Selling Out Read Free Page B

question.”
    Lila looked at Dr. Williams’s gentle, sympathetic face. “What?”
    “Was what you did in Alfheim right, or wrong?”
    CHAPTER TWO
    L ila looked at the doctor. “Everything I did was right.”
    Williams nodded, encouraging her to go on.
    “At the moment I did it,” Lila said, and loathed the qualification.
    “I advised Delaware not to send you out immediately,” the doctor said wearily. “But she doesn’t like to listen to me. No doubt the rest of today is already scheduled up to its eyeballs with briefings and any number of other necessary checks and balances before you leave. So, you’d better spill the rest of it in the next five minutes.”
    “There is no rest of it,” Lila said.
    “You overused your Voluntary Emotional Override shunt so much that the logistics here advises me that you should have it removed for your own mental health.”
    Lila shrugged. “So remove it.”
    “I see that the Automatic Warrior setting or whatever ridiculous name it goes by these days functioned as it ought to.”
    “Yeah. The off switch actually worked this time.”
    “I’m glad to hear it. Tell me about Zal.”
    Lila was almost caught out by the sudden shift of topic, which was not accompanied by any change in tone or delivery. She hesitated. “He’s very annoying.”
    “Are you involved with him? As they like to say when they mean, Do you love him?”
    “None of your goddamned business.”
    “Congratulations. You may go.”
    “You know,” Lila said, standing up. “You may think you know all about me, but you don’t.” The childishness of it surprised her.
    Shut up when you’re losing , Tath said, with a twinge of smugness.
    “Call me,” Williams said kindly.
    Lila walked out. She was so angry she didn’t know what else to do. Outside, in the warmly lit corridors of power, her colleagues and fellow agents greeted her with varying mixtures of friendliness, respect, and condescension that marked out very clearly to what extent each of them thought they knew something about her recent mission. She cued up the Voluntary Emotional Override and met them with interested politeness. Once she’d reached the women’s toilets she uncued the VEO, vomited up her rage in one of the cubicles, and washed her mouth out at the sink.
    She looked in the mirror as she dried her face on a paper towel. Scarlet hair, silver eyes. She watched her hands screw the towel up and throw it away. Their synthetic skin looked normal. She considered stripping it off.
    Why bother? You look freakish enough as it is. Anyway, it will not get you what you want.
    Oh. And what’s that?
    Another woman came in to put some water in a can for plants and to touch up her makeup. She glanced at Lila nervously. Lila said, “Hey,” adjusted her shirt, and left.
    To fit in with everyone else and be normal , Tath said.
    I can get you extracted in a minute, you know. I don’t even have an idea of what to say to Sarasilien.
    How interesting that you know his long name , Tath said. It must be worthless. I wonder why. Do your human magic experts not suspect?
    Perhaps it’s a sign of mutual trust? Lila snarled. A secretary carrying papers and coffee shrank to the wall as she passed. “Sorry,” Lila muttered aloud, trying to slow down.
    If it is then it is the first of its kind. We should find out the truth.
    No. I trust him. Don’t even say things against him if you know what’s good for you.
    Do not reveal me to him , Tath insisted. He may have noticed something, but it was not the fact of my inhabitation.
    We went through this already. Lila found the exit doors to the staff garden, an enclosed square at the heart of the main building. She walked out into the sunlight and fresh air and took several deep breaths. She doubted that it was even possible for her to have a private thought or feeling secret from Tath but she daren’t think about that for more than a second at a time, because when she did the sensation of being invaded and