His Reboot Girl (Emerald City #3) Read Online Free

corners of his lips pulled up, and he smirked. “I’ll hurt your girlfriend if you don’t.”
    I nearly said her name— Dorothy —but I managed to keep my mouth shut.
    “I don’t know who you mean.”
    His eyebrows quirked. “Poor Adele, forgotten already?” Without taking his eyes off me, he dug into a pocket and tugged out a thin strip of shiny metal. “You won’t have any objections if I do this?” He snapped it tight around her throat, and the ends clicked together with tiny powerful magnets.
    “Scott?” Panic threaded Adele’s voice, but I didn’t move. He could be bluffing.
    “You know what this is, don’t you?” His voice made my skin crawl. “You should. You invented it.”
    I kept my blank, uninterested expression. “I don’t remember.”
    “Scott, you disappoint me. Your early wetware prototypes needed this reinforcement collar.”
    I remembered in a flash. The first subjects had worn the collar, connected wirelessly to the embedded chip. It was only later, when I’d developed the surface-mounted chip—applied via a micro-tattoo—that I’d dispensed with the collars.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “They’re really easy to adapt, you know. It doesn’t take much to align them to the pain receptors.” Donny pushed Adele’s head down, and pressed the back of the collar. I saw a flash of metal, heard a crunching noise and then she shrieked.
    “Donny! Oh my God, get it out of me.” Her words all ran together, high pitched and frightened. “Scott, please, please , make him stop.”
    “It’s hooked into her spinal cortex now.” Donny released her, but she stayed hunched over, sobbing. I knew she’d lied to me, tried to fool me for her own ends, but the sound of her tears made me cringe.
    “You sure you don’t remember how to access the systems?”
    Donny and I stared at each other, like the gunslingers of old. I refused to give in. “Go fuck yourself.”
    Slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, Donny fished his phone out of another pocket. He frowned as he stared at the screen, then swiped and tapped for a moment. Adele shuddered all over and moaned. Donny tapped some more, and this time, Adele lifted her head and screamed.
    “Sorry, Scott,” he said. “I can’t hear you over the noise.”
    Her cries tore through me, and he knew it, the fucker.
    Adele howled, her body trembling from head to foot. “Make him stop,” she begged me, tears pouring down her face. “Please, Scott.” Her makeup ran in black smears over her cheeks, and she began to twist violently. “I can’t… It’s going—” Her head thrashed from side to side.
    I’d seen enough. “ Okay .”
    Donny just smirked some more. He tapped his phone again, and Adele’s wails ratcheted up a notch. “Can’t hear you.”
    “Fuckin’ stop. Okay?”
    He lowered the phone and gazed at Adele, then back at me. “You’ll log into the system?”
    Adele’s muffled sobs made me want to puke. I’d done this. “As far as I can, yes.”
    “Not good enough.” He lifted the phone once more. “I wonder how far up I can turn this?”
    No matter what she’d done, what her plans had been, I couldn’t watch him torture her.
    “I’ll get you in.”

Chapter Seven
    My memory wasn’t returning fast enough. I remembered snippets about my optogenetics work—and now Donny spoke about it, the wetware prototypes—but the details were out of my grasp.
    I know how to make it work. I’d wanted to say that, but had held back. What had I been thinking of? Some breakthrough, definitely, but in which field? If I gave Donny only partial access to my vault, would he be smart enough to know?
    “Take the collar off her,” I said.
    “Not until you give me access.”
    The woman lying on me stirred, and I held my breath. Was she waking up? With a tenderness I didn’t know I possessed, I swept another strand of hair from her face.
    “I could collar her instead. Would that get you moving?”  Donny