Forbidden Worlds - Box Set (42 page)

She nodded and stumbled off, hating herself for wanting it, for needing a repeat performance. Cursing Jared Simon, she headed for her office to get cleaned up.

Chapter 9

“I find it very difficult to read you, Tess. Sydney’s face hides your emotions too easily.” Melissa sipped a cup of hot tea while she made notes during their morning session, and Tess stared longingly at the steam rising from the cup. The faint essence of chamomile and honey teased her weary senses, and for the first time since the transfer, she missed being able to eat or drink anything besides Marc’s protein bars and bottled water.

A cup of tea might have soothed her jangled nerves right about now.

“I don’t understand. Sydney has eighty-six more facial muscles than a human body does. She can telegraph any expression I want or any emotion I feel.”

“But she doesn’t. Unless you’re emotionally blank right now. You look perfectly happy and content, yet I sense something is bothering you. You’re tapping your foot and smoothing out wrinkles in your pants that aren’t there. Are you agitated?”

“No. I’m a little anxious to get to work, I suppose. I admit I’ve been a little too preoccupied to work on my notes, and I’m falling behind. I was hoping to spend today catching up.”

“That’s all?”

“Plus I told Marc I’d spend the night at the lab so he can monitor my temperature. It’s been running a little high, and he’s concerned.”

“That makes you nervous?”

“He enjoys using anal probes.” Tess cocked a brow, hoping to diffuse Melissa’s line of inquiry with some humor.

The psychiatrist took another sip of tea. “I thought
you
did too.”

“Oh, we’re judging now, doctor?”

“Well, forgive me if I’m mistaken, but yesterday you were all about the sex romp you had planned with your neighbor, the bodybuilder. Today, suddenly, you can’t wait to settle down in your office and work on a dissertation?”

“I have a lot to write about.” Tess didn’t meet Melissa’s gaze. Her mind’s eye replayed the scene in Jared’s office, and involuntarily her body stiffened. She had to concentrate on breathing slowly to keep from squirming in her seat.

“I’m very concerned about you. You’re normally very easy to engage in conversation. I’d categorize you as shy but personable. Once you get to know someone, you interact with them on a comfortable level. That’s changed over the past few days.”

“I’m still getting used to my new...environment.”

“I don’t think it’s that. I think you’ve experienced things you don’t want to talk about.”

“Not true.” She wished she could talk about everything that had happened to her, everything Sydney had done and wanted to do, but she figured all it would get her was a swift trip back to her own body.

“If you want to talk about something in confidence, you can. Anything you ask me not to discuss with Jared or Marc, I won’t.”

Tess tilted her head. “You expect me to believe that? Part of the protocol is full disclosure. Anything I tell you has to be recorded.”

Melissa leaned forward and clasped her hands in front of her. “Anything Tess the researcher tells me about her physical and psychological experiences inside the android body, I have to report. If Tess the woman wants to confide in me about something truly personal, I’m bound by ethics to keep that information to myself.”

Tess wondered how she would distinguish one type of knowledge from the other. Everything that she had felt and thought and wished and imagined since Friday evening had been because she was inside Sydney’s body. There was nothing that had happened to Tess that hadn’t happened to Sydney as well.

“Are you starting to fear losing yourself?”

“No. I told you that already.”

“Each day is different. What wasn’t true yesterday could be true today.”

“No changes. I feel the same.”

“How are you sleeping?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t find it disturbing to wake up twice through the night to hydrate the body?”

Tess glanced away. “Nope. I normally get up through the night, so it’s no big deal.”

“What about your new connection to your neighbor? How are you dealing with that?”

“I’m done with that. It was just sex. I’m over him.”

Melissa’s eyes widened. “That quickly?”

“He’s shallow. He brought over a porno to play on TV while we had sex. He’s never once asked Sydney anything about herself except where she worked, which he should have known because Tess told him I was a colleague.”

Melissa’s pen scratched rapidly on her notepad. The sound irritated Tess.

“You switched point of view there.”

“Oh, fuck off, Melissa!” Tess shot up from the couch. “I’m so sick of you jumping on every single word. I, me, Tess, Sydney. How would you say it? Would you be able to perfectly articulate the difference between yourself and the persona of the artificial body you were living in? It’s not easy to become someone else. I have to act like Sydney when I’m outside this building, and it’s not fucking easy, okay?”

“Okay.” The doctor’s well-modulated voice dipped low, but the soothing tone only grated on Tess’s raw nerves even more. “Maybe it would be better if you stayed here at Gentron for the next few days. It might have been a mistake to design the protocol so that you had to interact with the outside world as someone other than yourself.”

“Do you
think
?”

“You said you’d be able to handle it.”

“I
am
handling it. It’s just...harder than I thought it would be.” Tess settled a bit. She had to placate Melissa and get out of her office. She needed to get some work done, then go to Marc and see if he could adjust her sensory receptors so she wasn’t constantly in a pre-orgasmic state.

“We can help you. You don’t have to figure this all out on your own.”

Tess nodded. “I know. I’m sorry I went off on you. I’m a little conflicted.”

“That’s understandable. Why don’t you go to your office, do what you need to do and I’ll drop in on you later and see how you are? Like you said, maybe catching up on your work will help you. You’ve had a long weekend, a bit of a wild one, and you need to refocus your energies.”

“Perfect, doc. I think you hit it exactly.” Tess headed for the door, but Melissa stopped her with a word.

“Sydney.”

“What?”

“Nothing,
Tess
. Go get some work done.”

Outside Melissa’s office Tess leaned against the wall and sighed. What had that been about? Was Melissa trying to manipulate her into admitting she was having trouble distinguishing between Sydney and herself?

The bitch.

Chapter 10

“Are you feeling any better?” Marc asked when Tess arrived at the Level 4 security lab at six p.m. He had a diagnostic bed all set up and was arranging a number of monitors around it.

Her own body lay in the bed next to it, but Tess refused to allow her gaze to wonder over in that direction.

“Let me guess, Melissa told you I was pissy to her this morning.”

“She said you were agitated and you needed some time alone to get work done.” He smiled and shrugged as if her avoidance of him throughout the day didn’t bother him, but the disappointment showed in his eyes. That bothered her, but she tried to ignore it.

“So I’ll be sleeping here?”
Or pretending to
. “Not in the diagnostic chair?”

“I figured you’d be more comfortable in a bed.”

“Can we pull the curtain around?” she asked. She’d never be able to concentrate if she had to keep looking at Tess lying there hooked up to all those tubes and wires.

“Sure.” Marc obliged by yanking the semi-opaque privacy curtain along the ceiling track between the beds. Tess felt better the moment her real self was out of view.

“How am I doing?” She jerked her head in the direction of the now hidden bed.

“You’re fine. Your vitals are holding stable. No brain activity, but we haven’t detected any organ degeneration yet, so we’re all good.”

She ran a finger along the rough institutional blankets of the empty bed and wondered how they’d feel abrading her naked skin.

Stop!
Tess’s voice rang in her head. She’d spent the afternoon forcing herself to write clinical sounding journal entries about her experiences, but at least a hundred times her mind had drifted off to dirty little scenarios where she seduced Marc or Jared or both of them. She’d practically come just thinking about one of them holding her down while the other fucked her, one of them fucking her while the other watched, both of them taking her simultaneously.

She shivered. This had to end. She had to find a way to control it. Being Sydney was supposed to be liberating. Living life as a beautiful woman for a week was supposed to be amazing fun. Instead she felt completely enslaved.

“Marc, I’m having a bit of an issue with the body.”

He turned to her immediately, concern written on his handsome face. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, a couple of things. First off, can you check the fluid levels? I forgot to hydrate last night and found out what happens when I don’t drink enough water.”

He nodded and reached for a scanner. “Why don’t you lie down and I’ll run the diagnostic sequence? That should pick up any abnormalities we need to know about.”

“Sure.” Her fingers went to the buttons of her blouse.

“You don’t have to get undressed if you don’t want to. I’m just going to put a couple of electrodes on your wrists for now.”

Disappointed, she dropped her hands and slid onto the bed. Sydney wanted to strip for him. She wanted to lie naked while he bent over her and studied every inch of her yearning flesh.

She bit her tongue as punishment for such ridiculous thoughts, but it didn’t hurt as much as it should have.

“So what happened? Did you start to lose motor control?”

“Big time. I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

“It’s all right. I’ve already suggested we design the bodies with a timer function that will actually simulate hunger and thirst at the appropriate times. This way a patient won’t be able to forget.”

“Yeah, that might help.” Tess watched him affix the electrodes to her wrists. The pressure of his fingers on her skin left her hyper-aware. He smelled good, like spicy aftershave. She tried to concentrate on his voice, though, rather than his enticing scent.

“Was there something else?”

“The sensory receptors. They’re too sensitive.”

He raised a brow. “Really? Are they causing you pain?”

“Yes.” She practically jumped on that. She needed to be numb for a bit so Tess could think without Sydney practically humping her brain. She had a scientist’s mind in a nymphomaniac’s body, a recipe for disaster.

“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“It wasn’t so bad at first.” No, at first it had been exquisite.

“The intensity is increasing?”

She nodded, and he frowned. Her lie sent him outside the privacy curtain to retrieve more equipment. When he returned a moment later he had more scanners and more electrodes which he affixed to her forehead and her ankles.

“Let me take some baseline readings and I’ll see what I can do. Where is the pain localized? Fingertips?”

“All over.”

“How about temperature? Are you getting hot and cold mixed up?”

“No, but everything just feels...
more
than it should. Am I making sense?”

“Yeah. I think I can fix it with a couple of adjustments. Don’t worry.” He brushed her hair back from her face and smiled reassuringly. “You’ll be right as rain by morning. Why don’t you try to get some sleep now and I’ll work on the calibrations?”

“Oh.” Sleep already? “Okay. Thanks.”

He left her alone behind the curtain.

Tess’s mind raced. Now would be the perfect time to sleep. She could ask Marc to monitor her brain waves and make sure she didn’t fade away as soon as she let go her hold on consciousness. She opened her mouth to call him back but stopped herself. If her brainwaves did show signs of degradation he’d have to put her right back in her own body and that wouldn’t do. Besides, she wasn’t tired. Sydney’s body didn’t experience fatigue or show it. What if the transferred mind turned out not to need sleep? Imagine the consequences of having a population that didn’t need down time. What feats could human beings accomplish if they never had to sleep?

She lay back on the bed, and concentrated on the sounds and smells of the lab. At least her body could appear to be at rest so Marc could get his temperature readings, but she wouldn’t have to let go, she wouldn’t have to waste any of her precious seven days being unconscious.

* * * *

Hours later Tess became aware of movement near the bed. She hadn’t been sleeping, just in a sort of meditative state, thinking, wondering, playing out scenarios in her head where Sydney became the face of Gentron’s immortality division. She’d envisioned demonstrating her sexual tolerances for Jared Simon’s private clients.

Marc’s soft voice intruded on her thoughts. “How are you doing, Tess?”

She was about to answer him when she realized he wasn’t speaking to her.

“You’re hanging on, that’s good. I know you can’t hear me, but I don’t want you to worry about anything. You’ll be back home soon.”

Tess sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Fortunately the electrode leads on her wrists, ankles and forehead were long enough that she didn’t disturb any of the equipment when she moved. Carefully, she moved the privacy curtain aside and peeked at the neighboring bed.

Marc stood next to her comatose body. He was smoothing her hair away from her face and holding one of her limp hands in his. “Your electrolytes are a little low, so I’m going to start an infusion. That will make you feel better. We don’t want you weak and dehydrated when you get your body back.”

Tess let the curtain fall back into place. She’d never seen Marc like that. Though he was a physician as well as a robotics engineer, he’d never dealt with any real patients since she’d begun working with him. She’d never experienced his bedside manner or thought he even possessed any. At Gentron he was a mechanic, more at home with wires and scanners and liquid crystal memory fluid pumps than with people.

Something about his caring manner touched her. He acted like Tess mattered to him, like he wanted her to come back. She wondered if he’d feel that way after he had Sydney.

“Marc?” She used her breathiest voice. “Is that you?”

A second later he parted the curtain. “Hey, how are you?”

“I’m fine. Isn’t it time for me to drink something?”

“Yes. I’ll get you some water. Do you want a protein bar?”

“Sure. How are the readings?”

He laughed and ran a hand though his hair, causing it to stand up in unruly spikes. “I honestly haven’t looked. I’ve been working on those calibrations for you. How about we unhook these leads and you can and eat while I run the tapes?”

She gave him half a nod and watched while he removed the electrodes. Glad to be free of the electronic tethers, she followed him out of the curtained alcove to his work area where a printer was busily churning out yards of paper tape.

He handed her a protein bar and a premeasured bulb of water, then turned to retrieve the spewing tape.

She ate slowly while he studied the printouts. “How come you don’t spool all that to your iPad?”

He laughed. “I’d love to, but the systems still aren’t compatible. I’ve been working on an interface, but with all the time I’ve been spending on Sydney, I haven’t had time to finish it. It’s all this damn proprietary software.”

“So what does it show? Am I gonna live, doc?”

He scanned the tapes in silence for a second, and when he looked it, it was clear her quip had gone over his head. “Umm...your core temperature never dropped below 100, and when we started the monitors it was 100.9. That concerns me.”

“Is it damaging any internal systems?”

“I’m not sure yet. It could be the reason why the sensory receptors are overloaded.”

“What can we do about it?”

He read through a few more yards of tape before responding. “I need to conduct a few tests on some of the spare parts we have before I subject you to anything. I know you’re uncomfortable, but can the adjustments wait until tomorrow? I want to be sure I’m using the right approach.”

Tess sighed. Had she really been in pain she might have protested, but she could manage this hyper-aroused state for another day if she had to. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

“Good. I’m sorry. I just want to be sure of the reason for the temperature spike before I attempt to correct anything.”

“Should I go lie down again so you can get more readings?”

“If you want to, but you really don’t have to stay here all night. If my theories are correct, you can come in tomorrow and I can fix you right up.”

Tess weighed her options. She could stay here and maybe chance falling asleep with Marc to watch over her, or she could go home, find Tye and get some relief for her still aching pussy. Or she could get that right here.

While Marc studied the readouts, she studied his features. He had a strong jaw, cool blue eyes and graceful, long-fingered hands. Under his lab coat his body was toned but not bulging with muscles like Tye’s. She imagined sex with him would be gentle and sweet and meaningful.

Did Sydney deserve that? Did she even want it? The best thing about Tye was, he’d forget about the sultry redhead as soon as she left town, and he’d be fine. Marc seemed like the type of guy who made connections, who wanted a real relationship. He seemed that way, but really, Tess had no idea. She’d never known him to date and had always assumed he didn’t have time, just like she didn’t have time.

“Marc, do you want to—”

“Hmm? Thanks, Tess. I know you didn’t want to spend so much time in the lab. I’ve got all the data I need so why don’t you go home and get some real rest?”

She slouched in disappointment and stood watching him for another minute while his skillful hands flew over this keyboard and that touchpad. He’d forgotten about her now that he had a scientific puzzle to solve. Interesting. She’d always imagined Marc just wasn’t interested in a Plain Jane like Tess, but maybe he wasn’t interested in women at all.

Part of her wanted to test the theory by throwing herself at him. No straight man would be able to resist Sydney’s perfection. But the thought of him rejecting her left her cold. Better to fantasize that he’d succumb than find out for sure that he wouldn’t.

“Goodnight, Marc. Thanks for your help.”

He waved absently, and she walked away, collected her shoes and purse and left the lab.

She waved to Lars on the way out, and he held up a hand. “It’s very late, Ms. Simon. Would you like me to walk you to your car?”

She almost said yes, just for the company, but thinking better of it, Tess declined. In the state Sydney was in right now, she didn’t want to chance trying to seduce the guard who had a wife and a number of kids at home. She didn’t want to be that type of woman, even for a week.

Tess’s car sat alone in its row of the parking lot, near enough to a lamp post that she had no fear of walking to it by herself. When she reached out to tap her passcode into the security pad on the driver’s door, though, a shadow fell across hers.

She knew him instantly by his scent, so she didn’t even turn around. “Jared. Are you stalking me?”