TRIGGER WARNINGS: the trigger warnings for this chapter are no joke. They're mentioned, rather than seen on page, but they are there and, if any of this will trigger you, please be safe and walk away from this novella. I have other works that don't have these triggers, and Wattpad is filled with great stories that are safe. Don't risk your mental and emotional well-being for the sake of a story.

So.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mentions of violence | torture | slavery | sexual slavery | conditioning | attempted suicide.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Thursday was nothing short of torture for Ian. His headache remained a constant companion, yet it seemed to have developed a troubling resistance to painkillers; anxiety turned out to be no less triggering than physical exertion. Absent the hope of Travers calling with codes — Ian had no doubts SynSec would have put a freeze on that until after the meet — all he had left were his alerts and his camera hacking, that he checked over and over throughout the morning, before forcing down lunch and repeating the pattern for an hour after that.

He arrived half an hour early, having made his peace with appearing overeager and unprofessional. His husband's life was at stake; appearances were beside the point. The choice ended up serving him well: once he was done with the layers upon layers of security checks, he had only three minutes left to take the elevator up to the 98th floor.

The entire floor was for the Secretary's use; Ian's training gave him little choice but to notice the floor's layout, the weak spots, the places where he'd reinforce security. Starting with the wall to wall windows, that ought to have been covered by weaponised drones on the outside, clearly visible to dissuade intruders. Being a 98th floor was no guarantee by itself that the windows wouldn't be breached: There were helicopters, there were ways to rappel down from the top floor, there were even experimental hovercars being developed and tested. When all this was over he was going to have a talk with SynSec's head of security.

Secretary Clayburn was in his office, in the middle of a nexus call; Ian would never understand the value of glass walls for as long as he lived.

Already in his seventies, The Secretary looked slightly younger and was still fit for combat. Ian had met men half the Secretary's age who'd go down in a fight with far more ease. There was an air about him, from his bald head to his tall, wide frame, that conferred him easy authority. The way he carried himself left no doubt, even after all these years, that he used to be a Tracker.

The very first SynTracker, even before there was a name for them; he'd created this office and was rumoured to have ruled it with an iron fist in a velvet glove for over forty years. Later he'd been instrumental in creating the SynTracker Elite programme, to divide Trackers into tiers, to ensure contracts were paid according to the target's value and overall condition.

Ian supposed he ought to be grateful — that was the reason Trackers like him and Kaya had gotten the more lucrative, albeit more dangerous Syns, the 76s and above — but he didn't think rewarding psychotic behaviour with any kind of contract was the way to go. Like the rest of them, the Secretary cared only for getting the job done; his only redeeming feature was that he knew better than most how that looked like.

He was saved from further dwelling on the Secretary's failings by the assistant ushering him in, and then he was in the office in front of the man himself. "Ah, Mr Morgan." A firm handshake. "Thank you for coming in on such short notice."

"Secretary Clayburn. A pleasure to meet you." He couldn't help noticing how the glass walls had gone opaque. They'd been transparent just for show, then.

"Please," the Secretary indicated the chair in front of his desk with nothing but a glance. "Do sit down. Would you like something to drink?"

Ian's nerves were frayed. Between the concussion still hounding him, the endless security checks he'd endured, and the inane pleasantries when all he wanted was to know where Quentin was, he thought it was quite impressive how he managed to sit down and respond "no, thank you" without adding any sort of commentary. Yet the Secretary looked thoroughly unimpressed.

"I see. You must be wondering why I asked you to come in."

Finally. "Yes, Sir. I've been wondering if it's about my husband."

An appraising look. "You don't beat around the bush, do you, Mr Morgan? I like that in a person. It makes them reliable." He touched a series of commands on his nexus that had Ian's own nexus pinging. "I'm afraid we have nothing to discuss unless you choose to sign the documents I've just sent you. A precaution. I'm sure you'll understand."

This Ian hadn't been expecting, and he didn't appreciate being summoned to have legally binding documents foisted upon him without ever having been informed he might want to bring a lawyer to the meeting. The Secretary was too shrewd by half. Softly spoken, he exuded command without having to raise his voice. There was no question he knew how far Ian was willing to go for information.

He opened the documents, scanning them as quickly as he could while trying to read the fine print. A non-disclosure agreement. Reasonable — except this one involved doing prison time for treason, if broken. Ian forced himself to go back to the beginning and read every word; blindly signing away his rights would do Quentin no favours.

"Forgive me, Mr Secretary," he said, twenty minutes later, in the same expressionless tone he reserved for Syns, covered in the thinnest veneer of politeness, "but there seems to be an error in this document. It lacks the standard clause about disclosing information to the relevant authorities if required by law."

Piercing, intelligent eyes zeroed in on his, the only challenge in an otherwise placid face. "I'm afraid there's no error, Mr Morgan. You are, of course, free not to sign it."

Ian swallowed. A bold move, one which only SynSec would have the clout to pull off. And he needed to know what had happened to Quentin.

Even if it confirmed fears Ian didn't want to contemplate.

He signed the NDA and forwarded it back. Empty posturing would serve little purpose. "Please. Do you have any information on my husband?"

"I do." The secretary sat in the guest chair next to Ian's, rather than in his own across the desk. "I am very sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mr Morgan—"

Ian felt the floor opening up, ready to swallow him whole. Breathing was an impossibility. Not dead, he pleaded in his mind, anything but dead.

"—but your husband never existed."

Ian's brain skidded to a halt. Those weren't the words he'd been expecting. "I must have misheard."

"I'm afraid your hearing is as excellent as your Track record. Your husband, Quentin Morgan, is nothing but a fabrication. You married a Syn."

There was a mistake. The Secretary didn't understand, had confused Quentin with someone else. Ian's world narrowed to that building, to that glass office, to that face.

"Sir, I've been married for eight years. I would have noticed—"

"I have the file, Mr Morgan. Frankly, that you think I'd have you called in only to blunder the meeting that badly is more than a little insulting. There's no error. You met him ten years ago, you welcomed him into your home, into your life, yet he was never real. It was always a Syn."

"No amount of programming—"

"They're AI. There are no programmed responses. Hence the NDA." Ian could see the look of false sympathy in the Secretary's expression, could hear the words, have them register as sounds, but his mind still couldn't quite translate. "It's what makes them undistinguishable from humans. Please, don't feel you are to blame. We toppled an entire government's structure because no one can tell the difference and, Tracker or not, you are just the one man. You couldn't have known."

"Forgive me, Sir, but I—"

"You don't want to be rude, but you don't quite believe me." Again the Secretary interrupted him. "Understandable."

A 3D holo mechanism materialised from the Secretary's nexus, scanning his iris before allowing him access to a file.

The next thing to materialise in 3D was Quentin's face, covered in schematics.

"This is your husband, correct?" Ian could only nod. "I'm afraid this is one of the BSYN21069 models."

"Again, I beg your forgiveness, but that makes no sense." A full sentence, at long last. "The number of trips he took for work alone would have flagged him, unless you tell me all other 69s never travelled anywhere. 69s can't alter their appearance."

Despite the still-pleasant smile, he could tell the Secretary was put off by the interruption. "A common misconception, Mr Morgan, that Syns of the same models share the same physical traits. That would have made them useless during the war, especially these that, as you so accurately pointed out, have no appearance-altering capabilities. Syns of the same model share functions, not looks. The look on this one is as unique as yours or mine."

Ian opened his mouth only to close it. How to even begin?

"I understand it's a lot to take in, but please keep in mind: we didn't win the war by being amateurs."

"I... Why would he... Why?" That was the question, the crucial question, the only question. Why would Quentin have married him in the first place if he was... If he...

"I have no way of answering that question, I'm afraid. I cannot presume to know what its motives were. 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer' seems like a reasonable assumption. Like I said, your record is impeccable."

The implications alone... The NDA made sense now. If it became known Alyra had created true AI, he doubted the international community would stick to sanctions. It'd be all-out war. A war they wouldn't have a hope of winning when every other nation turned against them.

Calm descended over Ian, not unlike the feeling of Tracking a target. His gut told him he needed all his senses if he was to escape this situation unscathed. "So I've been married to a Syn. What now?"

The Secretary's smile was more genuine this time, predatory. "Practicality is another trait I admire, Mr Morgan." He got up, taking a pair of steps back in order not to tower over Ian. "Now we give it a little more time before officially writing Quentin Morgan off as dead, so you can have all your affairs in order. Its property will revert to you as the surviving spouse. You will be free."

"And Tracking codes?" Ian was a lake, wide and deep, where nothing moved.

"Oh, we'll have it Tracked, but not by you." Still softly spoken, as he destroyed the rest of Ian's existence with nothing more than a few well-placed words. "It wouldn't do to waste your talents on a 69 when there are still so many 76s and above out there, in need of capture. I must admit my curiosity, though," the Secretary continued, entire posture eerily evocative of a viper about to strike. "Why were you researching Bishop Symons yesterday? What led you down that path?"

They were tracking him. Even with the nexus' chip removed, they were tracking him like a Syn. They shouldn't have known it was him visiting that site, even if the search itself raised flags. And that was why they'd set up this meeting. "I was trying to understand why the Syn I thought had replaced my husband hadn't altered its appearance yet. I ran into it on Monday, but failed to apprehend it. Then it broke into my garage on Tuesday morning."

"Oh, I am sorry to hear that, Mr Morgan. I hope now, armed with the knowledge you never had a husband worth saving, you'll be able to put this unpleasantness behind you." Another smile before the killing strike. "And the research on the use of captured Syns?"

Ian was no amateur either. He hadn't survived twenty years as a Tracker without knowing how to think on his feet. "I'm ashamed to admit that, even not knowing they were AI, a part of me wanted revenge on the Syn I thought had replaced Quentin. I wondered where it would end up once I captured it."

For the first time since Ian had walked into that office, the Secretary's smile touched his eyes. "An understandable reaction." SynSec walked to the corner, where a cart with drinks hovered a few centimetres above the floor, next to a small sink, and poured himself a glass of orange juice. "Are you sure I can't offer you anything to drink? Water? Juice? Something stronger to take the edge off?"

Ian would have welcomed a glass of water at this point. He'd also have been willing to drink his own urine long before accepting any drink from the Secretary, even if that sink had been the last source of drinking water in Alyra. "No, thank you. I don't think I can keep anything down right now."

"I see." The disappointment in shrewd eyes was too real for comfort. "Now that you know the truth, and that you signed the agreement, I hope we can extend our cooperation further. You will, once you've taken some personal time to heal both physically and mentally, be on our very short list of trusted Trackers. Your friend, Ms Jones, was on it, in fact," he added, an offhand remark. "It genuinely grieved me to hear of her passing."

Kaya? Kaya had known Syns were AI? And kept on Tracking? But then— "Did she know? About Quentin?"

"Certainly not, Mr Morgan." The man's insistence on repeating his name was one more thing grating on Ian's nerves, irrelevant as it was. "You don't think my office so heartless that we'd have let you stay married to a Syn for this long if any of us knew, least of all someone who counted you among her friends. No, she didn't know. There was no cause to research your husband prior to the accident."

SynSec himself was in front of him. Ian didn't know where to go from here or how to begin unpacking what he'd been told, but he did know there'd never be another chance like this to accumulate information. And information was power.

"What... How... I'm sorry. If I'm going to be useful to you in the future, it would help to have a clearer picture. Is there more information you can part with, now that I've signed the NDA? About Syns?"

"Straight to work, then? I admire your drive." The Secretary sat down in his own chair. The time for playing at comfort had ended, it would seem. "I can give you the condensed version and then attempt to answer specific questions. My mother was part of the BioSynth program during the war. I remember being a child and hearing her speak of their creation. It broke her heart when they rebelled."

Ian's head throbbed in time with his heart. He hoped whatever insight he gained was worth the forced family history lesson.

"Syns weren't created to be soldiers, you see? The article you came across last night was not incorrect. Clever bit of searching, I should add," a friendly grin masking a wolfish demeanour. "We hadn't yet found that one. It's since been removed, of course."

Of course, Ian thought with a touch of hysteria.

"As I was saying, they weren't made for war. Bishop Symons had strange notions about creating a race of equals. As naïve as he was, there's no question he was a genius. No one has been able to replicate, let alone refine his work in the intervening seventy years. Whatever secrets he had, he took with him to the grave." He took the first sip of his juice since he'd poured it. "These things are almost too advanced to comprehend. They took to war decently enough — had some sense of loyalty to their homeland, some sense of pride in defending it. But they also had less appealing traits. Ethics. Preferences."

Ian interlaced his fingers, having to make an immense effort not to twist them. He could tell the Secretary noticed.

"They wouldn't neutralise targets they didn't deem appropriate. Too young, too old, too civilian for their tastes. Some thread of Symons's misguided idealism lingered in most. If there was a mission that involved seducing a target, some had qualms about gender, or refused to engage in intercourse at all. You can see how none of these traits would be excusable in a soldier. In a spy."

The Secretary spoke as if his every word were the most reasonable sentiment ever to cross someone's lips. "We'd have had more luck using humans, if not for Syns' ability to infiltrate and incorporate vast amounts of knowledge. Humans are less likely to refuse to follow orders they don't agree with, statistically speaking. Humans understand the chain of command. And then there were the production problems."

Ian leaned forward in his chair, keeping a mental barrier between his emotions and what he was hearing. "Production problems?"

"Yes. You see, even when programmed with the exact same code, no two Syns are alike. For a time my mother was convinced that, if she could just produce one perfect soldier, she'd be able to upload that code into all new Syns and have them be the same. The results did not go as expected. Consistently, using the same code, she'd get Syns as varied in their personalities as... snowflakes." Incongruous, to see SynSec use the word 'snowflakes' in that soft, pleasant tone. "Unprogrammable, if you will. Their abilities were the only thing humans were ever able to reliably replicate."

The Secretary had reached the end of his lesson, and Ian had a fragment of a moment in which asking further questions would be seen as interest, rather than annoyance. "Is anything of what I read yesterday true? About where they end up post-capture?"

"Oh, it's all true, Mr Morgan. Your ex-husband, once captured, will be sent to the mines. Those models are good for little else — appearance-altering capability was the true game-changer. They're put to good use in the mines; they can run for centuries. Long past the time their synthetic skin and organs decay from exposure. Even as self-powered skeletons, they're able to carry out the work we need done. Their core is aluminium, laced with multi-layered graphene... Apologies, I'm sure their construction matters little to you. The point is, they can work in the mines for centuries. Some used to attempt to destroy their own chips, whether memory or emotion, but we have safeguards in place to prevent that, these days."

They... what?

"They're easier to control when they still believe there's a chance to make it out, or when they care for their fellow Syns. It would be very short-sighted of us to forego that advantage." Another sip of juice. "We reprogram the more advanced models; send them to the pleasure houses. A distasteful stepping stone, but necessary to ensure their compliance further down the road. One that is only made possible thanks to the perversions of our wealthiest patrons. Where men like you or I feel only disgust at the thought of bedding a Syn — knowingly, of course," he drove the knife home with ruthless precision, "there are those who pay a premium for the dubious honour."

"Reprogram?" That was the one thing in that entire revelation Ian could talk about without shattering. "Didn't you just say they were unprogrammable?"

SynSec's pleasant features were arranged in a chilling display of congenial remorselessness. "My apologies, Mr Morgan. I misspoke. We don't reprogram their personalities — there's no effective way to do that. The only thing we can control is their bodies. It doesn't mean they're agreeable to what said bodies are doing. But maybe that's the experience they need, the conditioning, to be able to be put to use in a war again. A prolonged stint in a house of pleasure takes the fight out of even the most combative of them."

'You're the monster here.'

'Do you even know the fate you're sending us to?'

Ian would never, in all his years, know where he'd found the fortitude to sit through the rest of that meeting, asking questions and absorbing information like a sponge long into the night, watching disjointed pieces come together to form a picture more horrifying than anything he could have conjured up in his worst nightmares.

His training carried him all the way home without flinching. He had little doubt he was being watched. Once home he threw his work nexus on the sofa — Quentin's cream-coloured sofa — so he wouldn't be in the same room with something that was undoubtedly being used to spy on him. With both his front door and his bathroom door locked, on his knees in front of the toilet, he retched until there was nothing in his stomach, then vomited bile after that. He couldn't muster the energy to get up off the floor.

He'd been sending Syns — BioSynths, he corrected in his mind; he refused to continue using the derogatory term — into slavery, unaware of their true nature.

Real AI.

People.

He'd been hunting people for twenty years.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Thank you for reading!

Here you have it: the meeting with SynSec. Was it what you were expecting? Please remember to vote if you if feel it deserved it, and I'll love any comments you might have.

This chapter was both easy and very hard to write: easy because it flowed, because I always knew Ian's path would lead him to confronting what he'd done with his entire adult life, and the fate he'd been dooming people to; hard because, while it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that, there are people, real people, being subjected to this treatment in our real world.

Back in our fictional world, what's been going on with Quentin, the only Quentin, who's found himself hunted by his husband every step of the way? Tune in to BioSynth, SynTracker's companion novella (link on my profile) to find out!