“I got the job done,” Gun replies coldly. “Are you questioning my methods?”
“I’m only noting that if you’d resorted to more conventional methods, you could have saved the family a perfectly good drone.”
“It was an obsolete model.” Gun stabs his waffle piece, though all he does is push it around his plate. “Take it out of my allowance if you have a problem with it.”
Anderson puts his fork down, mouth tightening. “Don’t get soft, son. This company needs you. If you’re going to lead someday, you have to be strong. You have to be able to make the tough decisions and do what needs doing.”
Gun tosses his fork on his plate. “I got the job done, and I did it without hurting anyone. I’m not going to apologize for that.”
“Nor should you.” His mother intercedes, resting a hand on her husband’s arm. “It was a job well done.” She gives Anderson a tight look. “I think Gun has proven that he doesn’t need to be micromanaged, William.”
His father grunts and resumes eating.
“How’s Andrea these days?” Maia asks, voice a little too chipper. The look she shoots Gun is a warning not to goad their father.
“We broke up a few days ago.” For his sister’s sake, Gun pulls his plate back and takes a bite. “I had exactly two champagne bottles hurled at my head.”
“How are things progressing with the VHS student?” Anderson asks.
Gun is ready for this. He makes a point of looking his father in the eye when he answers.
“Too mousy,” Gun says. “Even if I did convince her to work for us, she’s too skittish. She’ll just get caught and expose us. I planted some Lice on her, but the Global malware devours them.” He flicks a glance across the table at his friend. “Nate is looking into a method to get past them.”
Nate nods in affirmation.
His father takes a long drink of coffee. “Good thing you’re going to Claudine’s party. That will be a good time to get some data on Global firewalls.”
Gun nods, annoyed he hadn’t thought of this himself. He would have, if his father hadn’t been at him since he walked in the door.
“It’s a good idea,” Nate says, coming to Gun’s rescue. “I’ll have the Bifocals ready in time.”
Gun flicks Nate a grateful glance before burying his face in his coffee cup.
• • •
“I was right. You do have a thing for the Hom girl,” Nate declares as soon as brunch is over and the two of them are alone in the study. “You’ve got it bad.”
Gun turns away, not wanting his friend to see his face.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Nate says. “You’re talking to the person who cleaned up your puke the first time you snuck brandy out of your father’s liquor cabinet. Come on, fess up.”
Gun wipes all emotion from his face. “Yes, I like her.” It is hard to admit. Confessing it to his best friend makes it all the more real and uncomfortable.
“I knew it!” Nate crows. He grins. “Are you going to ask her out?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t know where to take her.” That’s a complete lie. He can think of a dozen places he’d like to take her, but they’re all in the real-world. That’s not an option. If she finds out who he really is, he’ll lose her. He knows this as certainly as he knows his shoe size.
“That’s crap. Tell me about her.”
“I don’t need dating advice from you. I think I’ve proven myself to be sufficient.”
Nate rolls his eyes. “You’re good at hunting women. That’s not the same thing as dating someone. Tell me about her.”
“She’s smart. Fierce and determined. She’d rather fight than do math. She feels trapped at VHS.”
Nate slaps his hand on one knee. “Got it. I know the perfect thing. Give me forty-eight hours. I’ll build a perfect Vex site for your first date.”
“That’s not a good idea—”
“Of course it is.” Nate flips open his tablet and begins to work, fingers flying over the screen.
• • •
“This is a birthday party, you idiot,” Maia says.
“It’s a mission,” Gun replies. “In case you missed the conversation at the end of brunch, I have an assignment.”
“Fine, have it your way.” Maia sighs, kicking off her shoes and crossing her legs on the sofa. She’s dressed in a black velour sweat suit that hugs all her curves. Unlike a most of the women Gun knows, her beauty is one hundred percent real. No augments, no body sculpting.
“I have my own surveillance to do on the Hatch siblings, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy myself,” she continues. “Fill me in on your plan. I can at least keep you from getting caught.”
“Dad just wants me to spy for general intel, but I think there’s a connection between the Winns and the League.” Gun outlines the information he has.
As he listens to himself, he has to admit he sounds like a paranoid crazy person trying to connect invisible dots. He pushes on with resolution. If there’s anyone he can sound crazy with, it’s his sister.
Maia waits for him to finish, all the while watching him with an impassive expression.
“It’s all circumstantial at this point,” he concludes. “I need hard proof. If I can find it, we can squash Global.”
“If we were talking about anyone other than Reginald and Claudine Winn, I’d say you’re grasping at straws,” she says. “But if anyone’s going to piggy back off a terrorist organization, it would be them. And they’re sneaky enough to pull it off.” She swings her legs off the sofa, sitting up to face him. “What’s your plan?”
“Claudine bugs all the students. Every last one of those kids is being monitored twenty-four-seven.” He describes the spyware found by the Dread Twins. “Our Lice can’t penetrate the defenses, but Nate has a new Vex Axcent called Bifocals. They deploy millisecond bursts of code to hack through firewall camouflage. Each burst takes a snapshot of the firewall code. Once I have enough snapshots, we’ll have the intel needed to reprogram the Lice so they can get into VHS.”
Maia’s eyebrows raise with appreciation. “Nate is a man with many talents.” She cocks her head at Gun. “Why spy at VHS? Surely you don’t think the students are part of the League conspiracy?”
“The Winns have collected the world’s best and brightest minds under the pretense of training them to be the next generation of Global employees. Who’s to say what really goes on at that site? Global has a fishbowl of geniuses all indebted to them. I want to know what goes on at that school.” It’s just a coincidence that he’ll learn more about Sulan as a byproduct of this project.
“I see your point,” Maia says, “but if you’re looking for proof that the Winns are colluding with the League, I think you’re looking in the wrong place. We need to hack Claudine and Reginald’s personal sites and Vex interactions.”
“Too obvious,” Gun replies. “They’d be expecting that. If the Winns are in contact with the League—and I think they are—a good way to camouflage it is with the VHS site. No one would ever expect it.”
Maia laughs. “So you obey Dad, get the Lice planted and gather intel on Global, and get to see your girl every night.”
Gun stiffens.
Maia rolls her eyes. “You might have Dad fooled, but not me. You’ve been different ever since you met the VHS girl.”
Gun scowls. He might admit the truth to Nate, but not to Maia. She’d keep his secret, but tease him mercilessly if he confessed.
“Whatever. Deny it if you want, but I know you like her.” Maia leans forward, face turning serious. “Just be careful, Gun. Don’t let yourself get too attached. You’ve lied to this girl and planted Black Tech on her. Those are not the building blocks of a solid relationship.”
With a pat on his knee, Maia leaves him. As soon as the door clicks shut behind her, Gun’s shoulders sag. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to conceal his feelings for Sulan. But Maia is right. He’s done nothing but lie to her since the beginning. She wouldn�
��t even recognize him if they met in the real-world. How can he ever hope to have anything real with Sulan?
11
Birthday
“Gun.” Claudine’s smile is as bright and as fake as ever. Hard eyes drill into him. “How nice of you to come.” Her avatar has an enormous pair of iridescent butterfly wings. Her dress is an iridescent gossamer that’s just transparent enough to make someone look twice.
“Happy birthday.” Gun flashes his dimple—as good as giving her the middle finger, based on the chilly stare he receives in return—and produces a bouquet of flowers. “I wouldn’t have missed your birthday.”
“Funny, I don’t remember sending you an invitation.”
Gun decides to be an ass. She’ll be suspicious if he plays it any other way. “Funny, I can’t imagine you bothering to send out your own invites.” With one last dazzling fake smile, he shoves the flowers into her hands.
As soon as they come in contact with her avatar, the pink irises break into song. They sing a song that blends Heard It Through the Grapevine and Happy Birthday. The flowers dance a complicated jig that involves leaf-waving and coordinated petal bobbing. The entire thing is ridiculous, and by the look on Claudine’s face, she knows it.
There’s a calculating coldness to her that Gun scented a mile away the first time they met. He occasionally enjoys spending time with the women his father orders him to charm—if they’re not too stupid—but thirty seconds with Claudine was enough to make Gun’s skin crawl. Still, he obeyed his father and endured her.
The night he caught her trying to hack his computer—after she tried unsuccessfully to drug his drink—was a relief. It gave him solid grounds to dump her, even though she tried to wheedle back into his good graces with talk of “combining their empires.”
As if Claudine would ever share. She didn’t even like to share her ice cream or a bite of steak, let alone a multibillion dollar company.
He never knew if the breakup infuriated her because it meant she no longer had access to his family’s estate, or because he’d dumped her before she could dump him. His family insisted Claudine always had a thing for him, but Gun doesn’t believe it. Claudine was too cold and ambitious to have a thing for another human being.
He strolls into the party, ignoring the ice-cold glare directed at his back.
The birthday site is an immense mansion, complete with tuxedoed waiters running around with trays of neon green champagne. This isn’t the standard virtual champagne; that stuff was just a prop to give avatars something to do with their hands. The neon green liquid means each glass is filled with Touch. Everywhere he looks, avatars are downing it. There will be mass orgies here by the end of the night.
Six months ago, he would have downed Touch with everyone else. It’s what an idiotic, rich kid playboy would do. He knows he should keep up appearances, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He’s sick of pretending to enjoy this world.
So he skips the Touch champagne, opting instead to stroll through the crowd. His gaze flicks over the outlandish outfits. Hats two feet tall. Sparkly platform heels so high they would never be possible in the real-world. Fairy wings. Purple hair designed to look like a cascade of wisteria. Everyone invited to this party is someone, and they all want to stand out.
Gun wears a plain tuxedo adorned with multicolored stick figures that breakdance across his back and down the sleeves of his jacket. The getup was Maia’s idea. She wears a matching black dress featuring ballerina stick figures. The two of them look as ridiculous as everyone else in this place. At least he talked Maia out of matching unicorn heads. A brother had to draw the line somewhere.
Many people, already thoroughly dosed with Touch, try to rub up against him. Gun expertly rebuffs them, continuing to roam the birthday site.
At the far end of a ballroom, Gun spots Crawler, the famous Vex host. He’s surrounded by at least a dozen people, all of them riveted as he regales them with a dramatic story. His suit, comprised of millions of miniature Wall Crawlers, writhes and shifts around his body.
Gun gives Crawler a wide berth, wanting to avoid the Wall Crawlers that are no doubt cruising the crowd and catching people in compromising situations. He’s surprised Claudine let him bring the Wall Crawlers into her party. This reinforces the rumor of their mutually beneficial relationship.
Nate installed an invisible button on the palm of his avatar. As Gun continues through the mansion, he presses the button to activate his Bifocals. The virtual world around him changes.
In front of him, the woman dressed like a mermaid is reduced to bits of code in the shape of a mermaid silhouette. He’s not as savvy with computer code as Nate and the Dread Twins, but he knows enough to discern the mermaid avatar is armored up with anti-malware code. She’s protected against hackers and spyware.
What she’s not protected against is the Touch coursing through her code. It’s a spinning blur of fluorescent green ones and zeroes that pour around one another in a rush.
Most people are in a similar state, their standard protection codes blitzed through with Touch. If Gun wanted to play dirty—which, he has to admit, does hold some appeal—he could attack the party with Black Tech. Of course that would gain him nothing more than a host of enemies, which isn’t his goal today.
His view of the code only lasts a second before reverting back to normal vision. He refrains from using the Bifocals for another snapshot. As much as he’d enjoy checking out the code of all the partygoers, he’s on a schedule. He has less than thirty minutes before he’s supposed to meet Sulan, and he doesn’t intend to be late.
What he needs to see is the code used to create this place. He needs his Lice to follow Sulan and all the other kids into VHS. In order to do that, they need to be able to slip through the school’s IDS, Intrusion Detection System. There’s no saying the protections will be identical, but it’s worth a shot.
He wanders the upper halls before at last finding a pair of double doors that lead onto a vast veranda. Avatars are scattered across it, many of them draped across one another on oversized chaise lounges. Gun reaches the railing and looks out, activating the Bifocals.
The protective code surrounding this place is like nothing he’s ever seen. It’s an ever-changing kaleidoscope, the ones and zeros changing shapes as they squiggle and slide in and around each other. The numbers compress and elongate and twist before bouncing back to their original shapes.
He presses the button on his palm, snapping pictures. The images are relayed back to Nate and the Dread Twins for analysis. Gun wants to jump back into the real-world, but it’s too soon. It’ll look suspicious.
“Oh, Gun,” says a familiar, syrupy voice. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
Gun forces his shoulders to relax and arms himself with his dimple, turning to face his ex. “Andrea.”
It’s been two months since he dumped her. He knew she’d be here, but hoped to avoid her.
She wears an outrageous avatar that’s more peacock than human. Long legs protrude from a female form covered with iridescent blue feathers. She’s enhanced her cleavage to be three times its normal size. A huge spray of peacock feathers sprout from her back. Turquoise hair flows from her scalp.
“This is Gerald.” Andrea drapes herself on the man next to her. He’s in his own ridiculous anamorphic getup that’s part man, part lion. He and Andrea look perfect next to each other.
“Nice to meet you, Gerald.” Gun doesn’t bother extending his hand.
“Gerald and I are planning a trip to Paris,” Andrea coos, beaming at Gerald. “He has an apartment right next to the Louvre. You know the Parisian government has blockaded the city from refugees? The city is an homage to Pre-‘Fault times.”
Andrea rattles on. Gun does his best to look interested and make small talk. The nanobots he injected into Hardon have been doing their job. Anderson has first-hand intel on the deal her father is brokering for a steel mine in China.
“Andrea, there you are.” Claudine
materializes beside them, trailing a waiter who carries a tray with the fluorescent green champagne. “You promised to share a toast with me.”
Before Andrea or anyone else can object, Claudine has glasses in all of their hands. Gun does not like the glint in her eye as she shoves a glass at him. He takes it, swirling the liquid but not consuming any.
“To exes,” Claudine says, raising a glass. “May the memories of our times together be buried under the happiness of the present.”
“Cheers!” Andrea enthuses. She throws back her champagne.
It takes all Gun’s willpower not to roll his eyes. He watches the others drink.
“You won’t join us in our toast?” Claudine asks after downing her glass.
Gun gives her a flat look and doesn’t reply.
“I’d think you’d embrace the sentiment.” Claudine stalks toward him, swallowing the last of her Touch. “After all, you have more exes than the rest of us.” She reaches out a hand, as though she intends to trail it across his jaw.
Gun tenses, about to sidestep her hand. Maia comes to his rescue. Slinging an arm around him, she grins at those gathered. She expertly positions herself to cut off Claudine.
“Is my brother bothering you?” Maia doesn’t refrain from the Touch champagne; she chugs it down like it’s beer.
“We were just catching up.” Claudine’s smile doesn’t touch her eyes. Under her breath, she murmurs, “Bald boys suck.”
Her words are so soft only Gun hears them. Something about the way she says them sends a chill across his shoulder blades in the real-world. There’s a bucket of hate and venom in those words.
“A birthday toast!” Maia declares, snatching up a new glass. “To the birthday girl. Happy birthday, Claudine!”
Gun and the others join the toast, glasses clinking. He’s still the only one who doesn’t drink.
Andrea and Gerald are pulled away by a group of people dressed in matching yellow leisure suits. Gun catches the barest hint of a smile on Claudine’s face as she sets her glass down on a nearby tray. Her expression makes him wary; when Claudine smiles, it’s never for anyone’s benefit except her own.
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