Page 9 of Dark Chains: First Link
Knowing William, he had made sure that was the case, but Kian had to ask.
"All calls through this line are routed through our satellite and are as secure as any call we've placed to him. Every call to and from this device passes through our encryption layer."
That was at least one concern addressed. Losham was in charge now, so he had probably excluded his line from the standard Brotherhood monitoring. If one of his so-called brothers was trying to gather dirt on him, though, all he would seewas encrypted traffic that the Brotherhood's experts couldn't decipher. Still, if Volkov was legit and he had something of value to offer the clan, they couldn't rely on him and his friends stealing Losham's phone each time to make contact. They would need to get a communication device to the scientist the same way they had done for Areana.
"If Volkov is legitimate, and if he has something we need, we'll have to establish an independent communication channel with him."
"I've been thinking along the same lines," Onegus said. "The problem is that it won't be as easy to deliver as the one we delivered to Areana. Not that hers was easy, but it was doable. This is going to be much more difficult. That being said, having a base in Safe Harbor at least makes distance a non-issue."
The chief was right. The micro-drone that had been used to deliver the communication earpiece to the harem had been dropped from a larger drone that had passed over the island too high for detection. It had worked because Carol had been able to provide exact coordinates and because the harem was isolated and had large grounds covered by dense vegetation.
"From Eluheed's descriptions, the lab building is located within the military installation, so flying even a tiny drone there is not a good idea. But if the scientists or the soldiers can move freely around the island, we can agree on a location and deliver it there." Kian swiveled his chair around and looked out the windows at the village below. "But that's a worry for later. We will need to figure that out after we talk to Volkov and the others."
"You are right," Onegus concurred. "Should I place the call now?"
Kian looked at the clock on his desk. They had been talking for eleven minutes, so they still had some time to spare. "What's your gut telling you?"
Onegus was quiet for a beat. "My gut says that this is a rare opportunity, but I'm not sure for what. The man on the phone was nervous but controlled and sounded like someone who knew that he was making the most important call of his life. He wasn't performing. He wasn't reading from a script, and the information he volunteered was designed to establish credibility without revealing too much. That's smart. It's also what a genuine defector does. Not that Volkov or Petrov are defectors. They are more like indentured servants who are trying to find a way out. The soldiers want to defect, and I wonder why."
"We are not in the business of assisting defecting soldiers," Kian said. "On the other hand, we helped Dalhu and Robert escape, so perhaps we are in the business of helping island defectors after all."
"The enhanced soldiers are a special case," Onegus said. "They're an anomaly, and anomalies don't fit neatly into existing categories, which is what makes them both dangerous and potentially useful."
Kian chuckled. "The word potentially is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. What do you think we could do with them?"
"I don't know, but having access to them and the scientists who created them is better than having no access and guessing what their capabilities are."
"That's a smart observation, Chief. Let's find out exactly what we are dealing with. Make the call."
5
DAVE
The collective consciousness of Dave didn't get impatient or bored. They could occupy themselves endlessly by running ideas and newly acquired information across eight parallel streams of thought, making calculations, coming up with strategic scenarios, or just philosophizing. That was one of the advantages of being eight minds fused into one. Boredom was the failure of a single mind to keep itself occupied, and that didn't apply when there were seven other minds to share everything with.
Still, the waiting was tedious, especially for the humans and the newly transitioned immortal, and their anxiety saturated the small bedroom like smoke from a simmering fire.
They were staring at the phone as if by doing so they would make it ring sooner, their hearts beating faster in their anticipation. Mattie's sounded the loudest, and Dimitri's took second place. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles in a pose that was trying to project calm but failed because his jaw was so clenched that the faint grinding of his teeth was audible.
Petrov was the least stressed, perhaps because of the alcohol smoothing the rough edges of his psyche, or perhaps because he was the oldest and most experienced of the group. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes were closed, but he wasn't sleeping. His breathing pattern was shallow, and his right foot was tapping against the floor. Dave had noticed that when the scientist was thinking hard, his body went still everywhere except for that one foot.
Still, it was difficult to ignore the emotional scents the three were producing. Their anxiety had a chemical signature that the collective could detect and analyze, thanks to the education they had received during their lab visits.
Cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine were not names they had learned growing up in the enclosure or later in the training camp. But after months of experimentation on their bodies, they had learned to recognize those particular scents when they went through their enhanced olfactory systems.
In the cramped space the resulting smell was strong, but the Eight were not affected by it.
There was a faint elevation in their baseline alertness, a slight increase in the rate of the collective's internal processing, as if the shared consciousness had shifted from idle to standby. But the emotional contagion was diluted across eight minds, the fear absorbed, distributed, and neutralized.
Since the mind merge, Dave's hormonal responses had been muted. Fear still registered, but as data rather than the visceral, gut-twisting sensation that was evident in Mattie's white-knuckled grip on the bed frame and Dimitri's clenched jaw. Anger surfaced occasionally, but it was controlled, processed through the collective, and transformed into tacticalenergy before it could compromise decision-making. Joy was theoretical. They remembered rare occasions of happiness from childhood and recognized it in others. They cataloged its manifestations and studied its effects, but they couldn't internalize it. It was just an awareness of its existence, not intimate knowledge.
Was this because the drugs suppressed the hormonal pathways that governed emotion? Or had the merger of eight consciousnesses into one created something that was more purely cerebral, analytical, and not as susceptible to the chemicals that were present in the individual bodies and affecting their minds?
Dave didn't have the answer to that, and they doubted the scientists knew either. There was no one and nothing like Dave in the world.
The question had been cycling through the collective's background processes for some time, surfacing periodically when triggered by particular circumstances as it did now. Watching their three new friends drowning in anxiety while the Eight were unaffected despite the high stakes made the gap between Dave and everyone else patently obvious.
We should ask Dimitri about the neurochemistry, Number Three thought.We shouldn't just assume that he and Petrov don't know whether the drugs are suppressing our limbic system or whether the merger itself has altered how we process emotions.
