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“They will it.” Seung crossed her arms. “They become an extension of the Mah. Tied and without a mind of their own.”
“And what happens if the connection between the Mah and the cur breaks?”
“It dies.”
“If the implant stopped working, and it lost the way to control it, then shouldn’t it have died?” Luca said.
Johnathan waited for Seung to answer, when she didn’t, he said her name.
She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. But curs aren’t self-aware. They can’t think for themselves. If what these people used to control the cur malfunctioned, it wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“The one that attacked me wasn’t mindless. It laughed.” Dr. Dante rolled a hand. “Not an actual laugh. But it was amused.”
“You’d only see something like that if the cur mirrors the emotions of its creator. If they’re using implants, there’s no sentience to reflect.” Seung said.
“I’m telling you that thing was aware.”
“You were scared, and fear can warp your perception,” Johnathan said.
“Hell yes, I was scared, but my perception was perfectly fine.”
Even a trained soldier would have been thrown off and interpreted things that weren’t there.
Dr. Dante pointed at Johnathan. “Don’t you dare look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he said.
“Like I’m anthropomorphizing an animal.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Giving an animal human characteristics or behaviors,” Phillips said.
“Exactly.” Dr. Dante swept back his mess of bangs covering his forehead. “That cur didn’t look at me like an animal. It looked at me like itknewme.”
Knew him?
It couldn’t. But the one who created it could. The ties binding Mah to the cur would let it see, hear, taste, experience everything the creature it controlled did.
Because, in truth, they were the same.
And the cur would act out what the Mah thought, desired…
Craved.
Dr. Dante rubbed his shoulder where Paul had bitten him.
“Johnathan?” Phillips narrowed her eyes. “You care to share with the class?”
“What if this Denton guy lied about using the VrK to make curs and there’s really a Mah working with them?”
“Like who?”
Saying his thoughts allowed them to be possible. But if Johnathan was anywhere near right, and he prayed he wasn’t, curs weren’t the only thing they needed to worry about. “My brother.”
* * *
The ghost of shredding flesh filled Nox’s palms, and fear clogged his nose. He would never forget the absolute terror in Paul Dekker’s eyes when he’d descended on him and understood the rage he’d awakened.
