Virtual

by Alianne Donnelly

  * * *

  For the second time in as many days, Ryan watched Victoria run out of the house to get away from him, and this time he was sure she knew something was going on.

  Way to keep a low profile, genius.

  He should have left well enough alone. But no. He’d had to personally be the one to tell Victoria the asshole who’d swapped saliva with her had tried to call holo-Ryan and get a security access code. Not just once, either.

  The scary thing was, if it had been the proper holo-Ryan, it would have responded, and it would have granted the request because the system wasn’t voice-specific, only voice activated.

  He’d already met with Celia about the monumental security risk when he’d come into the office a couple of hours ago. All customers were being contacted, and a voice recognition software upgrade was being pushed to all civilian units. Ryan did not feel even a little bit bad for the programmers in charge of that one.

  He was the man. A hero. Only he didn’t get to gloat, because it would all go down the drain the moment Victoria put her lawyer hat on and sued them all.

  The DOD would not like this.

  As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he panicked.

  “Shit,” he snapped, and burst into action, typing like mad to hack Victoria’s car. She had front- and rear-facing cameras; he could activate them and see whether there were any unmarked vans following her. “Come on, come on…”

  He had to connect through the Wi-Fi on her phone to get a transmission, and drummed his fingers while the link was established, praying he didn’t get through just in time to see her being gagged and hooded.

  The screen split in two, showing the road in front of Victoria’s car on the left and the rear view on the right. Nothing unusual in either shot. She was speeding, but her GPS said she was en route straight to work, ETA five minutes. Five minutes, and she’d be safe. Just as soon as she walked into the building.

  It didn’t make Ryan feel any better about her being in the car alone and upset. Someone could still be following her, keeping tabs on her—someone other than him.

  He had to get word to her somehow, warn her she was in danger.

  Yeah, Ryan could imagine how well that would go over. You can’t sue us, the DOD will kill you. Because breach of contract and invasion of privacy weren’t exciting enough, why not throw in coercion to make things interesting?

  “Mr. George?”

  Ryan jumped and fumbled with the controls to turn off the video feeds. “Yeah?”

  “I’m Malcom Sheffield,” said the man in black. “I’m with the…efficiency committee.”

  Ryan shook the offered hand. “Of course.” Stay calm. “How can I help you?”

  Sheffield smiled. “I thought it was high time we met. You were the programmer who first discovered the malfunction earlier this month, yes? We have heard about the way you stepped in to correct the error. Your quick thinking saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. We were all duly impressed.”

  Ryan gulped. “Just doing my job.”

  Sheffield looked over the equipment. “Yes, and you do it quite well. Which is why I am here.”

  Not good!

  “My superiors have taken a liking to you. You have style, you think fast on your feet, have solid programming skills… Watching you work has been a treat.”

  Don’t panic. It doesn’t have to mean what you think it means.

  “The way you handled the Marlow situation was truly inspired.”

  Or maybe it does. Shit!

  “You went above and beyond the call of duty. That’s a rare quality these days.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “Thanks?” Ryan replied, desperate for any kind of noise. As long as there was noise, others might hear him being dragged out at gunpoint. His palms were starting to sweat, and he kept wanting to check the monitors to make sure they weren’t broadcasting any incriminating evidence. Sheffield was watching him with a steady stare that made Ryan feel like a very small bug under a very large magnifying glass. The instant he even twitched to look away, Ryan knew Sheffield would pounce.

  Suddenly the not-so-subtle DOD agent shoved away from the doorjamb, and Ryan flinched when he reached into his pocket. Not for a gun—Thank you, God. Just a flash drive. “I have something I’d like you to look at,” he said, offering the drive to Ryan.

  Trying to pet a rearing cobra would have been less risky.

  “Go ahead,” Sheffield cajoled. “The contents will play automatically.”

  Against his better judgment, Ryan relented and plugged in the drive.

  His screen went black, and then a blinking icon appeared in the top left corner. In another second, it opened and data streamed across the screen, neatly organized into four sections that looked like…

  “These are blueprints,” he said.

  “A little something we are working on. A pet project, you might say.”

  “It’s…impressive.” It really was. Ryan could tell it wasn’t finished yet, but, oh man, when it was, it would be a masterpiece. The code was already stable, the user interface still rudimentary, but the framework was solid. It was the programming equivalent of a DaVinci sketch.

  “Yes,” Sheffield agreed.

  “But it’s not finished.”

  “Indeed,” Sheffield said. “There was an…accident with the programmer who began this project, and he is no longer able to continue its development. Part of the reason we are here at Hearth Global is to judge the talent, so to speak. We are looking for someone who will help us bring this to completion. Someone who understands the intricacies of complex systems and thrives under pressure. Such individuals tend to stand out in a crowd.”

  “Wait.” Ryan swiveled his chair around to face him. “Are you offering me a job?”

  Sheffield smiled as if he’d been told an awkward joke. “A more appropriate term would be calling.” He gestured for the flash drive, and Ryan gave it back. “You must understand this is not your average nine-to-five. The person who takes this on would be giving up a great deal—their life would change forever.” The flash drive went back into his pocket. “Which is why we want to make sure the chosen candidate is fully cognizant of the demands that will be made of him. I can assure you, the sacrifice might be great, but the rewards we are prepared to offer are much greater.”

  “I suppose that would depend on your definition of sacrifice and reward.” He could have happily kicked his own ass. Idiot! You do not mouth off to a DOD agent!

  Sheffield inclined his head. “Perhaps.”

  Ryan scratched his temple. “Yeah, well, I’m flattered, I am. But I’m a graphics tech, not an architect.” He also wasn’t what modern health professionals affectionately referred to as suicidal.

  “Why don’t you think about it?” Sheffield replied, as if he’d been expecting this. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Does Celia know you’re trying to poach her flock?”

  “Have a good day, Mr. George.” And away he went.

  Ryan slumped in his seat, hanging his head over the backrest.

  “Yo, look who it is. Ryan ‘Snugglebum’ George, in the flesh.”

  He sighed. “I’m going to kill Madi.”

  “Gonna have to go through me first,” Taylor said, thumping his chest in challenge.

  Ryan waved that off as unimportant. “Fine, whatever.”

  “Man, you don’t look so good.”

  Ryan spun the chair and watched the ceiling turn above him. “Oh, I’m just…thinking.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Remember back in the day when we used to come to work and knew exactly what our day would be like?”

  “Uh-huh. I hit on your sister, you chased me off, and then we all slacked the day away playing World of Warcraft until closing. Good times.”

  “Yeah. Good times. I miss ’em.”

  Taylor snorted. “I don’t. Unlike some people around here, I get laid on the regular now.”

  Without looking at him, Ryan ra
ised a finger in warning.

  “Boom, baby! I’m outie. See-yah…”

  There went the last sociable person around here not currently imbibing massive amounts of caffeine, which left Ryan to spend the rest of his day alone, sweating Victoria’s return.

  When 6:15 rolled by and she still wasn’t home, he started to get worried. Sheffield’s little visit might have creeped the hell out of Ryan, but the man had made it sound like they trusted him to have this under control.

  Good. He totally did.

  Victoria was just busy at work. She’d been working crazy hours. This was nothing out of the ordinary for her.

  Chafing with impatience, he brought up the car’s GPS again.

  Victoria was definitely not at work anymore. She was driving around in an area that wasn’t anywhere near her usual hangouts. Okay, no big deal. Maybe she got a craving for some hole-in-the-wall place in the boonies. It could happen. She was a female. Who the hell knew what went on in their heads when they hit that special time of month?

  Like fire ants under his skin was the possibility that she might have gone to the asshole from last night. His gut told him she wouldn’t. She had to be smart enough to recognize a creeper when he tried to steal keys to her house. But the way she’d looked right before she left, who the hell knew?

  She was coming back!

  Ryan glued himself to the computer screen, watching her car pull into the driveway. She got out and popped the trunk to take out at least a dozen bags from some fancy dress store he didn’t recognize.

  Switch to internal cameras as she entered the house. It unlocked for her so she didn’t have to dig for her key fob. The door locked when she closed it behind her, a new security measure she noticed when the tumblers clicked. She didn’t exactly look relieved.

  Holo-Ryan didn’t appear, and Victoria didn’t call him, just took her purchases upstairs to her bedroom.

  A muscle in Ryan’s jaw twitched when she started to undress. Feeling like a peeping tom, Ryan switched to the kitchen cam to give her some privacy. The audio was still on, though, and he could hear the hiss of fabric and the rustle of shopping bags. He was amazed at his own willpower, but this was what made him different from Gordon the perv and Liam the creeper. Ryan knew the boundaries, and he was doing everything he could not to cross them any more than necessary.

  Victoria came down to the kitchen, humming to herself. She poured herself a tall glass of cold milk, made herself instant mac and cheese, went to the living room, and spent the next three hours watching movies, while Ryan sat there, waiting for her to call him and rip him a new one.

  When the last one ended, she washed her dishes by hand, dried them, and put them away. She wiped down the counter on her way out, and turned off the lights. Back in her bedroom, she opened the window a little, and went to bed. The house went completely dark.

  Ryan stared. No tantrum, no righteous outrage at having been deceived, nothing.

  What the hell just happened?

  — Chapter 12 —

  What did one do when one suspected one’s house was being controlled by someone else? One called for backup. After hours of scouring the internet for any pre-existing evidence that Hearth Global wasn’t completely forthright with their customers, and finding nothing, Tori had called in the big guns. Jessica O’Hare, her best friend and confidante, was just about the only person whose instincts Tori trusted as much as her own. The woman had a knack for finding the needle in any haystack. She was Tori’s go-to person whenever something didn’t look right in the files, or when a testimony just didn’t ring true.

  More importantly, Jessica was one of those freaks of nature who could find Waldo in under five seconds.

  Too bad she couldn’t find any dirt on Hearth Global.

  They’d spent the afternoon searching in tandem, while Tori dodged messages from her boss, who was getting not happy about Tori requesting emergency PTO in the middle of a court case. She’d declined four calls from Liam, and finally had to put her phone on silent because the incessant ping of incoming text messages was driving her up the wall. And after all that, Tori was no closer to a solid case than she’d been the day before.

  She’d been just about ready to throw in the towel, when Jessica blurted out the perfect solution to it all.

  The plan was brilliant, and so devious, Tori had trouble containing her giddy excitement. They needed evidence to prove the hologram, which was supposed to be an automated, human-free software, was actually being controlled by a person who could see and hear everything going on inside Tori’s house.

  Why not get some?

  Let’s see how Ryan likes it when the tables turn.

  Tori looked over the scene with a critical eye. Dresses all over the bed, shoes scattered on the floor, shopping bags on the dresser and vanity, strategically placed so the cameras hidden inside them had a wide-angle view of her entire bedroom.

  Lights, camera, action.