Project Lull Ch. 03

Chapter 3 -- Playback

Julien Cole didn't pace.

He sat behind his desk with the office lights off and watched a woman's heartbeat travel across the tablet screen. He forced himself to sit there, to be still, and to think.

The Lull Administrator Dashboard was open, tuned to Unit 0117. A small GPS tag moved along a mini-map in the upper-right corner of his screen, while the left filled with real-time metrics. Heart rate. Oxygen level. Skin conductivity. Body temperature. If the message channel was initiated, a visualized audio wave pulsed any time the device recognized background noise, her voice or, if he turned up the sensitivity, her breathing.

He had turned it on almost immediately as the elevator doors closed behind Kari. It was a mix of habit, professional curiosity, and caution. Over the past two weeks, she had become his evening routine. Her body was the background noise of his nights, always occupying a corner of his attention. And this was the first time he'd tested commands in person or allowed her to fully realize her circumstances enough to talk--or, at least, attempt to talk.

But he'd also gone further than he'd intended. Yes, he'd planned to see how she responded to in-person commands and debasing her was both the goal and something he had absolutely been looking forward to with anticipation. But the reality of it was more than he'd counted on. Bits of the evening's events played over and over in his mind, troubling and tantalizing and unforgettable. The way her skin felt under his fingertips. The way her muscles tightened and trembled when she tried to fight a command. How he could see the way her brain worked even while every element of the situation tried to sabotage her thoughts. It was mesmerizing. He'd gotten caught up in the moment. That was the kind of slip he really couldn't allow.

Could he?

He watched, idly, sorting through daily reports he'd put aside early in preparation for his evening meeting with Ms. Hall. Her heart rate was a thin, pale line in the corner of his vision, gently rising and falling in the background as she exited the building and entered the cab that carried her out into the rain.

And then it had spiked. 8:53 p. m., sharp as a struck match. Already wired and on edge, he'd feared it was a malfunction and had dropped everything to figure out what had happened. Until he realized what she'd done. He'd told her to come to him, first... to tell him her concerns about Lull before ever saying a word to anyone else, and she's done exactly that. But she'd recorded him, a possibility he hadn't even considered, and she'd managed to secret it out of his office.

She could have destroyed him so easily with that. Oh, there were avenues of deniability he could certainly explore. Three contingency plans were already starting to form in the background of his thoughts. But it was too dangerous a weapon for her hands.

Only, she played it with the unit still in place and between the record and the signal, she'd made it so her body was once again, unexpectedly, his. He watched as the line did what it had done every one of the past eleven nights as he commanded her to be quiet. He could see the climb and collapse and climb of her vitals, tracing each surge as she slid deeper into the rhythm of the device.

He could have left it there. He should have. A small command and she'd take a nap and wake up at home and he could reinforce the walls holding in her memory and make sure there were no other loose ends for her to stumble over.

But the realization of how close he'd just come to repeating Peregrin all over again sparked a cold, hungry fury. At himself. At her.

She needed to understand. This wasn't her game to play. It was his.

He'd given her memories back. He'd let the full realization of her situation sink in, and then he'd punished her. And then, as her cab had approached Marsdale Bridge, something unexpected occurred. For four whole seconds, the lines of her flattened, holding against everything that he had been building in her, and refused.

Four seconds. Her will against his, pure and undiluted. While he waited, he played that section back three times with the audio all the way up and, each time, something warm and dark stirred in his chest.

Remarkable, he thought, and found that he was smiling in the dark like a boy.

He'd told her to return, then, even before he knew what he was going to do with her. To her. He was being careless, and part of him knew it, but he needed that recording. He needed to make sure there were no more loose ends.

He needed to see what he was working with. To be sure. He told himself it was an acceptable risk.

More to occupy his hands than anything else, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a thin, gray folder. He hadn't looked at it in three months. Before that, it had been years. The contents had been committed to memory long ago, and it was too risky to chance anyone seeing him with it and making the connection.

He opened the folder to the first page.

PEREGRIN BIOMETRICS: INDEPENDENT SAFETY AUDIT.

Twenty-two pages. On the last page, under the partner's signature in a small and tidy font, were the words Prepared by: K. Hall.

She'd been twenty-six. He'd been thirty-four, with a company he had built from nothing and eleven employees who believed in him, and he'd sat at the far end of a conference table while a young woman in a professional, gray suit read out her findings in a level, reasonable voice. Material misstatement of safety data. Inadequate disclosure of adverse events. Recommend the board suspend trials pending independent review.

The shock hadn't been the data. Julien Cole was not the kind of man to stumbled over a missed detail, or to let a project under his supervision turn in a direction he had not fully vetted and approved. No, he'd known and deemed the "adverse events" to be an acceptable cost of doing business. Tragic. But progress required sacrifice.

No, what had been shocking was that she'd unearthed it in the first place. He'd been so confident in his cleverness--his own ability to push the unwelcome details under the proverbial rug--sure he'd accounted for every possible means of exposure.

He remembered the exact angle of her pen as she composed herself in that conference room. He remembered that she never once looked at him. She had addressed the table, the lawyers, the open folder in front of her and, when the meeting ended, she had capped her pen and walked out into her life with no idea that she had ended his.

Peregrin had been dead within nine weeks. Investors, then employees, then the building. He had spent seven years afterward building something better and quieter and, he told himself, without a single corner cut. And, the whole time, he had kept the folder in the drawer, her initials on the last page.

Kari Hall had seen through the data--through him--and he had never been able to forgive her for it.

He had requested her by name. It had not been difficult. She had risen through the ranks to Lead Auditor and Director of Digital Health Quality Assurance. While not exactly meteoric, it was impressive. She was impressive. The investor's counsel owed him a favor and a favor, properly placed, was a very small and powerful thing. And so, three weeks ago, a woman in a charcoal coat had walked into his lobby and shaken his hand and looked up at him with polite, professional, utterly blank eyes.

She hadn't known him

And that's why, he reminded himself. That's the whole point.

He reminded himself of that now, watching her cab make the return journey across the city through the rain. It had been a good reason for seven years. Nothing had changed. The reassurances sounded rote, even to his own mind.

The lobby called at 9:56 p. m.

"Mr. Cole, Ms. Hall is here. She says you're expecting her."

"I am," Julien said. "Send her up. And if the cab is still there, double the payment for his fare. It's my fault we're working so late."

He closed the folder and returned it to the drawer. He rolled his sleeves a quarter turn. His hands were not entirely steady, he realized with mild surprise, and he waited for them to be.

Turning to his computer, he pulled up the building security feed for the elevator and watched her ascend: a small gray figure in a damp trench coat, standing perfectly straight. A little black recording device was gripped tightly in one hand. She was staring straight ahead, her mouth moving. He turned the audio feed for her unit back up.

The scientific method, probably, or something like it. He'd learned that about her the first night he'd dared to push into her mind. When she was scared or confused, she ran through research guidelines and protocols. It was a stubborn, dutiful litany against an unruly world, and the sight of her doing it now undid something in him he didn't have a name for.

Forty-one floors. The chime sounded. He turned on the light. His door was already open, the view to the elevator bank unimpeded.

She stood framed there in the elevator for a moment with the doors open and the office light pooling at her feet, and he saw her try. He saw every muscle in her body set itself against the threshold. Her heels stayed planted. Her free hand found the door frame and held on, knuckles white with the strain, and he could hear the faint, frantic hiss of her breath all the way across the room.

"Kari," he said quietly.

She looked up.

She looked up, and it occurred to him that this might be the first time she had truly looked at him. Not through him. Not past him. Not at some professional blur in a good shirt. Her eyes were red-rimmed and furious and absolutely clear and they found his across the twenty feet of dark floor and held, and something went through him like a current.

"Come in," he said.

Her hand slid off the door frame. She walked.

He let her approach until she was standing in the middle of his office. "Stay there."

She stopped.

His eyes slid over her, taking all of her in. She'd buttoned her coat up to her throat. She'd put her hair back up after leaving the first time, but tendrils had escaped in the time since, leaving it disarrayed after the events of the cab and the persistent rain. Her skin was flushed and, just above her collar, he could see her pulse beating visibly at the base of her throat. He took his time, drinking in every detail. She simply stood, saying nothing. She looked exhausted.

"Put the recorder on the desk."

She crossed the last stretch of office floor, set the device down in front of him, and stepped back. Her hand was trembling.

"You came all the way to give me this," Julien said. He picked it up and turned it over, considering it. "Aren't you going to ask why I wanted it?"

"I--" Her voice cracked on the first word and she took a breath, steadying herself before trying again. "I know why. You can't let me have it. It's proof."

"Is it?" He'd been thinking about this as she'd been on her way back. "Maybe. But that's for later. Right now... I want you to listen to it. Listen to yourself. He reached forward, thumbing the volume to make sure it was turned all the way up, and pressed play.

The sounds of the elevator, rain on glass, and her own bright voice echoed into the room. I want to talk about Tuesday night.

He watched her face.

looked away. Her gaze flinched to the window, the carpet, the wall... toward anything except the small black box on the desk between them or the man on the other side. He let her do it for a few seconds. Then, gently, "Look at it, Kari."

Her eyes slid back.

The recording played on. His voice, calm and warm and pleased. Her voice, hoarse with protest. The soft rustle of fabric. The creak of leather. The hitch her in her breathing. Then the first moan, helpless and unguarded, filling the quiet office like smoke.

He heard her suck in a tiny, shuddering breath, and saw her thighs pressed together beneath her coat.

"That's you," he said softly. "That's you, barely three hours ago."

"Turn it off." It was little more than a whisper. Her hands were fisted at her sides, and he was fairly certain she'd dug her nails into her palm in order to push the words out.

"No."

Please, said the recording. Please. Please, I hate you, please.

A tear slipped down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away. He wasn't sure she could.

"Unbutton your coat."

God, not again, she thought. But her fingers found the first button and he watched her halting movements go through the now-familiar motions: stop, freeze, hang there trembling with every ounce of rebellion she could muster. He almost held his breath, counting the seconds with her. Six. Seven. It was lovely.

The recording gasped, a long ragged sound.

Her fingers moved.

The coat slid down her arms and pooled at her feet. As it dropped away, he could see that she'd spent effort to tidy her appearance, erasing as many signs of what had occurred as she could manage. He looked at the careful ensemble and the long line of small buttons on her blouse and thought, with pleasure that was almost grief, I'm going to undo every one of those again.

"Come here."

She walked to his desk with her chin up, like she'd chosen it. He pushed his chair back as she approached, motioning for her to come around the desk. She stood in front of him, still. Small. He drew her down into his lap by her wrist. There was no resistance to the fall, but she sat, rigid, as the fabric of her skirt hiked up slightly. Her knees settled on either side of his thighs. When he released his gentle grip on her wrist, her palms flattened against his chest like she meant to push him away, but there was no strength in them. She weighed almost nothing. She smelled like rain and sweat and something floral that was likely her soap or shampoo.

"Hands on my shoulders."

They slid, haltingly, and rested.

"Look at me."

Her eyes lifted. This close, he could see the individual lashes. Her eyes were green with flecks of gold. She was breathing hard through her mouth. The escaped tendrils of her hair clung to her damp skin, and he reached up to brush them back behind her left ear, fingertips tracing just behind where the little gray unit still sat, humming. She flinched.

"Unbutton my shirt."

"No."

"Say it again."

"No. No, I won't--" she shuddered, and her fingers found the top button as her resistance melted.

It was starting to be his favorite thing, her own protests working against her. He wasn't sure where she was finding the strength to resist, but he had enjoyed the surprising rush when she did. When he'd first told her to do it again, that was all it had been. But when she did, her own fury and fight spilling out in relief as he released her to say something real, it was also obedience. The device saw it as such, and it applied the reward, pulling her back down into his grasp.

He sat very still and let her hate it. She did it was such care--such perfect, wretched precision, opening his collar one button at a time with her trembling hands, while in the background her recorded voice begged and the clock ticked. When the last button parted and her palms spread over his bare chest, she went completely still and he felt her gasp against him.

"Good," he murmured. "That's very good."

"Don't," she said, so low he almost didn't hear her, even this close. "Don't say that."

There was something in her tone that made him pause. "Why not?"

"Because--" her voice broke. "Because it works."

It was such a quiet, uneasy confession. He had expected rage or tears or the clean white fury of her professional contempt. He had not expected something so small and honest and vulnerable. It was almost sacred.

For a moment, Julien Cole didn't know what to say. This wasn't the plan.

Right?

"Take off your blouse," he said, and his voice was rough in his own ears.

The plan was simple. It had been simple for seven years. Command her. Break her into perfect, compliant stillness, and leave her in the wreckage of the life she had built the very same way she had left him. He had designed the device for it. He had written the code himself.

What he had not planned for was the woman who held out on a bridge for four seconds, or how he felt watching her do it.

He had planned for fury. He'd planned for resistance--though he hadn't expected her to be quite so successful. He had planned, and it had all played out so beautifully. But he hadn't planned for her.

Kari knelt over him, her chest bare except for simple black satin and lace, her hands braced on his shoulders. He rested his hands on her thighs, feeling the soft silkiness of her skin, and let his palms slide up under her skirt. The fabric gathered against his wrists. Long fingers pushed between her thighs and found her soaked. She shuddered against his palm, a long unwilling roll of her hips, and the sound she made almost wasn't human.

"Hold still," he said.

She held still.

"I told you in this room that you'd have to be corrected." He drew two fingers through the slick of her and felt her whole body arch. "You came without permission. And you tried to stop on the bridge. So I'm going to teach you what permission means."

"Julien--"

"Quiet."

He took his time, working her with the idle, merciless attention of a man who had planned this for weeks... years. He never hurried--only pressed gently, circling and circling the center of her until she was shaking in his lap and her nails were digging into his shoulders. Every time she trembled toward the edge, he eased away, drawing desperate whimpers out of her until her head dropped to his collar bone.

"Please," she whispered it against his skin and he shivered.

"Not yet."

"Please."

"Not yet."

He watched, entranced, as she fell apart. Her lips shaped something soundless and felt the warm shape of words that were nothing more than a breath against his throat. He wondered, idly, what bit of information she'd tried to cling to in that moment before the sensations drove it away. Her thighs trembled on either side of him and her hips rolled against the steady persistence of his fingers in small, desperate, involuntary arcs. Her skin dampened, glowing with a sheen of sweat in the light. She was, he thought, the most beautiful thing he'd ever done.

His fingers curled inside her, just so, drawing out a sound like a sob.

"You hate this," he said, quietly.

"Yes."

"You hate me."

"Yes."

"And you're begging."

His had relaxed, then curled again, forcing another gasp. "Yes. Julien, please. I'm asking, please--"

"Say it properly."

"Please, let me come." Her voice cracked. "Please. Please, let me come. I can't--" the pitch of the words rose, then shattered as he slid a third finger inside her and felt her muscles spasm around him. "I can't--"

"Come," he breathed.

He expected the orgasm to look like it had earlier--a collapse, a surrender, her body folding under his hands. Instead, he found that all he could see was her face. She looked up at the last moment and her eyes caught his, wild and furious and hungry, and she shuddered through it with her gaze fixed on his like it was the only thing keeping her afloat. Involuntary moans escaped as pleasure flooded through her, and he could feel her nails dig crescent moons into his shoulders as her body convulsed against him with each wave. He couldn't look away.

No one had ever looked at him like... that.

It undid him. There was no thought. No awareness of fumbling for his belt or the release of the slacks, though he managed it somehow, instinctively, He pulled her down against him, his breath ragged, and he was inside her before he had decided to be, her heat closing around him in a long, shuddering stroke. She gasped. He gripped her hips and moved, and moved with him, riding him in a slow helpless rhythm with her forehead pressed against his and her mouth open on a broken sound that he thought, for one wild, unforgivable moment, might be his name.

"Say it," he heard himself whisper.

"No."

"Say it."

"Julien." Barely a breath. "Julien--"

He came inside her, with his face buried against her throat.

Afterward, they sat in the dark, hearts pounding. His shirt was open and Kari was collapsed against his chest, her soft breaths heated and unsteady over his skin. The recorder was still running. He reached out, one arm holding her steady against him, and stopped it.

The silence afterwards was very large.

She didn't move. Her skin was damp. Her hair clung to her cheek. He could feel her heartbeat against his, fast and rabbity, and he put one hand on the small of her back, tracing the curve of her spine. He waited for the satisfaction to arrive.

It didn't.

It had been there earlier, with her bent over his desk. He'd felt it, listening to her in the cab. But now, where that small black stone of grievance had been, there was a strange, aching hollow.

I want... her, he thought. It staggered him.

Everything he'd taken from her tonight, the sobs and the begging and the exquisite, humiliated obedience, had come from a body that had no choice but to give it. But, threaded through it all, had been something truly, genuinely her.

He remembered the quiet, desperate confession.

Don't. Don't say that.

Why?

Because... because it works.

Was it real? Was there a part of her--not programmed, but a part of the real her--in anything she'd done tonight?

It doesn't matter, he thought, and he knew it was a lie.

"Kari?" he said.

"What." It wasn't really a question. There was true exhaustion in her muffled voice. Her face was still turned against him.

He closed his eyes. Julien Cole, who did not pace and who never made a move without a plan to reverse, did something he would not be able to explain to himself afterward.

He reached up and tapped the screen of the tablet on his desk.

"I'm switching it off."

She went rigid against him.

"Not a trick. Not a test." He found the emergency controls for medical emergencies and he tapped again. The hum that had become her ever-present companion over the past two weeks faded from her ear. "It's off. The unit's dead. Nothing I say to you now will work unless you want it to."

Silence.

"Take it out," he said.

For a long time, she didn't move.

Then her left hand rose, slowly, and closed around the earpiece. She drew it from her ear with a small, wet sound and held it in her palm, staring at it like it had just bit her. Then she set it beside her on the desk. There was a soft click as it landed on the wood surface.

"You can leave," he told her. "No one will stop you."

She slid off his lap.

She stood in front of him, unsteady. Her skirt was rumpled, hair disheveled, blouse pooled on the floor at her feet, and she looked towards the elevator doors. He measured the distance with his eyes and waited for her to run.

She didn't.

She bent and gathered up her blouse, pulling it back over her arms and around her shoulders. Then, slowly, she moved to the other side of the desk and lowered herself into the chair across from him. One by one, with the same careful precision she did everything, she pushed the buttons back into place. A hand reached up to smooth her hair, then stopped, falling back into her lap. Then, and only then, she turned her gaze to him, watching him warily.

"Why?"

He'd adjusted himself while he watched her move, fastening his pants and straightening in his seat, though his shirt still hung open.

Her question wasn't unexpected, and his answer was one that had played over and over in his head for seven years.

"Peregrin."

She frowned. He watched her mind race, quickly, and he could practically see her flipping through the memories like she was thumbing through files in a cabinet. "Peregrin Biometrics."

"You wrote the audit."

"Six..." her brow furrowed. "No, seven. Seven years ago? The trial data was falsified. The adverse events were buried." And then she looked at him, truly looked, and her eyes were dark and tired and cold as a winter lake. "You were the founder."

"Yes."

"I never met you."

It was like a slap.

"I sat at the end of the table," he said, and regretted it immediately.

"I'm sure you did." Her voice was flat. "I did eleven audits that year." She paused and something in her face shifted. There was a flicker of... something... as the pieces fell into place. "Is that what this was? Revenge? On an auditor who didn't even know your face?"

Understanding... pity... contempt. He couldn't tell what boiled there, just under the surface. He didn't like it. He opened his mouth, but nothing came.

"I remember the data," Kari said slowly, like she was still reading over the file in her mind. "I remember the numbers. Nine patients were hospitalized. Two of them were children."

She shook her head and rose to her feet. Slowly. Deliberately. He didn't stop her.

She retrieved her coat, shaking out the wet wool before she slid it around her shoulders. From where he sat he could see a slight tremble in her hands, but her jaw was set and she moved with steady determination. "I'm not sorry for doing my job."

"I know," he said.

She'd done up the first button of her coat, but she paused with her fingers on the second, her gaze dropping to the earpiece. There was a long pause before she finished fastening the clasp into place and then, to his surprise, she came back to the desk and sat down.

"I'm not leaving."

"You're not," he said, not really a question or a statement. He stared at her, disbelieving, and immediately chastised himself for the brief, giddy rush he'd felt. "... Why?"

This was a trap. A way to destroy him. Hells, he thought ruefully, she can, now. She's free. I did that.

He watched, silent and unsure, as she folded her hands in her lap and watched him back with those cold, level, unreadable eyes.

Behind them, the rain continued to beat against the glass. Somewhere far below, a car horn sounded and fell way. Unit 0117 was still and silent between them. Harmless.

Julien reached out and picked it up, turning it over in his fingers.

His thoughts spun as he waited for the shoe to drop. His other hand reached for the tablet, bringing it to life. If she asked him what he was doing, he couldn't have told her. Not yet. But while he waited to find out how she was going to undo him, he searched the data.