Page 34 of Unbind

‘Woah,’ I say, trying to wrap my head around what he’s saying. I’m definitely far less tech fluent than Winky. ‘So your eyesight will be half natural, half digital?’

‘Pretty much. And it will act like a smart crystalline lens too, so as my range of vision shrinks in my right eye with age, the prosthetic will compensate. So I won’t get that annoying thing like you have when you have a TV dinner,Mum, where you have to keep taking your glasses off to see the screen and then putting them back on to see your food.’

‘That’s theworst,’ Mum mutters. ‘I gagged on a piece of pork gristle the other night because I was so glued toTraitors.’

‘Well, there’ll be none of that.’

‘Do you know what would be amazing?’ Dad asks. ‘Face recognition that brings up someone’s name every time I bump into them at the shops and can’t bloody remember their name.’

We all laugh, because Dad’s getting worse with names every year.

‘That’s child’s play,’ my brother scoffs affectionately. ‘This stuff is way beyond that.’

‘So they want to work with you?’ I prompt, because I’m not sure he’s got to the point of his story yet.

‘Yep.’ He pops thepproudly.

Anna leans forward. ‘Apparently he’s theperfectcandidate.’

‘Of course he is,’ Mum says fondly.

‘Basically, it’s because I’m completely blind in one eye, no optic nerve activity to speak of, but I’ve got vision in the other so I have a good baseline for comparing the real thing with the digital experience,’ he says. ‘And Dr Smythe knows I’m an early adopter, so he was pretty sure I’d go for it. I can’t believe it. I’m meeting them this week, but I’ve been poring over their technology all morning and it’s bloody incredible. I’m absolutely blown away.’

Anna’s gazing at him with so much love and delight, her lips pressed tightly together like she’s trying to hold in the emotion.

I know how she feels.

For the past twenty years, my brother’s missing eye has been a handicap for him.

Now, it feels as though it could be a superpower.

19

ADAM

I’ve stayed away from Alchemy for almost a week, telling myself there’s no reason at all for me to go there—even if the team comped me a membership, which is decent of them. I’ve already looked around the place, sampled the wares, as it were, and set the ball rolling on the transfer of ownership from Wolff to Wright.

No other due diligence is needed. The bankers and lawyers can firm up the details once Wolff’s board signs off, which I’m sure they’ll do happily. The stake has been a bigger financial PR headache than its tiny presence on Wolff’s balance sheet warrants.

The real reason I’ve stayed away, though, is precisely the same reason I want to show up there so badly.

Natalie Bennett.

God knows, I couldn’t find a less suitable person to fixate on. There isn’t a woman on the planet who’d find the prospect of the slightest intimacy with me more morally repugnant.

My therapist may insist that I keep women at arm’slength because I still believe, deep down, that I’m unworthy of love. (Rather, he may have insisted once and hurriedly retracted when I threatened to fire him.) Lord knows what he’d say if he thought for a moment I had designs on a woman with whom my chances of making reparations for past unholy crimes are zero.

I know perfectly well what he’d say, in fact. He’d say I’m hoping to win her over because absolution from Stephen Bennett’s own sister would be the purest form of absolution I could hope for.

So yes, I steer clear of Alchemy. The irony of my investing in a sex club where I can have any woman I please except for the one I actually want is not lost on me. Seeing Natalie will serve no purpose, ergo reacquainting myself with her enchanting face and perfect body and vicious tongue is pointless.

She endured the hospitality I rammed down her throat with thinly-veiled hostility. She enjoyed my home, sure, but certainly not my company. She may as well have been a fairytale princess trapped in a brute’s dungeon for all the graciousness she exhibited. Persephone, even, condemned to Hades’ underworld.

Thank heaven she didn’t stir while I was stupid enough to fall asleep on her bed. I’m not sure which she would have found creepier—me passed out next to her with a huge boner or me, wakeful and watchful.

It genuinely pissed me off that she wouldn’t give me access to her data, that she let her pride and her dislike of me get in the way of having an extra pair of eyes monitoring her while she slept. I haven’t had any exposure to type 1 since Ellen died, and I wasn’t prepared for how incredibly upsetting it would be to witness Natalie’s attack, how powerless I’d feel as I struggled to get her glucose up and, later, asI lay there next to her with no way of monitoring her short of cracking open a lancet and puncturing the pale skin of the sleeping princess to draw her blood.

That said, the gratification I took from that hour or so of watching her sleep before I succumbed myself had a cause entirely separate from altruism. Not only did she look so peaceful, her beautiful face free from the horrific attack that had contorted it earlier, but all her hostility was gone, too. I was able to gaze down at her for as long as I liked while she slept the tranquil sleep of someone blithely unaware both that their mask had dropped and that their enemy was near.

---