Before I had much of a chance to think about why Nadine had decided to follow that particular line of questioning, my boss started debriefing me about my kidnapping. I basically told him the same story I've just told you, pretty much from the moment it all started down to when I got back to the casino. He listened intently, asking occasional questions, but mostly just letting me talk. Nadine went back to listening to me as well, but didn't interrupt.
John, of course, slept through the whole thing, or at least I think he did, since his mouth drooped slightly open and his eyes stayed shut the whole time. He might even have drooled a little bit, but I didn't look at him that closely.
When I finally finished my little story, Eric nodded and agreed with Nadine's earlier statement that I'd been extremely lucky. It was true, of course. Things could have been much, much worse. Then Nadine popped up with a strange question. "Tell me, Kate," she said curiously, "did you ever consider actually staying with Irwin?"
That made me pause. "Well," I admitted, "yeah, a couple of times, I think I did."
"Why didn't you?" she asked, driving on like any psychologist, trying to find the complete answer, something that told her a little bit more about me. I knew what she was doing, but could only answer truthfully. Lying would have served no purpose.
"Because it was a trap," I said after a moment. "No matter how nice he was to me, it was still a prison. Besides, I have work to do."
"Is that all?" asked Nadine.
I shrugged. "I guess so," I said. "Well, no, there was one other thing. He said he loved me, but I knew it wasn't as a person, only as his pet. I wasn't a real woman to him. He made that clear. And I'm not a pet, like I kept trying to tell him. I just wish he'd listened to me. If I could've gotten through to him, I'm sure he would've let me go. He never really meant me any harm."
She nodded and sat back, apparently satisfied with that answer.
After that, the boss asked me a couple more questions, then he told John to take care of my implants. He had to shake him to wake him up, which worried me, but by the time John had his instruments out and ready, he was wide awake. This was a guy who lived only for his work, apparently, and everything else bored him.
Working with my implants was a relatively simple process. He put me in a neck brace to immobilize my head, and gave my ear a pretty strong local anesthetic, so that the right side of my face and head went completely numb. It felt like I was listing to the side, and I kept having to fight the impulse to lean my head to the left to compensate.
The effect also dulled my concentration a bit, so that I couldn't really focus on what was going on in the room. I remember that some things were said and I might have spoken, but if I did it was only to babble incoherently, since only half my mouth worked. The doctor muddled around with some instruments, too, but I didn't really pay much attention since I was too busy trying to stay awake.
Actually, what really happened was that he inserted a little tube with a micro-manipulator into my ear, then moved it around inside my head, removing the dead implants and replacing them with fresh, better shielded ones. You might think he couldn't possibly have reached an optical implant that way, but the tube for that had already been inserted years ago, when I became a field agent and wearing these things became commonplace. After all, it wouldn't do if I had to undergo an operation every time they needed to change the batteries, right?
Anyway, if I'd been able to feel anything, I was sure it would've hurt like crazy, but all I sensed was the occasional push against my head with his free hand as he steadied himself. There was a video monitor there that he was watching his progress with, but I never looked at it, because I really didn't have any interest in seeing inside my head.
At any rate, I have this vague recollection of the three of them leaving after a while, though I wasn't completely coherent. They left me on the couch, where I fell asleep almost immediately.
When I woke up, I found that most of my beers were gone, and I know I'd only had one, so someone took the rest of them. For reasons I couldn't explain, I suspected John, even though I'd never actually seen him drink one.
He'd done a pretty good job with the operation, it turned out. I felt only the barest stinging from my ear, and no sensation at all inside my head. Early on, when I'd had the initial conduits installed, I'd felt this weird pressure and tickling in there for weeks, but not this time. Well, even if he only stayed awake long enough to do the operation and drink my beer, I was grateful for his skill.
For the rest of the afternoon I just lounged around the apartment for a bit, recovering from my long nap, and then noticed I was getting hungry. It was after 6, after all, so I went into the kitchen and started to pull out a frozen pizza for dinner. Before I could put it in the oven, though, there was a knock at the door.
"Who is it?" I asked, suspecting it was my boss coming back to make sure I'd recovered.
"It's me, Kate," came Mark's voice.
Great, what did he want? I probably looked awful, having slept all day like that. "Come in," I said reluctantly.
He did, and to my surprise, he was fairly nicely dressed. Not in a suit or anything, but he at least had some slacks and decent shoes. "What's the occasion?" I asked curiously.
"Nothing," he replied. "I just thought you might like to go get some dinner now that you're up."
That took me by surprise, for two reasons. I decided to focus on the more obvious one. "How did you know I was up?"
"Oh, I was checking the ocular to make sure it was working," he replied with a smile. "I didn't know for sure until you opened your eyes. Before that it was just a black screen."
"Yeah, good thinking," I agreed. "Now what do you mean by asking me to dinner? Is this some kind of date?"
He suddenly turned serious. "I suppose you could think of it that way," he said. "I think we need to talk."
"You could say that," I replied casually. Damn straight we needed to talk! "I've read Heather's diary, so I know what you mean."
"I figured you would," he said with a half-hearted smile. "After you left, I kicked myself for asking you not to. I should've known that would make you too curious for your own good."
"You were right," I told him. "I assume you also sent the text of the diary to HQ?"
"Yeah, I had to," he admitted. "I had no choice, you know. I didn't want to. Did that get you into trouble today?"
"I don't know yet," I replied honestly. "The psychologist asked me some rather pointed questions. I figured it had to be because of the diary text. It's just as well I'd seen it, you know, or those questions would've come completely out of left field."
"Just the same, I wish you could've been spared that."
I just looked at him for a couple of seconds, wondering what to say next. We were doing a pretty damn good job of beating around the bush, weren't we? Well, I have to admit, I wasn't in any big rush to get started delving into Mark's secrets, and I had a feeling he wasn't all that happy about it either. His face and body language told me he was nervous, and didn't really want to be here, but events had forced this upon him.
I felt bad for Mark, but just as it had been with Irwin, this wasn't really my problem. It was his. The best I could do was try to help him get through it, no matter how uncomfortable it made me.
"All right," I said after a moment. "I'll accept your invitation, Mark. I'll go out to dinner. Just give me a couple of minutes to get cleaned up, all right? I think I have a couple of beers left in the fridge, so help yourself."
"Sure," he replied with a smile. It was a hopeful, but shaky, smile that seemed to suggest he wasn't sure whether he was happy I'd accepted or not.