SynTracker | ONC 2021 | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Eight: Thursday

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.