Duality: Vol 2, Euphoria (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (30 page)

“Maybe you’re suffering the same problem,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt slowly, one black button at a time.

I frowned.  “I don’t suffer from my own influence, thank God.  Otherwise I would have been committed to an insane asylum a looong time ago, believe me.”

“I’m not talking about your influence,” he said.

I looked at the door.  “Are there others here?  Others who are influencing me right now?”

He shrugged, pulling the shirt off his shoulders to reveal the most perfectly-sculpted body that ever existed.  Drool actually formed in my mouth over it, and I had to swallow hard to get rid of it.  I tore my gaze away and stared at the floor, walls, and ceiling. 
Malcolm.  Think of Malcolm and his beautiful brown eyes, his bristly cheeks that get just a spot of color in them when he’s upset.  Think of his warm, strong hand in yours … how he protects you when others threaten.

It worked to snap me out of my trance, at least for now.

“You are not the only Influencer here, I already told you that,” he said, throwing his black shirt on the bed.

“Yes.  And you were going to tell me the rest of your secrets, before I give it up.” I cleared my throat as he unbuckled his belt.  “You’d better start talking or you’re going to be completely naked before I get what I want.”

He smiled just the tiniest bit.  “I promise, you’ll get everything you want and then some.”

I swallowed again and looked away.  This was a bad idea.  Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.  This guy was focused.  A beautiful Rainbow, so beautiful it almost hurt my eyes to look at him. 
Malcolm!  Where are you?!

“What would you like to know?” he asked, his belt gone now and his pants unbuttoned at the top.  His arms hung at his side and I breathed a sigh of relief that at least for now he’d stopped with the whole strip tease thing.

“How many Influencers are there here in the compound?”

He looked up at the ceiling in contemplation for a few seconds.  “Four or five.  I’m not sure.  I don’t know everyone, and I’m not privy to many of the details.”

“I thought you were Helen’s right hand man.”

He smiled, a little bitterly if I was reading his expression right.  “I am often at her right hand, but I wouldn’t say I’m her man or that she shared her confidence with me as the expression suggests.”

“Are you human?  Like totally, one hundred percent human?”  My mouth had a mind of its own.  Or my good-manners brakes weren’t working today. 
Did I just ask this guy if he’s a cyborg? 
“Sorry, that was rude.  Never mind.”

His nostrils flared and his lips went thin for a few seconds, before he answered.  “Yes.  I am human.  Although being here, it’s often that I question whether I am.  I don’t mind that you asked.  Ask me anything.  I want to feel your skin on mine.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, it took a moment for my brain to totally appreciate what he was saying.  If I didn’t have the image of Malcolm’s face swimming in my brain and my intense feelings of caring towards him, everything Zane was saying combined with his looks would have had me shoving my virginity in his face and demanding he take it. 
What the hell?

“What are they doing here at Greater Good?” I asked.  “What’s their mission?”

“They are for sale to the highest bidder.  The Influencers are used to achieve the goal paid for.”  He shrugged.  “It’s all very simple on the surface.  I don’t get involved in the logistics.  I hear they are complicated.”

“Logistics?”

“Yes, the execution of the plan.  All the pieces that must fit together for the goal to be achieved.”

“There was a bombing…”  I wondered if he knew anything about the subway thing.

“Yes.  That was a test-run.  An Influencer was sent out into the field.  He did not come back.”

“He was caught, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.  He was caught.  His influence failed to work consistently.  They are trying to find out why.”

“What do you mean, it didn’t work consistently?”

Zane took a step closer to me.  “His influence on others allows him to be unnoticeable.  He can be present without anyone seeing him.”

“Like the invisible man?” I asked, my voice very soft as I considered the possibility.

“Not exactly.  He’s there, he is not invisible.  He just cannot be seen because he makes himself unnoticeable. Negligible. Like he doesn’t matter.”

“Invisible,” I said.

He took another step, now just inches from me, his naked chest so close I could feel the warmth coming from it and see the light sprinkling of hair that led down into his pants.

He put his hand up and touched some of my hair, holding it up and putting it to his nose.  He breathed in deeply and then said, “All of the Influencers are invisible, aren’t they?  No one sees who they really are.  People just see what they want to see, what they’re forced to see.  Being an Influencer is like being a ghost in your own skin.”

Chapter Forty-Six: Malcolm

NO ONE WAS IN THE hallway where we were being kept, but as we moved through the compound, following a maze of corridors and passing closed doors, we heard plenty of voices and footsteps.  We ducked into empty closets, rooms with beds in them, and other  unoccupied spaces to avoid being seen, getting almost to the entrance where we’d first come in before finally running into another person.  This time, there were no closets or other places to hide.  Panic made my insides turn to liquid as his gaze took us in.

“Who the heck are you?” he asked.  A skinny guy wearing ugly glasses and a button-down, short sleeved shirt with a pocket on the front stared us down.  There were two pens and some clear plastic sticking out of the top of it and a white plastic card hanging over the front.  “Do you have authorization to be here in the IT section?  I don’t think so.  Let me see your ID badges.”

That’s what was hanging from his shirt.  It had his picture on it, with his hair slicked sharply to the side.  I looked down at my chest, wondering if I should pretend I forgot mine somewhere.  My three-quarter t-shirt didn’t exactly look office-worker quality.

“We don’t have badges.  We’re special guests,” said Jasmine.

“Be that as it may, you have no authorization to be in IT.  I’m going to report this.”  He moved to go around Jasmine, but she stepped in his way and blocked him from leaving.

“I have a better idea.  Why don’t you help us get un-lost?  That way you don’t get in trouble for allowing a security breach, and I don’t miss dinner.”  She smiled big.

He hesitated.  “I’m supposed to report every irregularity to the head office.”

“Every irregularity?” Jasmine laughed.  “You’d be calling the head office all day long if that were the case.”  She leaned in closer to him.  “You know … with all the weirdos wandering around in here.”

He smiled back and then stopped, looking almost guilty.  “I wouldn’t call them weirdos.”

“What would you call them?” she asked, cocking her head.

I waited breathlessly to see what he’d say.

His lips pressed together and his nostrils flared.  Then he shook his head.  “I keep my opinions to myself, just like you should.  Follow me.  I’ll bring you to the guest quarters because I’ve already got enough to deal with and I don’t need another meeting about the need for additional controls.  If they want more controls they need to hire more personnel and I’m going to tell them that next time they bring it up, too, mark my words.”  He turned around and shot us a quick frown before turning back and continuing his walk.  “If anyone finds you after I leave you in the guest wing, don’t you dare tell them I found you out here.  I don’t have time for this junk.”

Jasmine walked quickly to keep up with him.  I let them get a little bit ahead, trying to catch a glimpse into some of the rooms we were passing.  There wasn’t much to see at first, but as we got closer to our destination, the activity picked up.  Doors were open and sounds were coming out of some of them.  We passed several people in the hallways, but they were all too busy to pay attention to us.  Apparently, having an IT escort was all it took to look like we belonged here.

“You have a lot of high end security here,” said Jasmine, looking up in a corner of the hallway where a security camera’s red light blinked.  “You all on one platform or subsystems?”

“Our security platform integrates what are usually separate subsystems like video management, access control, VoIP and video analytics into one platform.  It’s state of the art.”  He stopped and looked at her, back to frowning.  “Why are you asking these questions?”  He put his hands on his hips.

“Oh, no reason.  I do a lot of gaming at home and we have a security system too, but they’re separate.  I was wondering if there was a way I could hook it all together so I wouldn’t have to get off Halo to answer the door.”

The IT guy snorted.  “Yeah, right.  Better stick to your gaming.  It takes serious skill to do what I do.  And we’re the only facility in the world that harnesses psychic energy to power our systems.  There’s no gaming console in the world that can do that.”  He left us standing there and continued his journey.

I grabbed Jasmine’s arm and squeezed it.  “Don’t,” I said quietly.

“He has no clue about IT skills.  I could disable his system in two minutes, max.”  She glared at the security camera that was up ahead, the tenth one I’d seen since we left our jail cell.  “Especially if they’re using people like you and Rae to power shit.  What a bunch of idiots.  Anyone in IT knows you don’t put human elements in places where computers can do the work.  That’s a hole, dude.  That’s a fucking trap door as big as the front door that I could walk through and bring an army in with me.”

“
You
know that and now
I
know that.  But do we want
him
to know that?”  I stared her down, waiting for her common sense to kick in and push her pride out of the way.

“Fine.  I’ll keep my mouth shut.  But he’d better not talk to me like I’m stupid.”  She left me to follow the guy around a corner.

I hurried to catch up, reaching them when they stopped at the end of a long corridor that had several doors on either side.

“This is the guest wing.  I’m not sure which rooms are yours, though.  You’re on your own.  I have work to do.  Important work,” he said, giving Jasmine bug-eyes as he walked past her.

She flipped a bird and stuck her tongue out at his back.

I held back a smirk until he was gone around the corner.  “Okay, so here we are,” I said, slinging my arm over Jasmine’s shoulder.  “Now what do we do?”  I looked down at her, waiting for her response.

She opened her mouth to say something, but the words never made it out.  A door flew open and a shirtless fat guy fell out onto the ground in the middle of the hallway, his pants down around his knees.

Chapter Forty-Seven: Rae

ZANE SNAPPED OUT OF THE trance he’d been in, playing with my hair or feeling sorry for the Influencers or whatever, and put his hand on my shoulder.  “Time to pay the piper,” he said, giving me another stunning smile.  He bent down, his lids dropping down as he got nearer.

I slid out of his grasp and moved closer to the door, wondering if I’d be able to outrun him.  He was tall with long legs.  I was willing to bet he jogged a lot too.  He was too in-shape to think otherwise.

“What are you doing?” he asked, turning around. He didn’t look quite as happy as he had two seconds ago.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say my Rainbow grip was slipping.

“Nothing.  Just … getting some space between us.  I get nervous when people get too close.”

“Why?” he sneered.  “You too good for other people?”

I was shocked by his quick change of mood.  He’d gone from sexy to assholey in the space of three seconds.

“No, I don’t think I’m too good.”  It was stupid, but his words hurt my feelings.  I’d always thought the exact opposite about myself.

“Too pretty, then?  You’re too pretty for a guy like me to touch?”

“What?  No!  Don’t be ridiculous.”  I stared at him, noticing something weird, and it wasn’t just his change in attitude.  The angrier he got at my rejection, the quicker he lost that attractive quality that’d made me go gah-gah over him earlier.  His skin wasn’t quite so smooth-looking now and his hair not so perfectly shiny and styled.  His jaw was weak and pointy where it had once appeared strong and square.

His pants started to slide down, his big gut expanding the loosened waistband until it couldn’t take the pressure anymore.

Gut? Since when did Zane have a gut?  What happened to that glorious six-pack?

I looked back up at his face and my mouth dropped open.  “What’s happening to you?” I whispered.

He took three steps towards me, a malevolent smile taking over his expression. “What’s the matter, Rae?  You don’t like what you see anymore?”

I moved back until my hand was on the door.  “Stop right there, Zane.  I’m not kidding.  I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but there’s something wrong with your face.”

He tipped his head back and laughed; it had a distinctly bitter quality to it.  “Something wrong with my
face?
  That’s a good one.”  He glared at me again.  “There’s never anything wrong with my face!  My face is perfect!  Look at it!  Can’t you see?”  He picked up a hand mirror from the side table and threw it at me violently, making it crash against the wall right next to my head.  Big shards of glass bounced off my arm and landed at my feet.  “Of course you can’t see,” he growled.  “No one can.  I’m invisible.”

Suddenly two and two made four in my brain.  The math added up, and I realized what had been staring me in the face all along.

“You’re an Influencer, Zane, aren’t you?”

He glared at me, angry tears shining in his eyes.  “What was your first clue?”  He took one more step, now almost close enough to reach out and grab me.

I turned the handle of the door, preparing to yank it open.  I prayed the reason I could see Zane for who he really is was standing just outside in the hallway.