CHAPTER 250: BAD EGGS

Once the security system was dead, he tranq’ed the remaining thirty-two guards, starting with the ones closest to Graham’s granddaughter.

For each man, he templatized and linked the man’s belt, clamped the device Caleb West created to the man’s belt, exported the change, triggered the injector that was part of the device, exported again, then moved the device to the next belt and repeated the steps.

Because it only took him five seconds to perform the entire sequence, and his soul space was running at a time ratio of ten-to-one, it only took him seventeen physical world seconds to tranq all the guards.

Once he had taken care of all the guards, he teleported Naoko and the doll into a closet that was just down the hall from the room where the girl was being kept.

He’d had Naoko dress in a painter’s suit and hood and nitrile gloves so that she didn’t leave behind any fingerprints or genetic material.

After he teleported her, she exited the closet and searched the guards until she found the keys to the girl’s room and her ankle chain.

Once Naoko found the keys, Jack dosed the girl with Somnusol, then gave Naoko the go-ahead.

To dose the girl, he clamped an injector pen to the manacle of her ankle chain. The pen was in a small tube with a spring-loaded piston held back by a pin. After the injector was in place, he pulled the pin, causing the piston to trigger the injector pen.

Naoko freed the girl, carried her back to the closet and put her into the barrel.

Then, while Jack teleported the girl into the shower stall in Graham’s bunker, Naoko moved the doll into the room where the girl was being kept.

As soon as Graham had extracted his unconscious granddaughter from the barrel, Jack teleported the barrel back to the villa, teleported Naoko back to his suite, then returned the barrel to Nora’s apartment.

After that, he summoned copies of Graham’s son and daughter-in-law.

They had been aware of their daughter’s kidnapping and were extremely grateful to Jack for rescuing her.

On learning about Jack’s long-term plans, both were excited to contribute, and when he described what he had done with Heidy and Cindy’s soul bonds, they asked if he would do the same for them.

[Soul Bond Accepted: Ethan Sinclair and Mariel Sinclair]

They both accepted quickly, and he was able to achieve the same results as he had with Heidy and Cindy.

Once the soul bond process was complete, Ethen and Mariel turned and stared into each other’s eyes.

After a few moments of mental communication, then hugged each other, then turned and smiled at Jack.

"Thank you," said Ethan. "This is more than we could have ever hoped for."

"Yes, and thank you again for saving our daughter," said Mariel.

Then Ethan said, "We thought we had solid security on our daughter, but this event suggests we either made an egregious error-"

"Or some of our people have been compromised," interjected Graham in a dark tone.

"Will you help us weed out the bad eggs?" asked Ethan.

"It’s to your benefit as well," added Mariel to Jack, "since it will improve your security as well."

"Yes," said Jack. "I was going to suggest it if you didn’t. I’ve used sapient templates to ’interview’ people in the past, but I’ve been reluctant to just use it willy-nilly."

"May I speak bluntly?" asked Graham.

"Please do," said Jack. Fran often told him, "Don’t let your ego get in the way of good sense."

"You have the ability to get into the head of whoever you want. I can understand your reluctance to abuse that power. But it is foolish to restrict yourself so severely that you leave yourself blind. Since you can, you should take the time to interrogate every person you think might pose a threat to you."

"I get what you’re saying," said Jack. "But that list is huge! Every world leader, intelligence agency official, corporate executive, and who knows how many other people all represent a potential threat."

All three Sinclairs nodded.

"And I know I could gain a huge advantage if I interrogated my competitors, but something about using my power that way feels wrong. I’m fine with using the power to learn if I can trust someone. But using it to pry into people’s private lives or to gain an advantage over them feels wrong."

"Is it a question of fairness, or something else?" asked Ethan.

"No, I already know my powers give me a massively unfair advantage in general, but that advantage doesn’t come at anyone’s personal expense. It’s just..."

"Ah, I think I understand," said Graham. "When you first talked to me, you made it clear why you were even offering to save my granddaughter. You didn’t hide your motives because you wanted me to make an informed choice instead of acting on a potentially false understanding."

"Yes," said Jack. "I wanted to make sure you didn’t later decide I had deceived you."

"A commendable attitude," said Graham. "We can work within the ethical framework you are trying to maintain for yourself. But I urge you to at least take the time to learn who might take illegal action against you."

"We have some people who I believe would be excited to work with you to advance your plans while respecting your ethics," said Ethan. "We need to question them anyway and I was hoping you would be willing of consider soul bonding some of them as well."

"They will be able to help you ask the right questions, and I believe you should be able to offload most of the interrogations to them."

He wasn’t opposed to the idea. He could sit in on a few interrogations and then cut them loose if he was comfortable with the way things went.

"Alright. Let’s start with your key people," he said.

He’d already soul bonded the twelve members of Orin’s top team. So he saw no issue with soul bonding a few people from Castle Group.

What had started as a simple act of generosity, granting pseudo-immortality to his girls’ loved ones, had turned into two rescue operations and a potential purge. Two soul bonds became sixteen and would probably be over twenty when they were done.