Free Synthetic Dreams by Kim Knox

senior Corporation employee. I’m trusting you to get me out of here in one piece, but to do that I have to have a clue about something. ”
    A brief smile pulled at his mouth. “There’s a perimeter fence beyond this stretch of land. We get through that and there’s an access through the hill. The whole thing is a warren.”
    “We simply ‘get through’?”
    Paul pulled her through the thick line of a box hedge. The sharp prick of thin branches and the brush of small glossy leaves itched her skin. Its acrid stink sharpened—it stank like piss. The proximity of the fence warmed the cold night air, and the hum of security walls throbbed against her eardrums.
    A shimmer of air just beyond the hedge was another sign of the encircling walls. One touch and they were fried. A split second of agonised pain and she’d be a brief human cinder. She’d seen it more than once. Vyn pulled in a nervous breath. This wasn’t her area of expertise. Ossian was the one with the talent for physical structures. He’d got both of them in and out of more places than she wanted to remember.
    “You have the key?” She stared up at Paul as he ran his gaze over the seemingly endless and lethal wall.
    “Yes.” His fingers loosened their grip, but he didn’t let her go. They slid down over her elbow, along her forearm to her wrist. A hard thumb jerked up the heel of her palm and he yanked her forward. “It’s you.”

    “Fuck—no!”
    Her palm hit the invisible wall, the sudden force of the impact shocking her skin…but not frying her. It flared hot against her hand, the quick stab of blunt pins forcing out a sharp breath. But she wasn’t dead.
    “What the fuck is this?” She grated out the words, staring at her hand, her stiffened fingers, as flares of light darted around her skin. Beads of energy teased over the scars drawn on the back of her hand to edge their way under the cuff of her jacket.
    Vyn stopped breathing. It was as if the energy sought her out, as if it drew her into itself. Knowing her. Accepting her. Slots dropped into place in her mind, and anger twisted hard in her stomach. “Those bastards made me into a key. More than that. Destroyed my life so I’d be a part of their security system? ”
    “Open a doorway.”
    Vyn thinned her mouth and focused. She felt her gaze narrow, the hard pinch of a line forming between and around her eyes. She imagined a hole, making it high and wide enough to fit them both through. For a long second, the quick flare of silver scales caught in a circle burned against her retinas. She blinked. It vanished and the air cleared, a cold ripple of simple night air sweeping over her hot skin.
    She took a step forward. Paul did the same and they passed under to the other side of the fence. The ripple of security dropped down behind them again.
    Vyn pushed out a hard breath and yanked her hand free from his. “You could have told me.”
    He grabbed her arm again and pulled her through the breaks in the low bushes. “It’s instinctive. I tell you how you’re the key? You block it.”
    Vyn struggled in his grip but couldn’t break free. “Not necessarily.”
    Paul shrugged. “Believe that.”
    They tramped over the undulating ground, the hum of security wrapping around her. She wanted to argue, to say that he was an idiot, but she was too aware of how the mind worked. She played with perception every day. And she hated to admit it, but he could know more about her skin being an organic circuit than she did. For now.
    She pressed her lips together. “How far?”
    “Just beyond that copse.”
    Vyn winced and glanced back to the security wall. Copse was too close to corpse. The lights of Paul’s house flickered beyond the sheen of air and she had to wonder if the other Liam’s body was still trying to mash his face into the carpet, or if the signal had failed.
    Running in the cold-world had its limitations. She hated it. She wanted the link to the tiers, to the open and immediate