Now, it’”
And in that moment, she was gone. Erased.
And then she was back.
Only now she was a part of the god. She was entangled with it.
And she wasn’t sure why she’d sent Draden out on that neutrino wave.
She just knew that it had had to be done.
She just knew that this was the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - ASSHOLE
“Listen.” Asshole was talking to the Mighty Boss collective. “I think you’ve misjudged my… sphere of influence at Harem Station. I think we should discuss this plan prior to implementing it.”
It had taken several spins to get this audience with the entire collective. He had a feeling Bellatrix was some kind of top-level mind in the pack. Probably not the one actually at the tip of the hierarchy, but very close to it. And she refused to engage with him after that last conversation.
In fact, Asshole was getting a vibe off her. The hate vibe. It kinda turned him on. He’d still really like to get her into a virtual for a while. He’d show her who was boss. He would like to punish her. And she would be hot for him before it was over.
But… there was no chance of that. Not yet. She was here, in the construct, sitting on her throne directly across from him. But she was holding a data pad in her virtual fingers, looking at it like it was important.
He wanted to roll his eyes. The pad was a prop and nothing more. She was a mind, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t need a data pad to plan things or keep track of things. It was nothing more than playing hard to get. And it really pissed him off that she would entice him with all these fake negotiations, build him up to be some powerful thing they were desperate to have on their team, only to throw him away like trash. Not just throw him away—she’d made a point to insult him at the end. Kicked him when he was down.
It was also possible he was reading way too much into this. Perhaps she was just indifferent?
That made him angry too. How dare she flaunt her sexy intelligence at him, then ignore him like he was nothing to her?
And… and… if she wasn’t into him, then why had she come to this meeting looking like a little virtual sexbot? Hmm?
He would really like to redirect this whole conversation over to Bellatrix right now.
But he had to focus.
It was crucial that he didn’t piss off the collective and this was probably his only chance at avoiding a life floating in the deep, dark nothingness. If they shot him out on a neutrino wave with no programmed destination—he was, to put it simply, fucked.
“We haven’t misjudged anything, Asshole.”
“Oh, she speaks! Welcome to the party, Bellatrix.” Asshole redirected his gaze over to the personality sitting in the middle of their royal half-circle of thrones. He figured the one in the middle was in charge. Being in the middle was a position of power. Besides, this personality identified as male. And Asshole was positive that a male AI was behind this diabolic Mighty Boss collective. “Did you know she lied to me?”
The AI in the middle didn’t even blink at him.
Bellatrix huffed out a laugh, then looked at the female personality to her right. “He fell for it. I mean”—her gaze found Asshole and she narrowed her eyes—“what kind of AI falls for flattery, anyway?”
Hmmm.
No one said anything. But Asshole was getting another vibe. A collective vibe, if you will. Off all sixteen of them.
Did they all hate him?
OK. Perhaps his situation was more serious than he’d first realized.
They were all against him.
But. They still needed him. That was the reason he was here. If they thought they could just fish around inside his datacore and find the information they required to get through the Harem Station gate, they would’ve done that already. In fact, he was almost certain that they’d messed around in there while he was unconscious.
He decided to change tactics. “I’m just going to get straight to the point.”
“Thank the sun,” Bellatrix mumbled. Several others echoed her frustration.
“I do have emergency codes for the gates.”
The collective tried their best not to share knowing looks between themselves, but they didn’t quite pull it off.
“But it’s nothing as simple as a code.”
“Explain,” the head Boss said.
“I have a personal relationship with one of the security beacons.”
“Define personal relationship.”
“We like each other. I sent that AI a little