in.
“You were probably hoping you wouldn’t see me again. At least, not so soon,” Holland continued. “But I think you’ll be interested in who I have with me.”
With a jerk of his computer-generated hand, he grasped the chin of the other mist-and-light figure and yanked until her identity was exposed.
Quinn.
Even the misty holographic image couldn’t hide the damage Holland had inflicted on her face. Black and blue circled her eyes, and her nose bent unnaturally to the left, with blood trickling from her nostrils. Divested of her red curls, her shaved head glowed with a pale light. Livid finger marks stood out against the white skin of her throat.
The numbness prevented me from feeling more than a sliver of sympathy for her, or comfort that Holland’s hostage wasn’t Hunter or Daniel or one of the young members of Quinn’s team. But once this transmission was over, I knew my emotions would storm every inch of me.
A thin rope hung from Quinn’s neck; Holland grasped and yanked it. Her eyes flew open at the sudden tension before her lids drooped again and her chin fell to her neck.
“Wake. Up,” Holland repeated, giving the cord a vicious jerk.
Quinn’s startled scream was hoarse, her throat too damaged to muster much volume.
“I’m sure you recognize my former protégé, although I’ll admit, she’s looking a little worse for the wear.”
Holland’s drawl betrayed no hint of remorse, no reflection of any feelings he might still harbor for the woman he’d once loved. No sorrow, no anger. Nothing.
“She’s been reluctant to share pertinent information about how she was able to modify your programming, and I find I don’t have the patience I once had.”
Holland’s hand reached for something beyond the scope of the hologram, and returned with a deadly looking knife. His eyes never changed expression. He sighed, as though weary of the whole thing.
“I taped this for a reason, because I knew she’d be too stubborn to talk. I wanted to send a message,