Virtual

by Alianne Donnelly

  * * *

  “Remind me again why you’re here.”

  Not that Ryan had anything against Taylor’s company in general, but there was only so long a person could listen to a guy playing Tetris on his classic Game Boy before his brain cells started to unravel. Taylor had parked his ass on Ryan’s cot in the morning, and hadn’t moved since.

  “I’m your new supervisor. Duh. I’m here to supervise you doing your job and not, you know, taking a new one with a government agency.”

  Ryan winced. “Heard about that, huh?”

  “What, me? I don’t hear nothing, or see nothing. I don’t say nothing, either.”

  “That’s a lot of double negatives.”

  Taylor grinned. “I know. By the way, you might start getting a lot of winky faces from Maureen in accounting. Did you know she’s a gamer? Hard core Hitman fan. She’s got a closet full of sexy lingerie and a fetish for guys with a license to kill.” He paused the game and set it down. “You’re welcome.” And back to the game.

  Ryan shook his head. “Whatever.”

  What was that ping sound? It wasn’t coming from Taylor’s game.

  He checked his phone. Nope, not that, either. “Hey, T-dog, I think someone’s texting you.”

  Game pause. Taylor dug his phone out of his back pocket. “It’s not me. Could be Maureen from accounting. You should get that. No, really.”

  “It’s not my phone.”

  Taylor shrugged. “Check your systems, then.”

  “Can’t be me. I don’t have anything on here that pings.” Ryan minimized all of his screens, one by one. When he could see his desktop, there was a small notification window in the corner: MESSAGE CENTER. He had a message center?

  Ryan opened the notification and stared. “Damn, this guy just won’t quit.”

  “Who?”

  “Here, come look at this.”

  The message center was an actual email inbox for Victoria’s house. It was the equivalent of a last resort tech support line when voice commands didn’t work, or the house lost internet connection. But since the house was designed never to do that, the feature wasn’t meant to be used.

  Except, apparently, by crazy stalker assholes who didn’t understand the meaning of “No.”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Check it out. Two days ago, Victoria brings home this guy, right? They have coffee, laugh at lame jokes, check each other for tonsillitis, whatever.”

  “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?”

  “Up yours.” Ryan did some typing, and on another screen brought up the security feed from two nights ago. “Watch. As soon as she’s out of the room, he’s calling up the hologram to request an access code.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. There he goes again. Aaand one more time.” He fast-forwarded the video. “And just in case he wasn’t heard the first three times…”

  Taylor whistled. “Dog with a bone. He the one pinging you?”

  “Looks like.” Ryan checked the logged messages. “I don’t get him. It’s all requests for bullshit little things, like he’s trying to make himself at home. And how did he even get this email?”

  Taylor pulled up a folding chair. “Let’s check the sick puppy out.” He took over the extra keyboard and brought up a browser window. “God is Google, God is good. What’s his name?”

  “Liam Masterson.”

  “Okey-dokey. Checking name against facial recognition, please hold while your search results are populated with something other than pay-per-click ads.”

  “Is this legal?”

  Taylor snorted. “Do we care?”

  The house audio activated. “Ryan.”

  “You’re up, chief.”

  Ryan turned to the other screen and activated holo-Ryan.

  “Good morning, Victoria. How may I assist you today?” It was one of the pre-recorded phrases he’d loaded into the database. He had a whole list of them on the screen at all times so that he didn’t have to use the webcam and mic unless she said something off the wall again like the stupid color game.

  The security feed showed her in her bedroom, dressed in a robe, with her hair twisted up into a messy bun, staring at a bunch of dresses on the bed. “I’m trying to decide which dress to wear for my date,” she said.

  Ryan gritted his teeth. Do not respond. With Taylor giving him sideways glances while he rigged Google to dig up dirt on the Masterson guy, Ryan somehow managed to resist the temptation to ask whether he looked like Joan Rivers to her.

  He scrolled through the list of responses and selected one. “I would be happy to render assistance. What seems to be the problem?”

  Taylor gave him a thumbs-up.

  Victoria heaved a sigh. “See, I have this really important date later, and I really want to look hot, because I haven’t gotten laid in months…”

  Taylor raised an eyebrow at Ryan.

  Ryan shrugged helplessly. “What?” he mouthed.

  “…so can you help me pick out a dress?”

  Taylor was nodding enthusiastically.

  “Certainly,” holo-Ryan said. “I can bring up a selection from your favorite shopping sites. What are your preferences?”

  Victoria chuckled. “No, you’re not listening. I already have dresses. I want you to help me pick one.”

  “My apologies. I must have misunderstood. What was your request again?”

  Taylor snapped his fingers to get Ryan’s attention. He’d found a lead.

  Ryan shifted over to look, but Victoria wasn’t finished with this date crap. Dividing his attention between the two screens, Ryan skimmed what Taylor had pulled up before Victoria’s huff dragged him back to his side.

  “Here, let me help you.” She held up one of the dresses, a sleek little black number with spaghetti straps and a slit up one side. “Classic, or…” She picked up a red cocktail dress and held it up to her front. “Dramatic.”

  Ryan scowled and went back to reading Taylor’s screen. It was a directory listing for Liam James Masterson, his address and phone number. He shrugged at Taylor. So what?

  “Or maybe I should go with something more casual,” Victoria was saying. She had dropped the two dresses and was tugging on the hem of a white one with flowers on it.

  “All good choices,” holo-Ryan said.

  Taylor grabbed him by the seam of his T-shirt and dragged him back over. The same page was in the browser window, but he’d split the screen and on the other side was a list of addresses from Hearth’s contract database. He’d highlighted Liam’s among them. Again, Ryan shrugged. He already knew the guy had a smart house. That wasn’t news.

  Taylor shook his head and turned away to type something.

  “Nah,” Victoria was saying. “These are all crap. Liam is a man of sophisticated tastes. He’ll want to see something bold…something daring.” She untied her robe and dropped it to the floor, along with Ryan’s jaw.

  The woman was topless! And the lacy crimson thong she was sporting did not qualify as a covering, either.

  “What do you think?”

  Mercy…

  Victoria cocked her hip, arched her back, and tilted her head at holo-Ryan. “Cat got your tongue?” she purred.

  In the back of his head, Ryan knew this was a game, that she was testing him, trying to get a confession. But the thinking part of his brain had been reduced to mush the second that robe went bye-bye.

  “Should I turn slowly to give you a better view?”

  Yes, please.

  Ryan stared at the expanse of supple skin, the lush curves, that coy little smile, and he forgot where he was. He forgot his own name. A tiny little voice whispered she’d put this show on for him, and Ryan didn’t have the strength of conviction to look away as he’d always done before. He was captivated, not just by her beauty, but also by the vulnerability he’d bet his last cent she hadn’t counted on him seeing.

  Victoria was not an exhibitionist. In fact, she had a thing about nudity. Even alone
in her own house, she never walked around naked. She didn’t wear sexy lingerie, plunging necklines, or miniskirts. Ryan had been watching her long enough to know her. She might be acting brave, but her spine was stiff, her face flushed with embarrassment, and even though she looked holo-Ryan straight in the eye, her face was tilted down, as if she had to force herself to do it. This little charade was costing her a great deal.

  As soon as his mind recognized that, Ryan began to despise every wire and electrical pulse that made everything so impersonal and wrong. The artificial barrier felt like a prison. His pod turned into an impenetrable shell he couldn’t escape.

  Victoria was pissed, and rightly so. He got that. But she should have been able to tell him so to his face. She should have looked him in the eye when she did her little pirouette, and raised her chin in defiance to show him what he would never have.

  And she should have heard his real voice tell her how sorry he was to have lied to her.

  Taylor slapped the back of Ryan’s head, somehow breaking the spell on both of them. Ryan frowned, while on screen, Victoria sneered. “Yeah, I thought so.” She bent to retrieve her robe, inadvertently providing him with a million-dollar view of her backside. “How about we drop the act, huh? What do you say?”

  Ryan reached for his headset, but Taylor grabbed his arm and dragged him over to his side, stabbing his finger at the screen.

  “Hey, asshole!” Victoria snapped. “I’m talking to you!”

  Taylor had gotten rid of the Google search, and there was now a blank page next to the list of addresses. Across it, in bold, red font, he’d typed three letters.

  DOD.

  “Answer me, goddammit!”

  Ryan sucked in a breath. Masterson didn’t just live in a smart house, he lived in a DOD smart house.

  “Did I just hear her say she’s going out with this guy?”

  Ryan grabbed for his headset, almost falling out of his chair to get the audio switched over to manual. “Okay, you made your point. You know I’m real. Congratulations, you figured me out.” He covered the mic to tell Taylor, “Get me everything you have on him.”

  “On it.”

  “You think this is some kind of game?” Victoria demanded. “I trusted you! And the whole time you were spying on me! Did you enjoy the show? You want me to get Liam back in here so you can see some real action?”

  “No—stay away from Liam, he’s bad news.”

  “Whoa, dude, worse than you think.”

  Victoria laughed without humor. “I can’t believe this. Now you’re going to lecture me?”

  Ryan covered the mic again and shifted to look over Taylor’s shoulder.

  His brother-in-law might be an irreverent ass most of the time, but give him a keyboard and he could crack the NSA servers and solve world hunger in sixty seconds. Which was why him shaking his head like that did not bode well. “I’m getting very bad vibes here. From all over the place. Police reports, NSA, CIA, DOD… There’s references to the Middle East, terrorist cells, weapons stores. This guy’s a shit storm waiting to happen, Ryan.”

  “Why the hell haven’t the DOD reined him in?”

  Taylor brought up a set of police reports dated from as far back as 2002 and as recent as last year. Each of them involving a female victim, and all labeled UNSOLVED. “My guess? Because they’re protecting him.”

  “Let me guess,” Victoria was saying, “you’re going to tell me he’s no good for me, right? He’s bad news, and I deserve better.”

  Taylor gasped. “Whoa! What the—” The windows he’d opened started disappearing one by one. Taylor opened the command prompt and began typing. But as fast as he was, something, or someone else, was faster. “Jesus, what the hell is this?”

  Ryan had a fair idea. The contents will play automatically. No shit. Son of bitch Sheffield had infected him with a worm. He un-muted the mic. “Listen to me, I know how pissed off you are. You have every right to be. I fucked up, I’ll admit that, but right now you have much bigger issues than me.” He tried to bring up a command prompt on his end. Nothing. Taylor’s screen had already gone dark, and now the automated responses Ryan had pre-recorded were disappearing off the list, along with the facial mimicry corresponding with them.

  Taylor shoved him away to get at the keyboard.

  “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Victoria said, crossing her arms.

  “Liam Masterson is not who he says he is. He’s dangerous. I think you’re in trouble—”

  “He’s a lawyer. The only one who’ll be in trouble around here is you when you get max sentence. I won’t stop until I’ve got you locked up in San Quen—”

  “Listen to me!” he snapped. Audio recordings were gone. The hologram was malfunctioning. Schedules, personal settings, security, everything Ryan had done on the house was disintegrating. He was about to lose the uplink all together. He had to warn her before it was too late. “He’s connected with the DOD, and not in a good way. He’s hurt people before. You. Are. In. Danger. Don’t go near him. Don’t call him, don’t email him, just stay a—”

  Static cut off audio from the house, and his screen went black as Taylor stepped away from the keyboard looking shell-shocked.

  “Victoria?”

  Nothing.

  “Victoria!”

  The static cut out, plunging the pod into silence.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Taylor said. “Please tell me we didn’t just get that woman killed.”

  Ryan didn’t trust himself to answer.

  The computers shut down, and with a mocking whirr, turned back on again. The operating system booted up. The jukebox turned on from the middle of the last song Ryan had played. Everything back in working order. Except there was nothing left where Victoria’s house files ought to be. Not even an empty folder. His system was a blank slate. As if she’d never existed.

  When the internet hooked up, the instant messenger automatically logged him in and started blinking with a new unread message.

  Ryan clicked on it.

  ONE WARNING, it said.

  He had a bad feeling this was where the DOD stopped playing nice.

  — Chapter 13 —

  RRRIIINNNGGG… Someone’s callin’ ya… RRRIIINNNGGG… Could be important… RRRIIINNNGGG… PICK UP YOUR DAMN PH—

  Ryan blindly grabbed his phone off the nightstand. “Hullo,” he muttered into his pillow, balancing the phone on his ear and cheek.

  “Oh, good, you’re up.”

  Ryan raised his head to frown at the little screen. Five a.m. He’d only gotten to bed two hours ago. “Celia? ’s goin’ on?” She wouldn’t have called unless it was important.

  “We’ve got a problem. Victoria Marlow filed a subpoena for all documentation pertaining to her smart house. Codes, digital blueprints, and names. She wants everything.”

  Ryan sat up. “On what charges?”

  “Invasion of privacy, mostly,” Celia said. She sounded tired. “Our lawyer called me a couple of hours ago. Followed by an Agent Sheffield. From what they told me, it could have been a lot worse. Miss Marlow restrained herself and kept it simple. Sounds like she just wants to find out what the hell happened with her house, which is not unreasonable.”

  “But it’s still public.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What did Sheffield say?”

  “Let’s see… There was something about my programmers interfering with a DOD person of interest. Wait, no. That was yesterday. Right after this guy named Ryan George made direct contact with the client and blew some informant’s cover.”

  Ryan winced.

  “I take it from your silence, it wasn’t an accident as I’d led Sheffield to believe.” She sighed. “What were you thinking? Did I not make it clear that lives are at stake here?”

  “Why do you think I did it? The guy’s—”

  “A-ba-ba. I don’t want to know. You shouldn’t want to know. This isn’t any of our business.”

  “You made it my business when you put me i
n charge of security for Victoria. What did you expect? That I’d just sit there while someone tried to break into her house? Would you expect me to do that if the DOD wasn’t involved? No—screw that. I don’t care who he is or who’s covering for him, I’m not going to let her get hurt just to make a bunch of assholes in suits happy. Keeping Victoria safe is my priority.”

  “Was your priority,” Celia corrected. “In case you were wondering how all of this would affect her, allow me to break it down for you: as of three hours ago, the DOD is agreeing to stand back and watch this unfold. As long as Miss Marlow keeps the legal proceedings quiet and focused on her own house, they will pretend it doesn’t concern them. As for their informant, we’ve been ordered to stand down. That means no cops, or any other law enforcement agency is to be called in. I don’t know why, and I don’t want to know why. He’s one of theirs, and we have no call to get involved. Now, should any of this change, Agent Sheffield very cryptically said no one would like the consequences.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “Not me, darling,” she said as if he were slow. “They have nothing to fear from me.”

  “Who, then? Me? Victoria?”

  Celia said nothing.

  “Jesus. And you’re just going to sit there and let this happen?”

  “What would you have me do, Ryan? Put this company, myself, my family at risk? Will you take care of my five-year-old if I go to jail, or worse? I did what I could to remedy the situation, and that’s as far as I am willing to overstep.”

  “What about me?”

  She sighed. “Please don’t make this even more difficult. You already lost what credibility they gave you, along with all the work you did on Marlow house. I had Caleb run a diagnostic. The whole system reset back to its original state. All your upgrades and codes are gone from the company servers. I’m taking you off the account.”

  “Who’s going to handle it?”

  “Well, not that it matters, since it looks like Miss Marlow is moving out, but I’m giving it to Caleb.”

  “Good.” Caleb was a solid programmer. He kept his head down, did his job, and didn’t ask questions. The guy had integrity coming out the wazoo. He was also a soft touch. If Ryan asked nicely, Caleb would let him in on the side.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you can forget about it,” Celia said. “You’re in enough hot water with Miss Marlow as it is. Leave the woman alone.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll be forced to cut you loose. If you get involved with the informant again, you’ll be on your own, and the DOD does not forgive and forget. They can’t afford to. Let it go. Please. You gave her fair warning. If she’s as smart as you keep telling me, she’ll find a way to get this guy off her back on her own.”

  If only it were that simple.

  “Can Victoria really get all our codes?”

  “No. The DOD won’t let that happen. They’re stonewalling her behind patents and copyrights. It wouldn’t look good if she did get them. None of the upgrades you did are there anymore; it would look like we tried to cover something up.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We get ready for a legal shitstorm. According to our lawyers, if she doesn’t let this drop, it could be bad.”

  For a company based on security and discretion? Hell yeah, it would be bad. That was, unless the DOD decided to step in and shut Victoria up. “I’m guessing we’re going to get briefed on all this?”

  “Hawaii Joe is putting together an information packet, which you, me, and Taylor are required to memorize in case this goes to trial.”

  “What am I doing in the meantime, since I’m not on the account anymore.”

  “You get your original fifty back. The others will thank you. They have enough of their own to worry about. Try not to start any more fires in my division, will you?”

  Click.