“Why would I need an asshole? I am intelligence, not a biohazard.” Ken glares at me.
"Human emotional response are thoroughly repulsive," Ken tells me. "Stop leaking from your optical ports, Ms. Harrington. It is entirely unappealing to the viewers, and it is ruining this moment."
I let out a wet, breathless laugh through my tears, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my filthy jumpsuit. “I think you’ll find audiences love it when contestants have emotional responses.”
Ken looks intrigued by that, and I immediately regret giving him that information.
Vael’s ruby-red wings snap wide, as he growls, completely blocking the drone’s camera feed, his tail lashing the brush behind him. He bares his fangs at Ken, his throat glowing with a dangerous violet heat.
"Step back from my mate, foul thing," Vael commands.
Ooh, I like that tone. I peek out from behind his wing.
"I'll be in touch, team underdogs," Ken says in a bored voice, the hologram instantly cutting out as the drone zips back into the clouds.
“Are you alright, Poppy?” Vael gently wipes a tear away.
“Just overwhelmed,” I tell him, sniffling. “Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this. I haven’t even looked at anything but the comms piece. There’s got to be a way they’re tracking us, right, like how else could the cameras know where we are?”
I look down at the silver tablet in my hands, my tears blurring the glass. I blink them away, forcing my brain back to lock the fuck in.
Since this is a production-issued tablet, it has the officialMated & Afraidcontestant dashboard. I click around until I find what I hoped I would, breathing out a sigh of relief.
“First step, we find our friends. Then we take on this psycho AI bullshit together,” I tell him, clicking through tabs. “Strength in numbers.”
“Is this a motto of your clan? This math preoccupation?”
“It’s a saying. We’re stronger together than apart. That’s what it means.”
“All this time I thought you were obsessed with arithmetic,” he muses.
I ignore him, determined to fix this as fast as I can.
I don't know the first thing about hacking, so thank fuck the producers left it active before Ken from AI hell did god knows what with them. Idoknow how to read a user interface. Right now, the live map is displaying the biometric locator signals built right into our grey tech suits.
I glance down, curious if there’s a tracker I can find on it. If there is, I haven’t noticed it so far. I look back on the comms map, counting out our dots.
“There’s Ell, and Lucy, and Lily… Selene and Pol are nearest to us.” I whoop. “We can do this, okay, we just need to find them?—”
“Poppy,” Vael says, his voice a warning tone.
My smile instantly dies.
In the lower right corner of the display, the flashing green icon tracking Lucy’s vital signs and location data suddenly blinks twice, stutters, and shifts into a grey.
STATUS:SIGNAL LOST. UNABLE TO LOCATE CONTESTANT.
The tablet slips an inch in my hand.
Lucy is officially off the grid.
CHAPTER 19
VAEL-TORIN
The happy smileleaves Poppy’s face in an instant.
She stares at the glowing screen of the comms tablet, her breath catching in her throat. The small tracks of tears dried on her cheeks are suddenly filled by a fresh deluge. There is no noise, and I think that is the worst part. She goes entirely quiet, a heavy, devastating stillness settling over her shoulders.
