Page 32 of Amethyst Flame
Is this what we’d come to? And yet, I had no idea how to make it better for either of us.
I was at the Freeze first thing, redoing the schedule. To keep up my spying at Banta, I had to cross out almost all my shifts. Progressive though BantaMatrix claimed to be, they still didn’t pay their interns. Ugh, maybe I’d have to hit up Dane for a loan after all.
Rique gloated like I was surrendering the keys to the kingdom. When I handed him the keys, I pulsed some moths along the metal with a [morph] command that would make them stick in the lock every time he tried to use them. I hadn’t practiced much with longer-lasting, distance commands, so I was calling this an experiment.
Fuck, I’m petty.
I skidded into the industrial park parking lot with three minutes to spare—shit, I was still wearing my Freeze shirt—and raced to join my quintet of aspiring mad scientists while yanking the Banta-branded tee over my head.
Rahm, Hassan, and Mary Liz smiled and said good morning. Will gave me a closer look, his gaze flicking down to my chest.
“Something got your attention?” I asked in a slightly snide tone.
“Your badge is backward. We’re touring the lab today, and the security cameras need constant eyes-on so you don’t get reported.” He reached out to flip the badge around.
It took everything I had not to jerk back.
Rahm fiddled with his own badge. “These are cutting-edge,” he murmured. “Not surprising here, I guess. I heard they upgraded after a break-in a few months ago.”
I stiffened. “Break-in? Wow. You’d think a place like this would have the best security.”
“They do now,” Will said. “If we get hired, we have to agree to a RFID implant.” He pushed back his sleeve to tap at his inner wrist. He had surprisingly muscular forearms for a biomolecular engineer. How much heavy lifting did he do with molecules anyway?
Mary Liz wrinkled her nose. “Not sure I want to be tracked like a wild animal.”
Hassan shook his head. “I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything illegal or unethical with the data.”
We all stared at him in consternation until he snickered. Then we all had a good laugh, and that was how Selma Oluwa found us: just one small, happy family of aspiring wannabe microchipped white-collar tech minions in this late-stage capitalist dystopia.
She smiled at us. “I love your energy,” she enthused. “That’s the true clean, renewable energy of the future: idealistic young people like you.”
We all nodded dutifully and fell into step behind her as she gestured us onward.
In the elevator, she turned to face us, which felt a little weird. “While all the intern groups will have a chance to view the labs—the beating heart of BantaMatrix—if you come on as one of our engineers, this will beyourdomain. So of course we’re the first group to tour.” She started to tell us about the labs and the work we’d be seeing, but as we descended, my heartbeat began to accelerate.
Last time I’d been headed in this direction, I’d been Alling’s prisoner, terrified and uncertain of my powers. But there was no reason for me to be panicking now. I could leave anytime I wanted, go back to the Desert Freeze and rip my shifts away from Rique, forget the robot bugs inside me and just…
Just what? Yeah, that’s where it kinda broke down for me too.
I practiced the deep breathing exercises I’d looked up on YouTube to stave off panic attacks. I’d had half a second where I contemplated getting a therapist, but who could afford that? And if I couldn’t be honest with them, what was even the point?
Will was watching me again. He did that too much. But he didn’t say anything until we exited toward the lab and Oluwa started to lead us out into the wide-open space, so terrifyingly blank and white that I thought my vision was fading…
“You okay?” His voice was low.
I gritted my teeth. “Hate elevators.”
“Yeah, that newfangled technology can be pretty intimidating.”
I shot him an angry look, but somehow the distraction and annoyance canceled the worry. “You should see me around an electron microscope,” I boasted.
He blinked. “Well, yeah, I probably will.”
Shit.
When Alling had dragged me down here with the plan of extracting my hive, probably leaving me brain-dead or even dead-dead, I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to the different stations, and obviously he hadn’t explained much. Oluwa talked a lot more, but I also had the impression she wasn’ttellingus any more than Alling had. She glossed over so much of the specifics that I almost felt like I understood what she was talking about, even with my mostly Wikipedia level of education on the topics. The rest of my quintet seemed similarly unimpressed, and I noticed Hassan and Mary Liz tilting their heads together and whispering.
Oluwa looked over at them. “I’m sure this all seems very basic to you. But never to worry. By the end of your time here, you’ll get some hands-on experience with some of the most unique technology of our times—and the times to come.”
