Page 90 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

He wasn't going to ask for a head doctor, though. That was certain. He would learn to walk again, and his erections would return when they returned. He had suffered enough humiliation in the hands of the clan. He wasn't going to add this one to the list.

Areana walked out of the apartment holding the jar like some trophy. "Got it."

Daniel closed the door behind her remotely with his phone, although Navuh didn't understand why he bothered to do so when they weren't there. No one was going to steal anything from there unless someone was interested in Areana's nightgowns or his pajamas, and according to Daniel, the Guardians were paid well enough that theft wasn't likely.

She slipped the jar into the back pocket of the wheelchair and resumed pushing him toward the elevator bank.

Daniel pressed his palm to the scanner and took a step back.

He touched his ear and his easy posture changed. Probably some orders from those in charge that he was not happy with, given how stiff he'd become.

The elevator chimed, but nothing happened. The doors stayed shut when they were supposed to open.

A malfunction? In the clan's building?

Navuh derived a small measure of satisfaction from the proof that not everything in their domain ran like a well-oiled machine.

But then there was a metallic groan of protest, and the doors jerked apart instead of sliding.

The elevator wasn't empty.

Eight familiar men stepped out of it, and Navuh's world was turned upside down once more in so many weeks. The broken doors didn't even register until later, one more oddity in a morning that had run out of room for them.

He knew every one of those faces. He'd studied them for months through reinforced glass, had read reports on their vitals and their brain chemistry and their disturbing, deepening synchrony, had stood in the laboratory and weighed whether the prudent thing would be to exterminate them and cut his losses, or to continue with the experiment.

They were his creations. The last surviving product of the program that had cost him half the island and one of the finest scientific minds.

He owned them.

They were wearing exercise clothes, not uniforms, and there were no cuffs on their wrists. They were in his enemy's fortress, but they were not prisoners, and they were looking at him with the blank expressions they had always worn when he'd visited the lab.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in the island tongue out of habit.

They were still looking at him with those blank expressions, but he knew them well enough to notice that something passed between them. They were communicating inside their collective consciousness.

And then he saw something that made his breath catch.

They had no earpieces.

They all wore their hair closely cropped, their ears exposed, and there was not one filtering device among them. The clan that had plugged every ear that interacted with him had left these eight open, leaving the most powerful weapon he had ever created at his disposal.

Navuh's mind shifted gears, making rapid calculations.

Daniel controlled the cuffs, and if Navuh gave the Eight a command to do something they weren't supposed to, like order them to disarm the Guardian or kill Kian, Daniel would have the neurotoxin flooding Navuh's wrists before the sentence ended.

Unless Daniel didn't speak the island tongue and didn't understand the command. He probably didn't. Almost certainly didn't.

Probably. Almost certainly. Navuh wasn't going to risk everything on a probability.

He could do it subtly. He didn't need to command anything alarming. He needed only to plant the first hook, something innocent, something even the Guardians in the security office wouldn't flag. He could compel the Eight to visit him. To come to the pool during his hours. To seek him out, again and again, until he'd had time to layer command upon command, laying obedience down in coats like lacquer, until the eight of them were his again without one alarming word ever being spoken aloud.

They could disarm Daniel in half a heartbeat. They could take the phone, the weapon, and given how strong they were, they might even be able to tear the damned cuffs from his wrists. The neurotoxin would drop him, but he'd endure it to get free.

Not yet, though. Not while he sat in this chair. Patience. First, he needed to make them his, then heal, and then he would choose the right time.

The tall one in the front shrugged. "We wanted to see the world, so we crossed over to the clan."

Crossed over. As if switching sides to the enemy were a matter of strolling across a street.