Thursday

Talia crouched in the bushes, carefully eyeing Evan’s parked sports car in front of her. She knew what she was doing was risky, but she needed to do something. She’d spent days hiding out in the woods already, narrowly avoiding the patrols of brainwashed women Evan had ordered to hunt her down, some of whom were her own friends. It was clear that this wasn’t going to end unless she and Nate went on the offensive.

Carefully, she edged around the corner of the car and peered into the driver’s seat. The woman in front had tan skin and plush lips, her hands locked on the steering wheel with a robotic focus. There was no doubt that she was one of Evan’s thralls. Talia took a deep breath, clutching a rock in her hand. If she was going to analyze the devices, she needed one to examine. With so many secret patrols following Nate, this was her best bet for acquiring one without being caught.

In a flurry of motion, Talia used the rock to smash the car window. The impact triggered the car alarm, blaring across the entire neighborhood. The driver, however, remained completely unfazed, staring dead ahead at the empty road. It seemed Evan had programmed her for driving and nothing more. Good, that made it easier for Talia. Without wasting any time, she carefully extracted the device from the woman’s neck.

Talia didn’t know what would happen to the woman when the device was removed, but there was no room for concern. As the pins of the device exited the woman’s skin, she fell limp onto the steering wheel, her eyes remaining eerily open. Talia was concerned for the driver, but had no time to waste caring for her. She could only hope that someone with good intentions would get her to a hospital unharmed. With nothing else she could do, Talia fled the scene with the device in hand.

Several hours later, Talia was locked up in the university’s engineering lab well after everyone else had left. There was no denying the complexity of the device, the circuitry alone was far beyond her own capabilities. However, Talia wasn’t keen on giving up. She plugged the device into a computer to examine the code, spending hours poring through data while she manually tinkered with the device itself.

To her dismay, Talia could find no reasonable way to alter or disable the device. Some part of her hoped to find some loophole that would let her free Evan’s thralls from a safe distance, but no such weakness existed. The code was locked down, she had no means of writing or deleting it with the computers available to her. The lab computers could examine parts of the code with a bit of tweaking, but altering it would be impossible without the proper tech. Still, the ability to glean some knowledge would be better than nothing.

A thought occurred to Talia as she strategized: Could someone trap Evan with a device? Evan had told Nate that the device didn’t work on men, which seemed insane to Talia. The brains of men and women are virtually identical, biologically there should be no difference in the operation of the device. Poking around in the code soon provided an answer: The device was designed to examine the subject’s before sending out any signals, registering key data about them, including gender. Evan’s father likely programmed that in for his own perverted reasons, as well as his own protection. If someone were to slap Evan with a device, or any male for that matter, it would link up briefly, but they’d be freed within moments. In other words, controlling Evan wasn’t an option.

Talia wracked her brain as she pored through the code, trying desperately to think of something that could turn the tides. The tech was just too advanced, and the securities were airtight. Anyone stuck with one of his devices was bound to him as long as he had that stupid headset…

Wait, the headset! How did the devices determine who could issue commands? Talia scoured the data again, now with a clear goal in mind. Evan may be a genius in his own right, but he was far less cautious than his father. If he stole this tech, he may have modified it for his own purposes by linking it up to his own equipment.

There may have been a way to defeat Evan, but it meant coming face-to-face with him. It meant somehow bypassing his guards and servants and catching him off guard, all without getting slapped with a device herself. Talia had no idea how to make it happen, but it looked like the only lead she had. As she rushed to store everything in her bag, something about the device in her hand caught her eye. There were three pins that were injected into the neck. She knew from the code what they did, one received signals from the brain, another sent signals aligning with commands. So what did the third do?

Talia plugged the device back in and pulled up the code. She had one more lead to play out.