The short walk over to Christian’s lab in one of the office buildings was relatively quiet. Cadence hadn’t realized that, by inviting both of them, she kind of did herself a disservice. She had intended to use Jamie for physical support and Aaron for emotional support, but now everything just seemed odd.

A man who appeared to be a little older than her with dark blond hair was hunched over a computer, his back to them when they came in. She assumed this must be Christian. He must have been working hard on something when they entered because he didn’t even hear them at first. She wasn’t sure if he suddenly realized they were there or if someone popped him an eye message, but he looked up abruptly, setting down the mouse he had been using, and coming over to meet Cadence.

“Hello, I’m Christian,” he said extending his hand.

Cadence began to wonder what might be in the water around here. He was also an extremely attractive, well-built man, though his hair was a bit shaggy for her taste, with mischievous brown eyes. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said taking his hand.

“Likewise.” He seemed to be soaking her up a bit too long for Aaron’s liking, so he cleared his throat beside her, jarring Christian back to the task at hand. “Right then,” he said crossing back over to his desk. Cadence thought she detected a bit of a British accent, but she wasn’t entirely sure.

“Let’s get you in the chair over here,” he said gesturing toward something similar to a dentist’s chair.

She took her coat off but wasn’t sure where to put it. Her nerves were starting to get the better of her. Aaron took her coat, carrying it over to a rack by the door, and Jamie walked with her over to the black leather chair in the corner of the room. She was shaking already, and she was glad he was standing close by.

Christian was gathering his materials, which she assumed included the IAC he had created for her. Once he had the items he needed, he sat down on a stool with wheels and rolled over to where she sat almost fully reclined.

Jamie was standing about a foot away against the wall behind her, waiting to see if she needed him or not, and Aaron was still hanging back by the door. Though she was glad they were both there, she tried to clear her mind of them so that she could just get through the task at hand.

“All right, Cadence,” Christian said, examining her eyes. “We are going to put the IAC into your right eye. Now, before I begin, let me tell you how this will work, okay? The IAC is a tiny little chip, so small in fact that I can hardly see it unless I look through this magnification lens. I will use some eye drops to numb your eye, and then I’ll make a tiny incision on the surface of your eye, on the edge of your cornea, so that the IAC will fit right in. Then, I’ll put some antibiotic drops in your eye, and you’ll be all done. I’ll also send some of the drops home with you so you can put a few drops in a couple of times a day for a week or so to guard against infection and help that eye to heal up nicely. Okay? Do you have any questions about that?” he asked.

Cadence shook her head. It sounded like he knew what he was doing, and she was just hopeful that this was not the one time he made a mistake.

“Good. Now, after we’re all finished and the IAC is implanted, it will start doing what it needs to do to connect with your brain. I know it sounds weird and it is. I can remember being in your position not too awfully long ago thinking, ‘This guy is nuts! That’s not going to happen in my head!’ But it does. You’ll start off getting little bits of chatter, and then the next thing you know, Aaron’s waking you up in the middle of the night asking why you left one box blank on a report you filled out.” He laughed at himself, glancing over his shoulder in Aaron’s direction, and Cadence wondered if he told that joke when his boss wasn’t standing in the room. Aaron didn’t seem to mind a little humor at his expense, and Christian continued. “So, the whole thing will be up and operational in about three to five days, all right? Do you have any questions about the IAC?”

“I have lots of questions about the IAC,” she admitted.

“Okay, that’s great. What we will do is, once it starts to come on, we’ll get your mentor to go over it with you, kind of show you how it works, how to communicate, how to be sure you’ve stopped communicating before you mentally call the person you’ve been talking to a jackass, that sort of thing. All right?”

“Mentor?” Cadence questioned. “I don’t think I have a mentor.”

“I’m your mentor,” Aaron said from his position in the back of the room.

Cadence was so nervous she barely caught the exchange of glances between Christian and Jamie. She gathered Aaron didn’t take on mentees very frequently.

“And really, it could be anyone who knows how to use it. We just usually ask mentors to take care of that sort of thing because it makes it easy to keep track of who is doing what. So, if Aaron is too busy to show you how to get it going...”

“I’ll show you how to use it,” Aaron interrupted.

“Well, there you go,” Christian said. “No offense. You’re just so busy.”

“None taken.”

Aaron’s responses were all short and sharp, which made Cadence assume he must be working while he was attending this procedure, which wasn’t surprising since he was organizing a hunt for later that night.

“All right, Cadence, if you are ready, then I’ll go ahead and administer the numbing drops.”

She was as ready as she was ever going to be. He pulled her eyelid open and placed a few drops in her eye. “All right, go ahead and blink several times. We want to spread that around a little bit. Good,” he said, looking at her intently. “I’m just watching the dye to make sure it spreads to where he needs it to be. “We’re going to let that sit just a minute or two so your eye gets good and numb. Go ahead and close your eyes, and I’m going to give you a clean cloth to press against that eye until it’s had time to set, all right? Just press this on there, lightly; don’t push your eyeball out of the back of your head or anything, and we’ll be ready in just a bit.”

Cadence followed his directions, stifling a giggle. It was good that he was trying to make her laugh. It was helping her nerves a little. The room was excruciatingly quiet, and she thought they all must be talking about her without her knowing it. Even though she was certain Aaron was working, she thought he was extremely conscious of what was happening with her as he kept looking in her direction every few seconds. It looked as if Jamie and Christian might actually be talking to each other, and she wondered if they were expressing their opinions as to why Aaron would take on Cadence as his mentee.

After a couple of minutes, Christian finally indicated that it was time for Cadence to remove the towel. “How does your eye feel?” he asked.

Cadence blinked her eye rapidly. “It feels kind of weird,” she said. “And my vision is very blurry.”

“All right, good. I think we’re in business then,” he added. “Next comes the scariest part, but I assure you, I’ve done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and I’ve never screwed it up yet, okay? You see, I don’t have to make a precision cut in a particular place. I just have to put it somewhere in your cornea, and your brain and the chip will work the rest out. If it starts to hurt, let me know immediately by raising your left hand, and I’ll stop. I assume that’s one of the reasons Jamie is here?” She nodded and he turned to get his scalpel. “Okay, just look straight ahead and hold perfectly still.”

Cadence was terrified, watching that scalpel come directly at her eye. Christian had a pretty good grip on her head with one arm and he pulled her eyelid open with his thumb. It was all she could do to keep from attempting to jerk away. But she didn’t. And it didn’t hurt either.

“There we go,” Christian said once the incision was made. He turned back to the table to pick up the IAC with a pair of tweezers. Attaching the magnifier to his eye, he clamped onto the chip, scrutinized it for a second, likely to make sure it was facing the right direction, and turned back to Cadence. Once again, he held her eye open with his left hand as he dropped the chip into the incision.