Hello, Gorgeous!. MaryJanice Davidson

      “Office of Scientific Findings. And yes. You do. We own you.” He smiled, revealing very white teeth. “Want to see the receipt?”

      “Drop dead, you bloodless bastard.”

      “Such a lack of gratitude, considering that we saved your life. Three times, if the reports are correct. And they always are.”

      She was silent, thinking, I never asked you to. Never, not one time. The question was, would she rather be dead than under the Boss’s thumb?

      And here was what kept her up nights: Could they undo what they had done? Push a button from H.Q. and zap all the nanobytes into oblivion?

      Could she go on if they did that? Go back to being normal? As normal as she had ever been anyway?

      Annoyingly, he was still talking. “Caitlyn, dear, we’ve spent a fortune on you. A bloody fortune. If we traded you, we could get Alaska in exchange.”

      “So? I didn’t ask you to save me. You were snooping all the channels, looking for a guinea pig. Some no-nothing loser—”

      “Don’t be so hard on yourself, darling.”

      “—to tinker and fiddle with and—and change.”

      “For the better, which you seem not to have noticed.”

      “Don’t expect my goddamned gratitude, you snake. Just because you’ve souped me up a bit, I’m supposed to do your dirty work? Fuck you.”

      “Yes, so you’ve said. However, free will—at least in the O.S.F.—is an illusion. We work for a higher power here, Caitlyn. Your—how did you put it? Your indentured servitude is necessary so millions of Americans can enjoy their freedom. When you think about it,” he added, sighing again, “you seem awfully selfish.”

      “Pal, you haven’t seen the least of it.”

      “Think of the havoc you could wreak on terrorism if you only applied yourself.”

      “Think of the havoc I could wreak on your lungs if I only applied myself.”

      “This attitude of yours…I’ve given you time to see things in a more mature and, shall we say, less stupid manner—”

      “Blow me.”

      “It’s too bad.” He pressed a button on his desk. She could hear a hissing sound, like a snake caught in the ventilation shaft.

      Warning. Warning. Unidentified gas in the vicinity.

      Analyzing: three parts gas to one hundred parts room air. Dispensing nanobytes to lungs to facilitate oxygen extraction.

      “I hope, after you’ve rested, we can begin anew. With a fresh attitude. This tiresome squabbling is getting us nowhere. Really, it’s—why are you still conscious?”

      “Oh, I’ve been holding my breath,” she said. It had been surprisingly easy. “I can do it until I need to leave, which is right now.”

      “Hmmmm.” He pushed another button, and the hissing stopped. “Just as well. Some of that was going to float over here, and I didn’t want to go to the trouble of finding my mask in this mess.” He indicated the piles of files. “Caitlyn, I’ll be honest with you—”

      “After you just squirted knockout gas at me? And who does that, by the way? It’s like I’m trapped in a bad episode of The Bionic Woman!”

      “Oh, it is not! Stop being so dramatic. Just last week I knocked out the Speaker of the House. Now, be fair. When have I ever misled you?”

      “Go on,” she grumbled.

      “Very good. You are the first of your kind, a fully functioning cybernetic organism who has retained your humanity. More, you are a human cybernetic organism, and thus you are held back only by the limitations of your own mind.”

      He seemed to expect her to say something, but she had no comment. Frankly, she wasn’t quite sure where he was going with any of this.

      “Simply put,” he continued, “we don’t know your limits. I suspect you don’t either. You shouldn’t have been able to analyze the gas so quickly, but you did. You shouldn’t have been able to disarm our team so quickly, but you did. And this with no formal training! Needless to say, the fact that you are more than you were is a tremendous validation of our work. The nanobytes we—”

      “Infected me with.”

      “—placed within you are now as much a part of you as your heart, your lungs, your delightfully annoying personality. We need you, Caitlyn. We must have you, in fact.”

      “I think I liked it better when you were spraying gas.” That was nothing but the truth. His honesty was horrifying. It was awful to find out someone you couldn’t stand would do anything to hang on to you.

      “You were very expensive, but that’s not the least of it. There are men in this world who make me look like the late, lamented Mister Rogers. Men who would gut and rape your friend Stacy and then sit down to a steak dinner. Men who would do that on a global scale if given the chance. We have to stop them. We need you to do it.”

      “But I—I never wanted to be a spy. I don’t know anything about it and I don’t think I’d be good at it. Seriously, Eggman, you don’t want me.”

      “Well, we have you. And you know more than you think. You won’t give off ‘spy vibes,’ for want of a better phrase, so you can go places many of our operatives can’t. Who will suspect a comely, giddy twenty-five-year-old of being a government assassin?”

      “Twenty-four,” she said automatically. Then, “Whoa, whoa. I’m not killing anybody, pal. No way.”

      “I’ll let you decide that,” he said generously, “when the time comes.”

      “You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

      “I’ve been known to have that effect on young women.”

      She shuddered. Ick! “What if we make a deal, O short, dark, and evil one?”

      “I’m listening, O annoying, tall, and orange-haired one.”

      “One job. Just one. Pick your biggest badass, and I’ll go after him. Take him out, stop him from blowing up the world, bitch-slap him, whatever. And then we’re quits. You saved my life, I saved your job. We’re even. We’re done.”

      “That sounds fine.”

      “What? Really? It does?”

      “Yes.”

      “Huh. According to the chip in my head, you’re telling the truth.”

      “I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve heard voices in your head.” He rose and extended his hand. She shook it, ignoring the urge to squeeze until bone splinters appeared and he screamed and screamed. Maybe next time. “Welcome aboard, Caitlyn. We’ll be in touch.”

      God help me.

Part Two

      Chapter 4

      Caitlyn walked into Magnifique, noting with approval that every seat had a butt in it. She had used her inheritance to buy it as soon as she got out of college, and it was one of the most popular hair salons in St. Paul. It was her sweetheart, her baby. She’d been away too long.

      And she figured the quickest way to get back to normal was to, well, be normal. Which meant getting back to Mag’s day-to-day running, pronto.

      “Jenny,” she said, and the receptionist waved, turned her head to the left, and tapped her headset, which was so small, Caitlyn never knew if she was on the phone or not.

      “…uh-huh…yes, we’ve got you down for next Saturday at two o’clock…uh-huh…yep, highlights, lowlights, and a cut…well, we’ll see you then.” She punched a button on her console