Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

through space. So much of it was automatic. One couldn’t fathom how much until one tried to provide the impulses for someone else’s body, using one’s own will while simultaneously suppressing theirs. Mandy was responding poorly. Shuffling, clumsy. Ava could not get the girl to shut her mouth and keep it closed. The drooling was driving her crazy, and it was all the more grotesque with Mandy’s sexpot beauty, her heavily lashed blue eyes vacant behind the goggles, her pupils vastly dilated by the X-Cog prep drugs.

      Ava fancied that X-Cog master-crowning required a skill level comparable to what it must take to play an instrument at a professional level. It required intense concentration to make the crowned person move and speak naturally. Unless you upped the doses, which lowered the subject’s resistance, but melted their brains in a scant hour. Not cost efficient. One had to be a virtuoso, like her, and Dr. O, of course.

      This rendered the X-Cog interface less commercially feasible. How many people were willing to put in the hours to hone a new skill? People were lazy, contemptible slobs, as a rule. They needed things to be easy.

      Ava was committed to finding a way to make X-Cog accessible to anyone with the money to pay for it, and Mandy was the umpteenth effort to that end. But a virtuoso needed a decent instrument to play. Not a thick, dull, unresponsive piece of shit.

      Ava yanked off the master crown and flung it onto the table, more forcefully than she should have, considering how much it cost to develop and produce. The streamlined silver cap was very different from Dr. O’s heavy, clunky design, which had given her tension headaches. Dr. O hadn’t bothered with aesthetics. Dr. O had been a results man.

      The new design was her own graceful innovation. Everything essential was there, but the end result was a light-as-air tangle of flexible wires and sensors on a light mesh cap. Both master and slave crowns were designed to be easily concealed beneath a hat, scarf, or wig.

      Ava’s brilliance was wasted on Mandy. The dumb little bitch was going straight into the shredder. Mandy whimpered as Ava wrenched goggles and crown off the girl’s head, yanking out long blond hair. She whipped the master crown glasses off. Stupid, talentless cow. Crowning her was like trying to send nervous impulses through a lump of clay.

      Ava smoothed glossy black hair back and stared at Mandy, who swayed on her feet, gaping. The girl was dressed in the silver spandex jog bra and shorts that Ava had mandated as a uniform for X-Cog test subjects. She liked her girls to look sexy and sharp. But Mandy looked anything but sharp, with drool trailing off her chin.

      The look on the girl’s face disgusted her. She slapped Mandy. The girl stumbled against the table, looking vaguely confused.

      Ava slapped her again, harder. And again. Smack. Smack. Blood trickled from Mandy’s nose, from her split lip. The girl’s hands crept up, tried to cover her face. Ava struck Mandy’s ears, whapped the back of her head, knocking her forward. Mandy thudded heavily to her knees.

      “Back off, Av. That’s millions of dollars you’re kicking around.”

      Ava spun around, and shot a poisonous look at the man who had just walked in. “Mind your own fucking business, Des.”

      Desmond jerked his chin towards Mandy. “She is my business.”

      “She’s a worthless piece of shit,” Ava hissed.

      “Don’t take your frustration out on her.” Desmond’s arrogant, know-it-all tone made her want to put out one of his bright blue eyes. “You thought that upping the burn would give you more direct control with the crown at a lower dose of the drug. You were wrong. Too bad. Honest mistake. We won’t make it again. Grow up, Ava. Move on.”

      “But the basic idea is sound! Next time, I’ll recalibrate the—”

      “No.” The curt word cut her off. “We reached the point of diminishing returns weeks ago. No more cutting, no more burning.”

      There was no arguing with Des when he got that tone. He was the one with the money, the contacts. He’d funded her whole show, since Dr. O bit the dust. But bumping up against the limits of her power over him made her bad tempered. She kicked Mandy’s buttock viciously. The girl lurched forward with a pathetic grunt. “Don’t lecture me,” she said, sulkily. “I’m the one who’s clubbing with the stinking masses to troll for test subjects! Wasting time I should spend on research, bumping and grinding with Ecstasy whores like her!” She kicked Mandy again, making her whimper. “I need to delegate this tedious shit!”

      “I’m trying, babe, but I don’t understand why you’re so set on wiping them. I enjoy crowning the ones who aren’t burned or cut much better. It’s that inner resistance that makes it exciting, you know?”

      Ava snorted. “It’s not about excitement. You’ve never tried to crown a subject into anything more complex than sucking on your dick. Try making one of them type a string of code, and see how far you get. You can compel a girl to blow you by putting a twenty dollar gun to her head. You don’t need a ten million dollar X-Cog crown. I want to market X-Cog to defense contractors. Understand? Are you with me here?”

      “Fellatio is actually a pretty complex motor process.” Des sounded faintly hurt. “Particularly when you’re hung.”

      Ava rolled her eyes. “Please. Leave the neuroscience to me.”

      Des waved that away. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

      “I don’t want to hear the bad news,” she said pettishly.

      “Then I’ll tell you the good news, first.” He nudged Mandy thoughtfully with his toe. “We need a steady supply of high quality, hand-selected lab rats. We also need someone to deal with our disposal issue. Remember Tom Bixby, from the Haven?”

      Ava grimaced. Bixby had been one of Dr. O’s rich pets. One who’d survived and thrived after Dr. O’s Brain Potential Program. Off to Harvard with Dessie. She still remembered his hot eyes, his groping hands. “An arrogant prick, as I recall. That’s your brilliant idea?”

      “He runs his own private military company. Bixby Enterprises. It’s gotten huge. I think X-Cog would be extremely interesting to him. And we would have multiple layers of security, since he’s Club O.”

      Ava’s lip curled. “But he’s a dickhead.”

      Des’s eyes rolled impatiently. “Don’t be a spoiled baby. Offering him a partnership would solve all our problems in one move.”

      “And create a lot more,” she said.

      Des’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve set up a demo. You will be good, Ava.”

      Well, look at him. Throwing his weight around. Trying to whip her into line with his big dick. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me the bad news,” she said. “Maybe it’ll cheer me up.”

      Des stared at her, nostrils distended, cheeks reddening. Anger turned him on. A fact she often turned to her advantage. “I was at a Parrish Foundation board meeting today,” he said finally. “Parrish is taking over where his bitch of a wife left off. Getting rid of Linda distracted him for a while, but the party’s over, everybody out of the pool. He’s engaged a panel of financial forensics experts to examine every penny of Parrish Foundation money spent in the past three years. And to vet all future projects. No more cutting it close.”

      “Oh, God,” Ava moaned. “I’m so close to a breakthrough!”

      “I know, but what can you do. He’s as much of a pit bull as his ballbusting wife, may she burn in hell. The Morality Police don’t want anything naughty going down, after Dr. O’s big scandal.”

      “Fucking hypocrites. ‘Helix was a victim, too,’” Ava mimicked.

      Des looked at the moaning girl at his feet. “This shit does not look good, Av. Save it for when we can afford a more secret facility, and that won’t be until after we get control of the Foundation board.”

      “It can’t wait! Besides, no one will miss her. She’s just a whore that I scraped