[BL] Transmigrated as the Villain CEO's Mermaid Secretary

Chapter 442: Little Trinkets

Ethan Goelet pressed his back flat against the wall just past the curve of the stairwell and let himself breathe in two slow, careful counts.

One. Two.

Ethan adjusted the cuff of his sleeve where a thin line of sweat had begun to gather and continued to move.

The hallway leading to the mecha simulation room was tucked behind, close to the game room, based on the floor map that was shared with him by Keres.

He had made it nearly to the partition when he heard footsteps.

"—shouldn’t be anyone down this end—"

A man’s voice.

Based on the steps that were similar to Xavier’s footsteps, this should be Colonel Vane.

Ethan narrowed his eyes, he contemplated between killing Colonel Vane or just shoving him in some corner, nicely tied up if he was found out.

But he couldn’t let another person go missing since it would really alarm the people out of here. There were too many for him to fight alone.

Ethan decidedly moved to his calculated path. He noted the position of the other people and slid sideways into the shallow alcove with a fairly large statue.

He sprinted towards the statue without making a sound. He only felt relieved when his shoulder met the cold stone. He pressed the side of his face against the curve of the statue’s thigh and willed his breathing to flatten.

Footsteps.

There were two sets now.

The soft whirr-click of a sidearm’s safety being checked.

"—just a sweep. Grayson said—"

"Grayson had a point, but we need to keep going." Another male voice said. "Have you checked the surveillance robots?"

The footsteps passed within three meters of him.

Ethan counted to fourteen before the boots faded around the corner, and he allowed himself to breathe again.

Dumb luck, he thought, and almost smiled. Then a colder thought slid in behind it: or did they purposely want me to pass it as such?

He had no time to contemplate these things. If they found out, then they found out. There was no other way around it.

Ethan slipped from behind the statue and crossed to the partition in three quick strides.

From his inner pocket, he produced the small magnetic dot Keres had given him. It was a flat black disc, no larger than a coat button and slick as a leech against his fingertip.

Ethan pressed it firmly to the seam of the door, just below the silver filament.

It activated with a faint, almost-not-there click.

Then the panel began to fight him.

This wasn’t his specialty, so he couldn’t really argue coherently about the speed of its work.

The dot’s tiny indicator blinked RED.

RED. RED. RED.

"Come on," he muttered under his breath, and pressed his thumb against the disc as if pressure might help. "Come on—"

The blink stuttered and faltered.

For one bright awful second, Ethan was sure that he had tripped a counter-protocol.

Before he could even curse under his breath, he remembered something.

Keres said, "If it stalls, push the override packet. The one tagged H-7. It’s coded under Popova’s clearance. They won’t question her DNA on the network — she’s got authorization for every room in the building since she’s also a guest."

H-7. Right.

His fingers found the secondary contact on the dot and pressed.

It blinked red again and again, then it finally went green. The partition slid aside, but it didn’t open as wide as it normally did.

Ethan exhaled and looked at his hands, which were shaking. He didn’t know why, but after talking with Keres earlier, this small shaking hadn’t stopped once.

It didn’t matter.

He told himself, stepping inside, ducking through the gap, and pulling it shut behind him.

It also didn’t matter if they figured out later that it wasn’t actually Helena who had popped open this door. By the time the logs got pulled, and the cross-referencing was done, and they traced the system, Neville would be far away with me in the vast open space.

Ethan let out a small, cynical smile.

He looked around and observed the surroundings. The lighting here was dimmer and cooler in tone.

Two virtual pods sat in the center on a recessed dais, sleek black ovals like enormous polished beans. The cables coiled neatly from their bases into ports recessed in the floor.

The walls were a dark, soft grey, broken only by the faint pulsing of blue LED strips set into the seams.

Blue.

Ethan stopped moving his body and did not take another step.

He had reviewed the schematics for these chambers six times in the last week. He knew the rule that every simulation room had a non-interference protocol baked into its program.

It had a pheromone-and-presence threshold that, if crossed, would immediately wake up any active player. Meaning, if an unauthorized body entered, the pilots needed to wake up and protect themselves.

The blue LEDs were the all-clear.

If Ethan walked another two steps in, the LEDs would notice him, and the virtual pod would wake up the platers.

He fished the second item out of his pocket.

This one was uglier, but Keres had a sense of design when he wanted to, but this one with the virus in it was housed in a stubby, ridged little dongle that looked like a pinecone.

Ethan had asked, once, why it was shaped like that. Keres had given him a look of annoyance. He also found Keres annoying, so he didn’t ask any further.

He found the input port set into the wall just inside the doorway and pressed the pinecone in.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then—

Tick.

A single LED, the closest one to him, began to flicker.

Tick. Tick.

A wave of color rolled along the seams of the room, blue turning into violet. The violet turned into a deep pulsing red, and something in the air changed.

Ethan felt a small pop in his ears and saw the lights turn red.

The non-interference protocol was successfully disabled.

Ethan let out a sigh of relief, and he approached the virtual pods. He reached the first pod and let his hand hover over its surface, palm down, not quite touching.

Through the smoked transparent panel at the top, he could see Neville.

Ethan’s breath caught in his throat. He had told himself repeatedly that this was a momentary interest.

But every single time that he saw Neville’s face, his feelings just intensified by the second.

Through the panel, Neville’s face was tilted slightly to the side. His hazel-brown lashes rested against his pale skin. The small red mole under the corner of his right eye was small and cute.

His mouth was opened very slightly. His chest rose and fell in the slow, regular rhythm.

Ethan’s hand wavered.

"Don’t," he told himself, sharp and silent. "Don’t make another mistake, Neville. I don’t want to hurt you again."

Ethan moved, and the microchip went in next.

It was the third item. It was so small, a fleck no bigger than a piece of glitter was slotted into the maintenance port at the base of the main game console.

It would worm into the protective architecture of the simulation system over the next ninety seconds, dulling its safety reflexes one by one, until the system became, essentially, sleepy and would be willing to look the other way.

Ninety seconds.

There’s plenty of time.

Ethan turned back to Neville’s pod and pressed his palm against the release pad.

The pod’s surface bloomed with light with a thin seam of gold tracing the upper edge, and with a soft pneumatic hush, the lid lifted on its hydraulic arm. The temperature inside the pod was warmer than the room.

Ethan could smell, faintly, what he had longed for— that pheromone, that impossible ocean, deep and a faint sweet note underneath pheromones. It hit the back of his throat, and he swallowed it down.

From his inner jacket pocket, he produced the circlet device.

It was a thing of beauty, in its way.

It was a banned research from the imperial archives, recovered through a series of acquisitions. Ethan suspected he would be happier not understanding it.

The circlet was a slim silver band, unornamented, lined on the inside with a fine mesh of biocompatible filaments. When activated, the circlet mimicked the neural-immersion signal of a virtual pod with about ninety-four percent fidelity.

It wasn’t enough to fool a sober pod-system, but it didn’t have to be. It only had to fool the one sleeping on it.

The principle was that as long as the wearer was already asleep when the circlet was placed, the brain would interpret the new signal as a continuation.

The dreamer would keep dreaming.

The body could be moved, out of the pod, out of the room, out of the building, and onto a transport, into deep space that no one could know except the two of us.

The dreamer would not log out.

The dreamer would not wake up.

The dreamer would simply keep playing the game until someone, somewhere, decided to switch the circlet off.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

His master had no use for such a roundabout method. Because his master preferred direct things. In fact, he called the device cowardly, with the small flat smile he wore when he was being somewhat honest.

But the device had ended up in Ethan’s hands anyway, and Ethan was not too proud to use a coward’s tool when it suited him.

Ethan leaned over Neville’s pod.

But it was satisfying to use it this way.