The sim partner’s smile didn’t quite match Aiden’s, and the corners of his eyes didn’t crinkle the same way, but he was close enough. I never had learned to like sim partners’ facial expressions; they were little more than coordinated muscle movements, not the manifestation of a dirty thought or quiet amusement.

  I glanced around, letting my gaze dart toward the door and then up to the camera bubble on the ceiling. Why I was so worried, I didn’t know. No one could possibly have known what was going on in my mind.

  Paranoia is the hallmark of a guilty conscience, I’d heard time and time again.

  Except I wasn’t doing anything wrong, damn it.

  I got into the machine and hooked up all the electrodes. That was always a little clumsy and awkward, even after years of practice, but I managed. I glanced up at the security camera, then pressed two extra electrodes onto either side of my neck and another pair on the underside of my jaw. I had no idea if it would do anything, but Aiden liked it, so it was worth a try.

  Once the equipment was in place, I pulled down the lid and started the program. A computer rendering of Aiden appeared in front of me. As it always was, the setting was a sparsely furnished, unembellished bedroom not unlike my own, and it had about as much personality as “Aiden.”

  His suit was already off, and he beckoned for me to join him on the bed. I never could convince this version of him to look at me quite the same way, and though his eyes were beautiful, they weren’t magnetic like the real thing. Not quite so playful or hungry.

  But I went to him anyway, and as he put his arms around me, the faintly chemical scent of pheromones tickled my nose. My eyes rolled back as the electrodes tingled against my nerve endings. The simulated version of Aiden ran his fingertips along my neck, and the electrodes there responded with featherlight sensations.

  The virtual Aiden turned around and let me take him, and the machinery around my cock created just enough friction and pressure to convince my body I was really inside him. My hands slid over his hips, my fingers and palms tingling with the gentle brush of skin across skin. It wasn’t an exact match—I’d run my hands over my own flesh enough to know it wasn’t perfect—but it was damn close. Close enough it didn’t take long, especially after having been in the presence of the real thing, for me to get off.

  I lifted the lid, carefully removed the equipment from my now very sensitive cock, and then unceremoniously shoved it all away. After I’d peeled off the rest of the electrodes, I got up, and the machine’s self-cleaning mechanism kicked on. Listening to it whir and hum, I was thankful for the millionth time that we were long past the days when everything had to be cleaned by hand. The interns we had now had no idea how lucky they were.

  I sat up and rubbed my temples. My sim partner was still front and center in my mind, and he was quickly turning into a long-memorized image of the man he was based on.

  Why did I keep tempting myself? This was dangerous. I needed to use a different sim partner from here on out. Maybe take a suppressor for a while instead of going through a sim session. It might even be a good idea to request a transfer to a simhouse where the world didn’t lurch out from under me every other Thursday at fourteen thirty.

  Because the more I looked, the more I wanted to touch.

  And if I touched, I lost everything.

  Chapter 2

  The clock read 0645. Fifteen minutes before our shift started. We’d already gotten an update from the night crew—needed to get maintenance in to check the equipment in one room, there was something wrong with the program in another, the bug in a third one’s software was finally squared away—and now we hung out in the break room.

  Lacey yawned as she poured coffee, and I waited for her to finish filling her cup so I could fill mine. Everyone else was reading the news and chatting over their morning coffee, occupying the white plastic chairs at the round tables along the giant windows overlooking the city.

  At the table I always shared with him and Lacey, Graeme balanced a tablet against the edge and his coffee cup on his knee. “Good God. Another one?”

  I looked up from topping off my coffee. “Hmm?”

  He tapped the edge of his tablet. “They busted another wireless lounge last night.”

  “Did they, now?” I set the pot down and took a seat at our table. “How many did they catch this time?”

  “Let’s see.” Graeme scrolled through the news feed. “‘North Quadrant PD raided a wireless sex lounge in the Old City in what was thought to be an abandoned apartment complex. Contractors going through the building to determine how to demolish it discovered evidence of the lounge’… Blah, blah, blah.” He mumbled something to himself as he scrolled further. Then he stopped, and he whistled. “Wow. ‘Nineteen were arrested at the site, though dozens more are thought to have escaped.’” Shaking his head again, he set the tablet down and sipped his coffee. “Fucking degenerates. I swear, they’re multiplying.”

  Lacey dropped into a chair. “Or the smaller groups are running out of places to go, so they’re combining into larger ones.” She picked up her own tablet. “Anything that puts them all together and makes it easier for the cops to round them up is fine by me.”

  “Hear, hear,” Graeme muttered.

  “I just don’t get it.” Lacey clicked her tongue. “Even if going wireless were as great as people say it is, I can’t imagine it’s worth the consequences.” She gestured toward the sim rooms across the hall. “Those are perfectly fine, and they’re legal.”

  “Well, and if they ever decriminalized wireless sex,” Graeme said with a quiet laugh, “we’d all be out of a job.”

  “Yeah, right.” Lacey snorted and rolled her eyes. “I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

  “Even if it was, I can’t imagine wanting it.” Graeme wrinkled his nose. “How unsanitary.”

  I quietly sipped my coffee. Yeah, wireless sex was dangerous and unsanitary, but people went to tremendous lengths to get it. Most of the wireless lounges were in the old part of the city, and just getting there meant crossing the mech tracks, which was as dangerous as it was illegal.

  Of course, narcotics junkies went to great and dangerous lengths to get their fixes too, so maybe that wasn’t a reason to be curious. Still, the government didn’t feel the need to shell out billions every year so the general population could get a simulated narcotics fix in order to prevent them from going after the real thing.

  “And besides,” Lacey went on, “if too many people start going wireless, we’re going to be back where we were when the sim programs started.” She shivered. “No, thank you.”

  I looked into my coffee cup. She did have a point. Prior to the sim program, the hospitals had been overflowing with people suffering from the myriad illnesses that had mutated beyond anything medical technology could cure, and the population had exploded beyond sustainability. Perhaps simulations weren’t natural, but they were decidedly cleaner and more pleasant than the overcrowded, disease- and poverty-stricken alternative.

  Graeme stood to fill his coffee cup again. “What they need to do is punish wireless offenders more severely. If a wireless offense will earn them a one-way trip to some of those hard labor hellholes, people will think twice.”

  Graeme snorted. “If the pictures of the diseases don’t deter them, I don’t know what will. If they really want to stop these perverts, what they need—”

  The room shuddered around us, and a dull rumble quickly became loud enough to drown out any attempts at conversation. The floor and the walls shimmied instead of just vibrating, so it was probably an earthquake this time.

  After a moment, it stopped.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “as I was saying, what they need to do is make an example out of a few.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “Cut their balls off, for starters,” he muttered into his coffee cup. “That should remove the temptation.”

  I cringed. “You don’t think that’s a little extreme?”

  “Not if it keeps the perverts in check, no.”

  “They used to do that,” Lacey said. “Back when the laws were first passed and before people were onboard with the sim programs.”

  “Didn’t it work?” she asked.

  “Not really. People just worked harder to keep it underground. That’s how the lounges started.”

  Graeme scowled. “Then sending them off to the mining colonies will make them work harder to keep it underground too, won’t it? Maybe some of the people tempted to try it would think twice?”

  She shrugged. “Best thing I can think of? They should just be left to rot from their own diseases. No medical treatment, nothing. Let them keep going to the lounges so they all infect each other.”

  “Yep,” Graeme said. “And hey, with any luck, a few more structure collapses in the Old City will take out the rest of their perversion dens. Problem solved.” He raised his cup in a mock toast, and my stomach turned.

  “If castration didn’t work as a deterrent,” I said, “why would that?”

  “Think about it.” Graeme shrugged. “You don’t want to get castrated? Don’t get caught going wireless. You don’t want your dick to turn green and rot off? You don’t stick it in another person.” He stretched out in his chair, draping his arm over the back of it. “And as a bonus, we’re not wasting police resources chasing these idiots down. The microbes handle it for us.”

  “And the crumbling Old City buildings,” Lacey said.

  “Exactly.” Graeme smiled. Then he looked at his tablet. “Shit. I’m going to miss my own sim.”

  “This early?” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t think Mary was off work today.”

  “She isn’t.” He chuckled sheepishly. “Just don’t tell her I’m doing solo sims, all right? I’ll never hear the fucking end of it.”

  I laughed. “My silence isn’t free, brother. You know that.”

  Graeme shot me a glare, then scooped up his tablet and hurried out of the break room.

  After he’d gone, Lacey shook her head. “Poor sap. Gotta love having to sneak a sim session behind the wife’s back.”

  “Well,” I said with a shrug, “at least he’s already here, so it’s not like she’ll catch him sneaking into the simhouse.”

  “True.” She eyed the doorway he’d gone through, and lowered her voice. “I’m a little worried about him, actually.”

  “Why’s that?”

  She threw the doorway one more wary glance. “He’s been doing a lot more sessions lately. He’s doubled his solo sessions, and he and Mary have upped their joint sessions to two a week.” She chewed her lip. “I’m worried he’s going to get tempted into going wireless.”

  “Graeme?” I laughed. “Lacey, you heard him.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Her expression didn’t change. “And one of the simtechs I worked with a few years ago was super loud about people going wireless. I mean, he stopped just short of advocating cutting off their balls right in the middle of the street for everyone to see. Six months after I transferred from that simhouse to this one, he was busted in one of the big raids.”

  I swallowed. “Really?”

  She nodded. “I’m worried Graeme’s going to do the same thing, you know?”

  Shaking my head, I started to get up. “I don’t think he will.”

  “I’m going to keep an eye on him, though. If he ups his sims again, we should talk to him.”

  “Good idea.”

  She looked at the clock. “Well, time to get to work.”

  I followed her out of the break room and tried not to think about who was coming in for his sim session this afternoon. Or the temptation he’d hinted about last time. My coworkers would rat me out in a heartbeat if I even thought about going wireless with Aiden or anyone else, and besides, if the cops were raiding lounges and diseases were still running rampant…

  I shook my head and just tried to keep him—and his hints—out of my mind.

  As I always did when Aiden arrived, I struggled to maintain my calm, professional composure.

  Aiden got into the sim machine and put the virtual reality goggles on, but kept them up on his forehead. His eyes remained closed as I put all the equipment into place. That gave me an opportunity to steal a few glances at his smooth, naked body. Which of course didn’t help steady my hands. Or my breathing. Or my thinking.

  “You’re on edge today.” Aiden didn’t open his eyes. “Something wrong?”

  I gulped. “No. No, nothing’s wrong.”

  He looked up at me, and the corners of his mouth twitched with the faintest prelude to a grin. “Glad to hear it.”

  I picked up one of the electrodes. “This is for your neck.”

  He raised his chin a little to give me more access.

  I hesitated, then drew back, still holding the electrode between my fingers. “What exactly do the additional leads on your neck do, anyway?”

  One of these days, when he grinned at me like that, I swore I was going to shove a lead into his left nostril. It was like he could see right through me and knew something I hadn’t said out loud. Maybe something I hadn’t even thought yet.

  “Why don’t you try it?” he asked, and I couldn’t decide if he was patronizing me or if he was just amused. “You might like it.”

  “I did. And it was interesting, but…” I shrugged and leaned down to put the electrode in place.

  He held still until the electrode was secured. “It’s hard to explain. And really it’s not nearly as pleasurable as—” His gaze darted toward mine. For the first time since he’d started strolling into my simhouse, he looked uncomfortable, maybe even nervous, and he quickly cleared his throat and muttered, “It’s not as good as I’d hoped it would be.”

  “And yet you keep doing it.”

  That familiar cocky smile returned, but some unease remained in his eyes. “Well, I didn’t say it wasn’t good at all.”

  “So it’s just not as good compared to…what, exactly?”

  One eyebrow arched. “Are you trying to get me to admit I’ve had wireless sex before?”

  I jumped. His tone wasn’t defensive. Challenging maybe, not denying the implied accusation but daring me to come out and ask.

  “We’re wasting time.” I put my hand on the chamber’s lid. “I need to start your sim.”

  He didn’t protest. As I lowered the lid, though, he said, “It’s amazing, Keith. It really is.”

  I lifted the lid. “What is?”

  That damn grin again. “You’re curious, aren’t you?”

  I furrowed my brow. “About?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled like they always did. “About what it’s like. Going wireless.”

  My blood turned to ice water. “What the—” I glanced warily at the door. “I could have you arrested just for—”

  “But you won’t.” His tone was guarded, as if he wasn’t sure whether he was challenging me or pleading with me.

  The blip of his pulse, which had been steady in the background thus far, sped up just slightly. His eyes darted toward the monitoring console, then back to me, and his Adam’s apple jumped. “Nothing about it is what you think it is.”

  “It’s illegal,” I said through my teeth. “That’s all that—”

  “You’re curious though.”

  My heart was beating faster than his now. “That doesn’t matter.”

  He held my gaze. I should’ve closed the lid and started his sim, but… I’d never talked to anyone who’d gone wireless before. The only people I knew who had were in prison now. And there was something oddly intriguing, something that would’ve had my own ECG beeping out of control, about Aiden naked with someone else.

  I glanced at the door again. Then, lowering my voice to a whisper, I asked, “Have you seriously gone wireless?”

  “I have.”

  I inclined my head, moving my lips as little as possible because of the security cameras. “What’s it like?”

  He grinned triumphantly. “I knew it.”

  “Just tell me,” I growled. “Yes, I’m curious, but that doesn’t mean I’d actually do it.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “And risk losing my job? My home? Going to prison?” I snorted. “No, thanks.”

  “But you want me to tell you what it’s like?”

  “Out of curiosity, yes.”

  His eyebrow rose. “So you can turn me in?”

  “No. I won’t.” I swallowed. “I swear, I won’t.”

  He laughed softly. “Well, there isn’t much I can say. I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.”

  “Try.”

  “If you’re that curious, why don’t—”

  “Are you about to suggest I visit a wireless lounge?” I hissed. “We could get arrested just for discussing this.”

  “Maybe so,” he said with a shrug. “But I know you’re curious about it.”

  “I’m curious what it’s like inside a mech’s reactor core, but you don’t see me beating down any doors to get into one, do you?”

  Aiden laughed. “A reactor core? Come on now, isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

  I gave him an irritated look. “Is it?”

  “Uh, yeah, just a bit.” He gestured at the lid. “I should probably start my sim. I’m sure you have others after me.”

  “Actually, I—” Just have my own sim after you. “You’re right. Enjoy the ride, Aiden.” Before he could respond, I shut the lid.

  Safely behind the console, I started the sim and sat back to monitor his vitals. With the way my heart was pounding, maybe I should have been monitoring my own too. When my coworkers and I had been discussing all the reasons wireless sex was illegal and all the ways the government could prevent people from giving in to that temptation, it was one thing. When the man who’d all but extended the illicit invitation was here, naked, aroused, it was a lot more difficult to convince myself those arguments had merit. What would be the harm of trying it once? He was clean. I checked him before every sim, and he’d never come up positive for anything. I was clean too, of course. We couldn’t exchange diseases we didn’t have.