Hey folks…
I got started later on this than I wanted to and unless I write considerably more quickly than I normally do, I won’t finish tonight unless I stay up all night or close to it. And that, of course, risks falling asleep at work, something I’d prefer to avoid.
So don’t expect an update until tomorrow night, but if one somehow happens earlier, I’ll be happy.
A few hours later, I found myself on a call with him. Isaac sat in his home office. I sat in my lab. I’d used backchannels to let him know I had something big and he’d called me from his secure system—the one so secure that even his superiors wouldn’t be aware of it because they might have been compromised.
I’d given him access to the video I’d made. He’d finished watching and shook his head. “That’s bad. I’ve seen worse, but that’s pretty bad. Higher Ground is blackmailing their own employees into getting their DNA modified by alien artifacts. Then they’re using them to steal an unknown piece of data from Hardwick Industries. It seems to be organized by their research director who might have connections to the Nine.” Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 16
Using alien technology to empower people to break into Hardwick Industries and maybe commit other crimes as well had to be in violation of some agreement. Plus, they were talking about me. Didn’t the FBI quit while they were ahead if they had something and a civilian “asset” was in danger?
They hadn’t said, “That kid makes me nervous. Let’s kill him,” in so many words yet, but a risk to life and limb seemed implied in the way they were talking. Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 15
Art laughed. “I don’t know how many guys like him you knew in college, but here’s a little secret. Guys that age want women desperately and have no idea what to do about it. You’re good looking. Even if he never says anything, he’ll probably get nervous every time he gets near you.”
Zola shook her head. “I hope not, but I’m not sure it’s nervousness. I’m still figuring out what all these smells mean, but that doesn’t seem quite right. Besides, doesn’t he have a girlfriend? I thought I heard he was with someone or maybe Stephanie?” Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 14
I sat down, not wanting them to think I was watching them. Thanks to the bots I’d hidden around the offices and the lab, I didn’t have to watch them with my eyes. Allowing communication between my bots and my implant let me sit at my desk and watch the two of them move with my brain.
No doubt that opened up issues related to both privacy and humanity’s cyborg future, but I wasn’t worried about them. For me, being able to watch the two of them as they walked over to one of the small conference rooms meant that life was good.
I’d bugged that small conference room. Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 13
I recognized them. I didn’t know their names, but I’d seen them at the party the company threw at the old hotel by Lake Michigan.
Neither of them went by the company’s informal dress standard—jeans and a t-shirt, but their success in looking a cut above the rest of us worked better on the woman than the man.
Only a few inches shorter than I was, the woman had light skin, blond hair and wore a green suit jacket with a black turtleneck and pants. It struck me as a goth turned business professional look. I guessed she might be in her early thirties.
I pegged the man as being in his early forties. A couple inches shorter than the woman, he had curly black hair, tan skin, and either hadn’t shaved or grew facial hair at an alarming rate. Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 12
“Are you imagining that I brought weed along in my backpack? Or maybe guns? Bombs?”
I grinned at Stephanie, knowing that she didn’t expect any of those things. This was likely her way of hinting that any bugs I set in the offices or anything I might be carrying to control them might need to be hidden better or removed.
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “No. I was thinking you maybe had a jackknife.”
A couple cubicles away, Victor laughed. If there were an art to saying secret things in public, we seemed to have mastered it—or maybe that was just her. Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 11
Before I thought about it, I asked, “Why would your parents let you try drugged Cheerios even once? I’m assuming they didn’t label them.”
Tara laughed. “No. I mean, you know Infinity City. It’s in the middle of North Dakota in this world and it’s not in the center of civilization in most places it exists. So the nations around it find it easy to control what gets in an out and we don’t have farmland, so we’re dependent on anything that gets imported. If food comes from an alternate universe where the government keeps its citizens in a drugged out haze, we’ll take it. If a government’s trying to control the version of Infinity City that exists there, we’ll still take the food and it’ll probably get shipped into place that have nothing to do with where the food came from.” Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 10
She frowned. “And you know, preventing Lee from finding something out isn’t the only reason the previous Bloodmaidens might not tell me something. It’s just as possible that they made an arrangement with him to push me in some direction. All they have to do is give or withhold the right information at the right time.”
Shaking her head, she pushed herself off the stool. “Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Unless you need anything else, I should go to bed.”
I shook my head. “That’s all for me. I should sleep too. I know I’ve got stuff to hand in tomorrow. If I go to bed soon, I’ll be able to do it tomorrow morning.”
And with that, we both left, me to my room and her to her car. Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 9
She passed me the die and I looked down at it where it sat on my palm. It felt warm, warmer than my hand and the room anyway.
Then an idea struck me. “Could you make it glow when I touch it? It doesn’t have to be much—ideally about as much as it would when the uh… donor comes near.”
Amy scowled. “Now? If you’d asked me before, it would have been easy, but now I’d either have to undo it and remake it—and believe me, you can’t guess how hard that would be—or…”
Her voice trailed off and she stared at me. “Of course that only applies to normal people. For you, it will be easy. Hold out your hand—not the one with the die.” Continue reading Jekyll Or Hyde: Part 8