“You see, Shinobu, manufacturing chips is a very complex and detailed science, but it is child’s play compared to what resonance manipulation is capable of. While your project manager ponders the implications of cheap, high-powered circuitry, we are going to be building something altogether more important, in secret. And you are going to leave us alone while we do it.”

“I am?” managed the executive, tapping his considerable indignation as a source of bravery, “You forget yourself, young lady. You cannot make me, or my company, do anything.”

But his heart was not behind his posturing, and Ayala knew it. He rose sharply, wanting to get out of the room and regroup. He needed to find out what this machine was really capable of. Was it some weapon? Had he unwittingly helped some terrorist organization build some kind of doomsday device? He shivered and turned to leave the room.

“Sit down, Shinobu.” said Ayala quietly, but with an authority that welled up from her very core. He froze. He was angry, and maybe even a little afraid, and his emotions were starting to become overwhelming. For reasons that he could not quite explain, he turned back to her and saw that she had stood as well and they both faced each other, in silence, for a moment. It was a moment that passed like an age.

To the man’s surprise, it was Madeline who eventually spoke up. As the Japanese businessman stood face to face with Ayala, Madeline had seen the moment Ayala had told her to look for, and so she began.

“I suggest you take a seat, Matsuoka-san. While I may be the harmless scientist you have been told I am, I am afraid my friend here is definitely no mathematician. Perhaps more importantly she is far from harmless either, by any stretch of the imagination.”

The man looked at the Israeli woman as if for the first time. While she had seemed so pleasant in all their previous dealings, he suddenly saw the violence she kept caged inside her. Her supremely confident eyes locked with his, and she smiled a cold, merciless smile, her face hard as ice, her brows set, her body tensed and ready.

He maintained his poise for a moment longer, not out of bravado, but paralyzed by this woman’s stare. In it he saw an unyielding desire and capability to hurt him, hurt him in ways he struggled not to envision, and for a moment he was frozen by a wave of fear he had not felt since he was a child. He waited for her stare to relent, for some sign of civility in her eyes, but there would be none. He sat down.