CHAPTER 38

The fucking deceitfularsehole. Dariux fumed that night in his home office as he compared the test results he had smuggled from the lab with the results provided by Max. The discrepancies in one specific area were glaring.

Not that he had any illusions about Max’s transparency when it came to business deals. But lying to him about his own test results and causing a rift between him and Kalli was crossing a line. It went beyond a mere lack of scruples and into betrayal territory.

It wasn’t difficult to discern his motives and his intentions. Max wanted to suppress any proof that inter-human relationships might engender feelings that went dormant during the interaction with robots. All in an attempt to sell his theory that the best solution was to produce the missing hormones in a lab and inject them into females, to make them want to reproduce. The greedy bastard basically wanted to create a fucking human breeding farm.

It disgusted Dariux that he had ever seen eye to eye with Max. Anything he might have agreed on with the man was surely wrong. Kalli had been right all along. The proof was staring him right in the face. But he didn’t need to see his test results with his own eyes to realize what he had known for weeks now but had been too afraid to admit. He was in love with her. If he hadn’t been such a bloody idiot, he might be with Kalli right now.

Dariux needed to see her, talk to her as soon as possible. The longer this misunderstanding went unresolved, the harder it would be to undo the damage. He hoped to God it was not too late.

Turning to his communication device, he instructed, “Call Kalli.”

A fist had lodged in his throat, and his heart was beating a staccato beat as he waited for the connection. What would he say to her? What could he say after his obtuse behavior? After a few seconds of the logo twirling, it was obvious the call was not going through.

“Connect me with Kalli,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m unable to establish a connection. The requested customer is outside the network.”

“The fuck she is. I just saw her a few hours ago. Try again.”

But after several attempts, and a reboot, it became obvious that it was impossible to connect with Kalli.

“Useless piece of crap,” he said, hurling his communication device against the wall. He lived in the twenty-fucking-second century. Humans had invented the telephone not long after the year they had visited in their mission. Yet here he was, three centuries later, still unable to make a simple call.

He grabbed his coat and stomped to the door. If she would not pick up the call, he would pay her a visit. He knew where she lived. It was in her file.

“Are you going out?” Elena called from the kitchen, where she was making some sort of fruity dish wearing a skimpy baker’s uniform. Bloody hell, had that ever turned him on? What a pathetic cliche.

“Yes,” he replied curtly, unwilling to give explanations.

“Should I wait for you in your bed?” she went on, undeterred. “What should I wear?”

“No, go to sleep. I won’t need you tonight. In fact, I won’t need you for the foreseeable future. I’m taking a break from sex.” With that, he left without waiting for her response. He ran down the few steps towards his car, which was already waiting for him. “To Kalli’s house,” he ordered, and the vehicle took off.

He leaned back in the comfortable commander chair but did not relax. The trip to Kalli’s house was a short one. Less than five minutes. He had never visited her home before. It was in Kensington, an old part of London. The buildings looked pretty much the same as they had in the nineteenth century. He could only hope they had updated the interior to accommodate modern conveniences. His own house was a masterpiece of modern engineering and architecture. But of course, romantic Kalli would prefer the charm of the old, even if it came with a few inconveniences.

Soon he was running up the steps to her townhouse. The porch light turned on at his approach. Good, at least she had security and monitoring systems.

But the voice that spoke to him through the speakers was not the familiar timbre of Kalli’s.

“May I help you?” asked a man’s voice.

Bloody hell, had he got the wrong address? He checked the number again. No, this was the address on her file.

“I’m here to talk to Kalli.”

A pause. Then, “She is not here.”

Who the fuck was this bloke, and why was he obstructing his access to Kalli?

“Does she live here?” he bit out.

“This is her residence, but she is not here right now,” the man responded, polite but implacable.

“Well, when is she re—”

His sentence was cut off by the man opening the door. Although he remained secured behind a glass protective wall. Dariux studied him. Average height, trim and fit, but not overly muscular. Dark blond hair and handsome to the point of prettiness. He had an academic air about him.

“Who are you?” he asked, although a sinking suspicion was snaking through his gut.

“I’m Martin, Kalli’s boyfriend. Who are you?” the pretty boy asked.

Kalli’s boyfriend? The word hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. She had a boyfriend? Had she ever mentioned him? No, she hadn’t. He would have remembered that. Was he real or a parbot? Only one way to find out.

“I’m her lover,” Dariux said with a smug smile of defiance. “The man she has spent the past month having sex with.”

There. If this man was real, he was about to have a fight on his hands. He relished the prospect.

But the other man’s only reaction was a blink and a tilt of the head to the side, studying him as if trying to figure out what to do next. A parbot then. No human would receive those words with such absolute calm and lack of reaction.

“Are you Dariux? You went on the mission to the past with her, correct? It is the only way you could have spent a month with her, because she was here three days ago.”

“I...” Fuck, what to say? He was flattered that Kalli had mentioned him. How much had she shared with her ‘boyfriend’ about the mission and her whereabouts? He didn’t want to divulge unnecessary details, but he needed to know where she was, and something told him her parbot had to know.

“Yes, I’m Dariux. I saw her this morning, and now I need to speak to her. Do you know where she is, or when she is planning to return?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have that information.”

Dariux looked past the parbot into what he could glimpse of the house while he fought for control. Ugly emotions were swirling through him. Emotions he had not felt in a long time, and never with this much intensity. Jealousy, betrayal, rage, frustration... He very much feared if it weren’t for the protective glass, he would have his hands around the damned parbot’s neck right about now. A useless and ridiculous reaction, but he was past rational thought at the moment.

The woman he loved had a damned parbot. One who could be said was the opposite of him in every regard. Was that the type she preferred? The pretty, studious boy? He almost gagged with contempt. Well, she had liked him well enough when she was coming around his cock, and he looked nothing like this bloke.

Dariux swallowed down the bitterness to focus on the task at hand. He had to find Kalli. Talk to her. They could solve their differences.

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked the parbot.

“Three days ago.”

Before the mission, then. That meant she had not come home after they returned. Where was she staying?

“And have you been in contact with her? Has she called or sent any messages? Anything about her whereabouts?” Damn it, did she have such a basic parbot that he didn’t even worry about her safety?

“She sent a message saying she would be away for a while longer.”

“When?”

“When, what?”

“When did she send the message?” Dariux took a deep breath, fighting a losing battle with patience.

“Two days ago.”

“What, exactly, did she say?” He was grasping at straws, but maybe there was a hint of her whereabouts in the message she sent to her parbot.

“Exactly what I told you. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go.”

With that, the other man closed the door on his face. The damned parbot had dismissed him. And he had got no useful information. Where could she be? Why hadn’t she returned home? Why wasn’t she answering his attempts at communication? And why didn’t he know her well enough to figure out where she might have gone? This was all his fault. If he had taken the time to know her better, he would know where to look for her. He probably wouldn’t even need to look for her, because she wouldn’t have left in the first place.

He didn’t fool himself that her absence was a coincidence. No, she was avoiding him. It’s as if she had vanished from the face of the earth. If he hadn’t seen her this morning, he would be frantic with worry. But he had seen her. And she had been well enough. If a little pale. In truth, her fair skin seemed stretched thin around the delicate bones of her face. And she had dark circles under her eyes that the makeup couldn’t fully conceal. It was a knife to his heart to think he might be the cause of her distress.

Where are you, sprite?

She couldn’t have gone too far; she had attended a last-minute meeting at ChronoSynthetics this morning. He snorted. That meant nothing. She could be in the fucking Hebrides and still be within an hour of London. He got into the car. The urge to do something, go somewhere, was strong. He almost felt like driving around looking for her. Stupid impulse. What would be the point? The area to cover was simply too large. He wouldn’t find her like that.

He had to think. Strategize. There were other ways of finding out her whereabouts. He was very good with technology and not above using less than straightforward methods to dig out information. He would find her. Nobody could vanish without a trace.