Pavlov's Dogs by D.L. Snell, Thom Brannan Page A

step back.
    “Yes, of course,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
    He got on the bus and his legs went a little weak when the air conditioning hit him. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I could definitely... Marie?”
    His ex-wife sat in one of the seats with another man. Jorge took him in, looking him over, eyes narrowing. Dark striped shirt, blue jeans, forearms and biceps powerful enough to crack nuts in between.
    “Jorge?” Marie said. “ Ay, dios mio , you’re alive!”
    “Yeah,” Jorge said. “And who is this?”
    The man’s face hardened. “I am Paulo.”
    Jorge laughed once, an ugly sound. “Well, good luck with this one. ¿Y los niños? ”
    Marie’s face fell, and Jorge felt his guts turn to water.
    “ N’ombre ,” he said. “Tell me they’re okay.”
    “ No se,” Marie said. “No se. Estan con mi mama en Mexico, pero no se nada de ellos.”
    Paulo reached around Marie and rubbed her shoulders. He looked up at Jorge with clear eyes. “We tried calling. The kids have been with their grandmother for six weeks now, even before all this.”
    Jorge met the man’s gaze and knew there was something he wasn’t being told. “Shit,” he said, turning away. As he did, a large man with a shaved head stepped onto the bus. He glistened as if he were covered in sweat, but the smell coming off his sheen was bitter and tangy.
    “I’m McLoughlin,” he said. “I realize my team must come as a shock, but everyone can relax. We’re taking you someplace safe.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    DR. DONOVAN STOOD in front of a six-foot sculpture of a Dog, looking at it in the sharp fluorescent light of Crispin’s Command Center. The statue was crafted in painstaking, loving detail, from the yellowish-black talons on the misshapen feet to the tufts of hair on the ends of the Dog’s ears.
    Donovan tilted his head. “So, this is... decoration?”
    Crispin, who was sitting at a very large touchscreen above a bank of controls, took off his headphones and turned to the neurotechnician. “I’m sorry, what?”
    Pointing at the model of the Dog, Donovan said, “What is this?”
    “Oh!” Crispin smiled. His mood had much improved since the skewed vote, and it had only elevated with each positive report from McLoughlin’s team. “There is a rectangle on the base of the statue. Step on it, please.”
    Turning away and rolling his eyes, Donovan did as the project director bid. A seam of light brightened down the center of the Dog, splitting it from crown to crotch. The two halves of the sculpture rotated outward, revealing a network of fiber optics and realistic viscera. The skeletal structure was exposed on the right, the musculature on the left, with all the organs suspended in between.
    “That’s... different.” Donovan’s eyes widened and took in everything. The fiber optics ran throughout the systems of the Dog, a fine line of pulsing light. “These are, what? The pathways monitored?”
    Crispin grunted at the touchscreen. The monitor was tiled with little picture-in-picture video feeds of each Dog’s vision. “Close, Dr. Donovan. Those are the neural pathways the Pavlovian Chip controls . I’ll show you.”
    The doctor pinched his forefinger and thumb together on the touchscreen, then expanded them, zooming in on Samson’s feed. The display was moving steadily and smoothly in hi-def, sweeping from side to side as the Dog searched the alleyway. The size of the monitor, combined with how close Donovan stood, induced a bit of vertigo. He put out a hand to steady himself.
    “It takes a bit of getting used to,” Crispin said. “The neural interface captures the image coming into Samson’s eyes, even before it gets to his optic nerve. In fact...” He paused, raising one eyebrow at Donovan. “We can even intercept it. Would you like to see?”
    Donovan nodded.
    “Good. Let us see what our erstwhile Beta Samson is up to.”
    They watched as the view closed in on a stout wooden door with a lancet window of meshed