Page 12 of Pride
Sloan gasped. “You fricking kidding me? Like the one who dropped you from the roof?”
He’d not told anyone he’d let go of Alice’s hand on purpose. Shame washed over him, and he pushed it deep down inside before answering. “Turns out she was my assistant.”
Silence dropped like a weight in a pond, the implications rippling out. Parker shifted on the couch, feeling uncomfortable with the fact Alice had slid under his radar for so long.
“Do you want some help?” Flint asked warily and nodded to the bedroom.
Parker shook his head. “I’ve got it handled. She’s just pissed that I caught her off guard. She’s not in pain. When she calms down, I’ll question her and then tell you all what I learn.”
“I can help with questioning,” Sloan ventured. “With my gift.”
“No,” he clipped. She was Parker’s mate. “I’ve got it.”
The expressions on both their faces said they weren’t convinced, but he was done with this conversation. The sooner he fixed AIMI, the sooner he could go back to Alice. He lifted the hard drive. “Shall we plug her in now, or come back later?”
“Um…” Flint frowned Alice’s way.
“Now.” Parker moved to another door just off the hallway and opened. Inside was a server room. Four tall tower stacks stood from floor to ceiling. There were no windows, just vents in the ceiling. Three walls had large flat screen monitors from corner to corner. On each screen was a picture of the Deadly Seven logo animated and rotating slowly. Purple and blue lights flickering from the server towers were the only source of illumination apart from the logo on the screens. This was what he’d been building for the past two months. AIMI’s new framework. Now with the final parts he’d picked up from work, she was ready to go. She just needed her memory. What was left of it, anyway. They’d have to work on molding her to the same specifications, which meant a lot of diagnostics and tweaking.
Parker plugged the hard drive into the server and opened a laptop set up on a side table. Soon he wouldn’t need the old laptop unless he had to alter AIMI’s original code, but if he’d done his job correctly, AIMI would alter it herself with a new triage program he’d written.
Facial recognition security triggered and then gave him access. While he tinkered away on the laptop, he was acutely aware of both Alice’s continued shouts—she’d come up with some rather inventive cuss words—and Flint and Sloan’soohsandahsas they took a turn about the room, investigating the new towers.
Flint scowled at Parker. Sloan joined him with her arms folded.
“I know,” Parker said. “I should have told you about my plans for AIMI earlier. I should have let you help.”
“Asshole,” Sloan snapped. “We have as much right to AIMI as you do. She’s ours, too.”
Flint’s brow arched. “Sloan’s right. AIMI is family.”
Parker shrugged.
“I’m trying to be patient with you, Parker,” Flint said. “But you keep shutting us out. This isn’t how our family works.” Another glower toward the bedroom. “And locking someone in your room—especially a Sinner—isn’t normal behavior.”
Parker busied himself with the laptop.
“When Mama finds out about this, she’s gonna rip you a new one,” Sloan teased.
The last thing he needed was for Mary to turn up and serve him with a tongue lashing. He loved his mother, but she frightened him sometimes. Even though she taught them to have compassion and mercy, he knew she hailed from a time where none were needed. Or wanted. Parker’s mind traveled to the woman tied to his bed. She, too, had been trained to kill without regret, to have no compassion or clemency. So why had she offered a truce?
No. Alice had lied. It was all a lie designed to get close to him, uncover the secrets of his family, and then finish what the Sisterhood started all those years ago—kill the Deadly Seven.
So why did she wait two years?
Once he had the details, he would fill the family in.
He shook his head and snapped, “Do you want to see AIMI fire up, or not?”
As predicted, mention of the new AI triggered the two of them. Flint and Sloan started firing questions about AIMI’s upgrades. How much RAM? Processor chip. Power source. Backups. Security. Voice.
He answered none of it. “Let me show you.”
With the click of a few buttons on his laptop, he resurrected AIMI like a true member of the Lazarus family. Nobody could keep them down for long.
To the naked eye, nothing happened, but Parker knew her processor was sifting through the salvaged data and collating it with the new code. She was sorting and filing, thinking and adjusting. Sloan opened her mouth to speak. He held up his palm, stopping her. Wait.So impatient.
Then the Deadly Seven logo on the screens stopped spinning. The color shifted from purple on black to a pulsing magenta. Sparks fizzed out of the logo, a crackling came over the in-house speakers.
