The clinic computer alerted me that Mr. Walker had entered the building. I brought up the video and man, did he look peeved.
“It seems Mr. Walker received the E-mail. We will soon know how it works out.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“Come on, I have hacked the whole building in less than ten minutes. Of course I have access to the security system.”
He became thoughtful again.
“You could have taken over the HQ in the same manner, couldn’t you?”
Where did that come from?
“Don’t know. I haven’t tried it. Why?”
“It has the same security setup as we have here.”
Oh, yes, that was interesting data.
“Well, in that case, yes I could. I think I should offer Mr. Walker to set up something better.”
He had to smile at that.
“You really want to ingratiate yourself to him.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I think in your position I would too.”
Then the security system showed something interesting.
“Oh, your boss has just stormed into Reye’s office. Unfortunately, there are no cameras in there.”
Then the next alert came from the security system. Doctor Schaeffer had arrived. He stormed directly to the staff room where the bedraggled doctors were waiting.
I took another sip, only to find out that the bottle was empty. Damn, I shouldn’t have driven the nurse mad until I got a refill. Well, I will do better next time.
I looked at Wallace and held up the bottle.
“I can’t get you to fill the bottle back up, can I?”
He smiled. “Sorry, Kitten, but guard duty only. I can’t leave the room. Why don’t you use the call button?”
Okay, that was evil, but I could not fault him.
“Too bad. The call button is useless at the moment. I could of course send a message to the nurse's desk, but that would create questions. Well, Doc Schaeffer should be here in a few minutes if I gauged him right.”
The doctors looked collectively like scolded puppies, and Schaeffer shook his head in disgust before leaving the room.
As I predicted, a few minutes later, Doc Schaeffer came in.
“Hello Veronica, Hello Ryan.” Ryan mumbled a “Hello Doc”, while I managed a “Good morning Doctor.”
Then he concentrated on me. “Well, you look much better, and it seems that you can speak in whole sentences again.”
“Yes, it is a bit scratchy but tolerable.”
He took out his tablet and apparently studied my file.
“You are surprisingly alert for somebody who has a bad concussion.”
“Two reasons for that. We Pures have a jacked-up regeneration and I have a relatively smart nanites controller implanted, including a relatively big nanite colony. They had begun to repair the damage to my brain and throat.”
He looked a bit surprised.
“Strange, I looked, but I did not find any recipes that would help with either.”
“2nd gen fab, 3rd gen nanites, I only gave you recipes that your nano fab can produce. They only got the necessary fine control with the 5th gen for tissue damage like the throat, and with 8th gen for neural tissue. I have a 12th gen swarm.”
“Oh, that explains that. I can’t do this?” I shook my head. “Not until I can build you a modern fab, sorry, and honestly, if your doctors here keep abusing the fab for their amusement I will think long and hard before I give you a better one.”
Now he looked shocked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your doctors ignored an overflowing waiting area to amuse themselves by dissolving rats with nanites. I hope you understand that I will be reluctant to give an even more dangerous fab to such infantile idiots. Even if the rats were cloned, they still feel pain. If the research needs it, then yes, we have to sacrifice them, but simply torturing them for fun? No way.”
He looked at me thoughtfully, before sighing hard.
“Now what happened to the nurse here?”
“You mean the one who had too much to do reading her bodice ripper romance and eating candy to react to a relatively simple request? I think she is gone for now.”
“What do you understand under simple request?”
“I simply asked for a tablet and an OPB cable. It was even the second time, but the night nurse simply drugged me into sleep. The nurse today ripped into me that she had no time to provide toys for me, and advised me to get a book, before storming out again.”
“You know the nursing staff is under pressure, right?”
“As I said, she was busy reading her trashy romance and eating sweets.”
“How do you know that?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I needed, not wanted, the tablet and cable to reboot my implants. After your nurse brushed me off in such a friendly manner I borrowed Mr. Wallace’s tablet and cable and started them back up. After that, I inspected my status and optimized the nanite activity. Then I took the chance and actually looked into her activity. If you want I can give you… one moment please.”
I watched the security video of the nurse station in fast forward and looked for when she was reading.
“I can give you roughly three hours of video of her sitting on her butt reading and snacking. That should be enough”
He shook his head.
“Did you just hack our computers?”
“Just? No, I just logged in now. I hacked your network a bit over 20 minutes ago.”
“You just admit that?”
“Why should I not? It isn’t as if it would not come out. Especially as I talked with Mr. Wallace about it, and Mr. Walker should be aware of it any moment now, considering that I blew the whistle on Mr. Reyes.”
He massaged his temples, and I felt kinda bad about bombarding him so, but he had let the clinic run into chaos. Sometimes one had to be cruel to be kind.
He took a deep sigh.
“Now what has Hector done?”
“Besides letting the clinic turn to ruins? He stole 11 million from you. Well, from Mr. Walker through you, but that is semantics.”
“At least I agree with that.”
He took out his com and dialed.
“Hello, Ben”… ”I am already here.”…”Yes, I just heard about it.”…”No, I don’t know about any E-Mail.”…”Miss Sinclair told me about it.”…”Yes, obviously she is awake.”…”No, she hacked the network here in the clinic.”…”How should I know? You can come down and ask her yourself.”…”I assume that Hector will be, ah, retired?”…”If he really has done it there will be no choice I fear.”…”Yes, see you then.”
He ended the call and put the com back into his pocket.
“Well, you can explain everything to Ben in a few minutes.”
“Can you remove the tubing in the meantime? Especially the catheter, if you would?”
How nice, he blushed, but then turned to Wallace.
“Ah, Ryan, ehm, could you give us a bit of privacy?”
Thank goodness Wallace complied. A few minutes later I was once again free to roam the world, or at least limp around.
It hurt quite a bit, but my right leg carried me well enough, yet I still quickly sat down back onto the bed.
Then Mr. Walker stormed into the room.
“What the hell have you done?”
Sigh.
“I found out somebody had stolen more than 11 million bucks from you, and, friendly as I am, notified you of it.”
He snorted.
“We have only your word for it. We both know that it would be easy for you to forge anything inside a computer.”
“Partially true, with enough time I could have falsified the records in that way, but keep it real, it would have taken me several days to create something like that. All the references, the accounts, the electronic trails, not impossible to forge, but that would be anything except fast. I am in New York for six days now. Three of them I spent being raped and tortured, and two mostly unconscious.”
He calmed down a bit.
“You could have prepared all that beforehand.”
That surprised me.
“Why should I do that? 10 days ago I was planning to stay in Seattle. Only eight days ago I decided to go somewhere else, and only seven days ago I decided on New York. I learned about your territory a few hours before I made the appointment. I learned about this clinic when you led me here.”
“You can prove that? Or shall I kill a man on your word alone?”
“Well, luckily for you, whoever set up your security system here was smart enough to create offline backups in hard burned crystals. It would be easy to get any halfway decent computer user to find the pertaining files inside there, and please, don’t try to tell me that I could have planned this over the last three years.”
Maybe not the best way to talk to the boss of the territory, but I had gotten quite a bit irritated by his accusations.
“Damn it. A fine mess you got me there.”
He walked a bit up and down.
“There’s no helping it. Reyes has robbed us. He has to pay.”
It seemed that this topic was finished, finally.
“What about the other chaos you caused?”
On to the next fight, it seemed. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered to try to do the right thing.
“Do you mean teaching the rather unprofessional and rude nurse the meaning of work? Or scaring the lazy doctors hopefully into realizing that a nano fab is no toy?”
He sighed, walked to a chair, and sat down.
“Damn, you make too much chaos.”
“Would you have preferred that they kill somebody by casually using dissolver nanites? Or simply by playing instead of doing their job? There were somewhere around 100 people in the waiting room and no doctor around as they were torturing rats to death. I have to say, if they behave in this way in the future, then I won’t sell this clinic a modern fab. That is way too risky.”
Doc Schaeffer began to protest, but I waved him off.
“I don’t think you understand what they did. They used dissolvers in an unsecured environment without any precautions, in shirtsleeves in massive amounts to torture rats to death. They treated it as some sort of magic trick. I can’t even begin to describe how irresponsible that is, but the ONLY valid uses of dissolvers are biohazard removal and extremely carefully for anti-cancer treatments. If not for that I wouldn’t have included them in the recipes, but they are valuable for that.”
I carefully relaxed my hands, which I had balled into fists automatically, trying to ignore the pain my right arm gave me in protest.
“The amount of dissolvers they used was enough to kill everybody on the ground floor if something had gone wrong. The manuals I gave you have 12 pages of warning about dissolvers. 12 fricking pages, most of it written in fire engine red, to tell anybody who bothers to read it exactly how this stuff can kill and maim people. I know for sure that the fab throws a warning every single time somebody wants to make dissolvers. So they were warned but still played with it like a toy. As it is, you have to send in some bots to recycle the dissolvers to make use of the room safe again.”
Damn, that took more energy than I thought, something was wrong. When I called up the diagnostics I got a blood sugar alert. It seemed as if the last few days had depleted my emergency reserve.
“Damn… sorry, my blood sugar is falling. Can you send for some glucose?”
Doc Schaeffer stood there with his mouth hanging open but then shook his head.
“Uh, yes, yes. I had no idea that these things are that dangerous. I thought you said that nanites were much less dangerous than most thought.”
I smiled sadly at that.
“They are. Even dissolvers can’t start a grey goo scenario, and you have to confirm at least three different times that you are sure you want to make dissolvers. At the amount they made it should have been more like a dozen times. It takes active stupidity on an unbelievable level or malicious intent to make them dangerous. That is exactly why you should weed out your staff. If I had not been knocked out I would have talked about this with you, and helped you program the access to the fab accordingly.”
Then a nurse brought a bag, giving it to Schaeffer. He reached for the drip stand, but I shook my head and reached out for it.
With curiosity in his eyes, he gave me the bag and managed to open it with my teeth, slurping the glucose down. Nauseatingly sweet, but exactly what I needed. Within minutes my blood sugar was back up, and the excess was stored in the reserve.
When I finished the bag, I noticed the stares of the three men.
“What?”
It was Schaeffer who answered me.
“That, wasn’t that disgusting? How could you drink that?” He shuddered in revulsion.
“Yes, it was a bit nauseating, but I needed it.”
At the blank stares, I sighed.
“I am a Pure. All these enhancements come with a price. I need roughly 5000 kilocalories a day, and my nanites need another 1000 in addition. I know you put me on intravenous feed, but you gave me less than half of what I needed. I got even less the days before. I have an emergency reserve in an implant near my stomach that holds a bit over 25000 kcal or I would have nearly starved, but that ran out sometime this night.”
I dropped the empty bag on the nightstand.
“Now, can somebody tell me what the heck happened Monday?”
Schaeffer grimaced and took the last chair in the room.
“Well, you had just told me that you would use your cranial board, and then you simply stood there doing nothing. Then out of nowhere Oleg Hopkins, one of Ben’s men came in, grabbed you by the throat, and crashed you into the wall. When the other men tried to intervene he threw you to the side. You got a concussion, a broken arm, a bruised hip and a bruised throat out of it.”
It took me a moment to realize that he had finished.
“That is nice. I now know the name of the giant who attacked me. The rest, well I was there. Is there anything besides the name I did not know?”
Walker answered me.
“Somebody drugged Oleg, and more or less convinced him that you were poisoning me.”
I suppressed a few curses, before asking Walker: “Have you found the bugs?”
Schaeffer looked surprised, Wallace let out a small snicker and Walker looked at me calmly.
“Yes, we have, in my and Richard’s offices. How did you guess?”
Schaeffer now looked a bit shocked at Walker, but I ignored him.
“Between the time when I told you that I might be able to save you until the attack it was barely three hours, and only one and a half between when I told you that this is an attempted murder and the attack. On both occasions the number of potential leaks was small. I know that I was not responsible for somebody I don’t know trying to kill me, I simply assume that you won’t kill your only chance for survival, Doc Schaeffer could theoretically be the culprit, but I think that is extremely unlikely considering that he seems to be your general practitioner and had ample opportunity to kill you in a way that will not create suspicion and if you can’t trust your bodyguards this whole scheme to kill you with CRS would have been unnecessary as well, as any of them had the access to you to lead you into a trap or an accident. As there was nobody else in the vicinity the only possible options that remain are some well-placed bugs or a hacker that appropriated your webcam and microphone on the respective computers.”
I shook my head.
“From the way the computer security here is set up I can’t exclude the hacker, but the system is good enough that anybody who could do it without getting found out is expensive with a capital E. To waste that kind of money on simple surveillance is… unlikely, considering that the bugs cost only a few k. So the bugs it is.”
The whole affair became uncomfortable in a hurry.
“What was the quality of the bugs?”
“High end, microscale, environmental powered. We only found them when we used an RF scanner in a multi-band modus. From what my people tell me, it is Commonwealth tech.”
“Somebody wants you dead for sure. I don’t think it is easy to get commie bugs here.”
“Could you get or make them?”
“Huh? No idea where to get them. If I would still be in Seattle I think I could get them, but here? No way.”
“That answers getting them, and making them? You said you had a degree in electronics.”
“A degree in nanoelectronics, geared towards nanites and implants. I wouldn’t even know where to begin…”
I could use audio and visual implant tech as the basis. I would need to… no, that would make the signature too great, but if I instead used… yes, that could work. How to make the data transfer, though? I could use… no that is the tech I won’t sell, frequency hopping? An RF scanner would be able to find it, maybe… if I could get the emitter small enough… yes, that could work and would be nearly undetectable. Powering it would be easy. Just use environmental charge. Just how to place it? Should I make it mobile? That would increase the size by 50% at least, but it could be disguised as an insect. Should I build in an EM scanner? A discrete cough ripped me out of my thoughts.
I looked at the men, and they looked back at me with amusement.
“What were you just doing?”
I felt myself blush.
“Oh, sorry, that happens sometimes. I get an idea and run away with it.”
Walker chuckled.
“Am I right in the assumption that you just now designed a bug?”
“Uh, yeah. I would have to test it of course, and at the moment I don’t have the equipment to build it, but yes, it seems surprisingly easy.”
“Easy you say?” He lifted one eyebrow and looked at me quizzically.
“Yes, implant tech has many of the same constraints as a bug. It has to be small, has to be energy efficient and it can’t irradiate or heat its surroundings. When I thought about it, it was easy.”
I tried to clear my head.
“Well, where were we? Oh right, somebody has a strong wish to kill you. That is way too much effort for some, sorry to say it so, small-time mob boss in New York. Whoever they are, they have sunk serious money into it. For a fraction of that they could have simply paid a killer with a sniper.”
I was seriously considering repacking my equipment and cutting my losses, moving to the CSA.
“Dang it. You know that this is quickly becoming more trouble than it is worth for me.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose again and was weighing my options. In the end, I saw not many benefits to keep helping Walker. Whoever was on his case was unlikely to stop.
Still, they tried to kill me, and I had given my word. I may not have to go much for me, but my word was sacred for me, always was, always will be. At this moment I cursed my bruised hip that prevented me from pacing. I had no way to release my anxiety.
“Dang!” I had made my decision.
“That is way too much effort for getting you out of the way. There has to be more.”
I shook my head, and then looked at Walker.
“They’ve gone a long way to keep me from rescuing you, and they may have succeeded.”
All three men gasped at that, and Wallace accused me.
“So you will run?”
“What? No, of course not! What gave you that idea?”
I held up my right hand and waved it around.
“That is what may prevent me from helping. I need both hands to work on the replacement parts. It will take roughly two weeks before I can use that hand again. Two weeks may be more than Mr. Walker can afford.”
Walker was sinking back in the chair but said nothing. Schaeffer on the other hand perked up.
“What exactly do you need two hands for?”
“I need to disassemble the heart, sheath it in the bioreactor, and then reassemble it. Both disassembly and reassembly need two hands.”
Wallace interceded.
“Can’t you use a bot or an android?”
“Sorry, but not enough computing power. I would have to take each model apart manually and then make a program for each.”
“But these things are made mostly by bots.”
“Yes, of course, but these bots are part of an industrial complex and have been painstakingly programmed for each step. Give me this program, and I can have my bots disassemble and reassemble them. Or give me enough time and I can build a specialized machine for disassembling cyberware. That was my plan anyway, but my timetable was quite a bit more relaxed. I did not plan to have my first customer here for the next six to nine months. Then it would take me between four and six days to convert the Pulse III, and a week to nine days to convert an Excelsior, but I had just begun designing the necessary equipment when my need to relocate came up. I took only the pieces I can’t replace with me, the nano fab, the experimental bioreactor, and a few other toys.”
Walker threw in the next question.
“What do you need to build the equipment you need?”
“I need a chip fabber, a winding machine, an industrial fabber, and a carbon extruder.” Or my NADA up and running, but I like heck I would tell them that.
“Sadly that will still not help you. Even with all that it will take me a couple of months to make the equipment.” Of course, the NADA would reduce that to a couple of days, but telling anybody about it could be, no would be disastrous.
Doctor Schaeffer had, in the meantime thought about something.
“What if… what if you have somebody else be your hands until your arm heals?”
Possible, but still…
“I have just come to NYC. I don’t know anybody who could do the work.”
“I have a student who wants to branch out into implant surgery.”
He wanted me to teach one of these idiots? Was he crazy or simply kidding?
I struggled to find the right words.
“I… I really don’t think that any of your doctors here is suited for the job.”
“You don’t know my doctors here.” It was easy to tell that he was perturbed, but I was not sorry for him. He had let the situation here crumble.
“We had the discussion just a few minutes ago. If you think I let any of these idiots that you call doctors and that abuse dissolver nanites for fun even into the same building as my 8th gen nano fab then you have to think again.”
He got red, seemingly a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Yes, I can see that you don’t want any of them, but I did not think of one of them. The girl I meant is not yet working here. If she did not want to be an implant surgeon I would have her of course, but cyber tech is one of the fields we don’t do here.”
OK, that sounded quite a bit better.
“That could actually work. She needs a very steady hand, but if she wants to go into any kind of surgery she needs them anyway. I reserve the right to throw her out if she shows any proclivity for the kind of stupidity your other doctors showed.”
I thought about what the fact that somebody was moving heaven and earth to kill Walker meant for me.
“You know as it stands, I will not come back here until this shit is resolved. It is way too open and too dangerous. If anybody needs treatment, he or she has to come to the fortress.”
They seemed surprised, but Walker slowly nodded his head.
“I actually feared that you would cut your losses and run, so I can’t complain. Anyway, what is this fortress you are talking about?”
“Oh please, as if you did not know that the Sedgen building is a fortress. You would need a veritable army with heavy weapon support to breach it.”
He nodded.
“Yes, you are right. If it were located more central to my territory I would have moved there, but as it stands, I will send two of my men with you. At the moment you are way too valuable for me to take any risks with your security. Ryan here is one, the other is Justin O’Donnell. They will accompany you everywhere except your bedroom and the bathroom.”
That was, well it was unexpected. On one hand, it would give me some additional protection, even if I would not leave the fortress again in the near future. On the other hand, I had some things to do that I did not want anybody to know about. On the gripping hand though, he was the boss, and any protest would be futile.
Reluctantly I nodded.
“OK, as long as they understand that if I need my peace I need my peace. They can be in the same room if they want, but need to keep some distance and leave me mostly alone then.”
“That would be no problem. Now then, as we have the important points out of the way, what do you think is actually happening?”
Where the hell was that coming from? Did he think my last name was Holmes or Maple or something?
“How the hell should I know? I have seen exactly four buildings in New York from the inside, if I include the airport. I know less than 20 people here by name. I only knew that this was your territory by researching it on the net. I can at best give you a superficial report about the political and territorial situation in NYC by compiling net sources.”
He looked me into the eyes before he answered.
“Anybody walking the Abyss is somebody who has resources far beyond what we normal people have.”
I had to suppress my surprise, and my opinion of his intelligence rose a few notches.
“What makes you believe that I even know what this Abyss is let alone walking it?”
He smiled.
“Don’t be coy. You told it to me yourself. Every broker is a hacker of high standing him or herself, and one of the privileges for the so-called hangers-on is access to the Abyss. You are most likely a way better hacker than whatever we find here in New York.”
“OK, you have me there, but that still does not give me any insights into the rough situation here in New York, never mind the intricacies. What I can do is look into who manipulated your database here. For the rest, I simply lack information.”
Schaeffer asked confused: “What is the Abyss?”
I looked at Walker inviting, and his smile got a bit smugger than before.
“You remember what I told you about the Dark Web? The Abyss is one step deeper. It is some sort of exclusive utility for some of the best hackers in the world. Only they and their hangers-on can enter there.”
He looked at me and dared me to speak up. What could I say, challenge accepted.
“Nearly right, but not quite so. It is more of an exclusive club than a utility but generally on the same level as the deepest of the Dark Net. Technically everybody can get there, but unless you really know what you are doing and can get the people there to acknowledge you, it would be vastly better for your continued wellbeing to not go there. If you annoy the trolls in the dark web it can become uncomfortable, or even costly up to including your life if you are unlucky, but if you manage to aggravate the trolls in the Abyss enough, well the last time somebody did that was in June 2241 and he was from Hyderabad.”
It took a moment for Schaeffer to place the date and the city I named, but then he paled.
“They… they used a nuclear weapon to kill one man? What monsters are they?”
Hyderabad did not exist anymore, as an ICBM of the Indian strategic command had a glitch and launched its six two-megaton MIRVS onto the Indian city on June 26th, 2241. Nearly 600 thousand people had vanished in the inferno. A glitch called 5h3ph3rd that is.
“Some of them are monsters, yes. Others are… better, but you have to understand that the standard test that they send you will destroy the computers of 99.9% of the hackers in the world. The ones who can withstand that are the elite of the elite. Quite a few of them are arrogant monsters that view anybody who is not one of the ultra-elite as a step above vermin. If you are extremely respectful they may, and I stress the word may here, may tolerate you. The hangers-on are divided into two types. We call them groupies and minions.
Groupies are brownnosers that tell their hacker how wonderful he is or in some rare cases somebody who actually has an affair with the hacker. They are essentially bootlickers of the Abyss.
Minions on the other hand are hackers of the secondary or tertiary order who work for one of the elites in one or another capacity. Most of us are brokers, or in other words, people who can be contacted with job offers, some are research assistants or work on social engineering, and some are even technical support. As Mr. Walker said, one of the privileges a minion gets is access to the Abyss without having to go through the test. Minions are mostly immune from the harassment, while groupies should keep their time in the Abyss to when their master is present.”
“But… somebody there used a nuclear weapon to kill hundreds of thousands of people. You know who it was. You have to do something.”
I let a sad little smile on my face.
“You confuse me with somebody who can do something. I am a minion. The one who launched the missile was in the top 20. Of course, he has gone way too far, but nobody there can out him. It would be a death sentence. Not that this protected him when a few of the top 10 decided that he has gone way too far, and eliminated him. They drove him mad, destroyed his computers, his network, and soured his contacts. For a year they destroyed everything he touched. From what I heard, he committed suicide in August 42. By the way, I was ten when he launched it. I may be a bit faster than average, but that was way too young even for me. Spectre was not on the scene then, so I had no master to bring me into the Abyss even if I would have had the abilities needed there.”
I saw it working in their minds, all except Walker. He had a grim expression that told me that he knew most of it already. He shrugged his shoulders before he talked.
“Back to the topic, if I understand you correctly you can look into the computer side of this mess but further help is unlikely.”
“Yes, that sums it up. Is there anything else?”
Walker waited for a moment before answering.
“Not from my side. Ryan will bring you back to… “He made a short pause, “your fortress.”
Schaeffer then continued.
“I will have Mia come to the Sedgen building then. I hope you two get along. The rest of the day I will be busy chewing out my staff as it seems.” The last was pretty dejected.
I felt sorry for him, but it was crucial for him to get his house in order. A nano fab simply was no toy.
Then I noticed the strange, unnerving grin Walker was giving me. I could not understand how Doc Schaeffer’s plight could lead to it, and it managed to make me feel a bit insecure.
“Why are you smiling?”
I hoped that I kept my uncertainty out of my voice when I addressed him.
His grin got quite a bit wider.
“Well, you are aware that you are wearing only a hospital gown?”
Where the hell did that come from? Of course, I knew that I wore a hospital gown. I was a patient in a clinic. What else would I be wearing?
“Yeees? Your point is?”
“My point is that I know for sure that you are wearing only a hospital gown.”
The way he emphasized only made me pause. Then I followed his gaze towards my legs and my gown that shifted from calf-length thanks to my height-challenged frame and one size has to fit all mentality, to barely covering my crotch. Immediately I felt the heat rising on my face, and I was proud about neither the screech I let out nor the haste I scrambled back under covers with.
I was sure that I would glow red in the dark at this very moment.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
His grin got quite a bit lewd.
“I was too busy enjoying the view. You have nice legs, you know.”
Goddang it, sometimes I really, really hated my life.
The clinic computer alerted me that Mr. Walker had entered the building. I brought up the video and man, did he look peeved.
“It seems Mr. Walker received the E-mail. We will soon know how it works out.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“Come on, I have hacked the whole building in less than ten minutes. Of course I have access to the security system.”
He became thoughtful again.
“You could have taken over the HQ in the same manner, couldn’t you?”
Where did that come from?
“Don’t know. I haven’t tried it. Why?”
“It has the same security setup as we have here.”
Oh, yes, that was interesting data.
“Well, in that case, yes I could. I think I should offer Mr. Walker to set up something better.”
He had to smile at that.
“You really want to ingratiate yourself to him.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I think in your position I would too.”
Then the security system showed something interesting.
“Oh, your boss has just stormed into Reye’s office. Unfortunately, there are no cameras in there.”
Then the next alert came from the security system. Doctor Schaeffer had arrived. He stormed directly to the staff room where the bedraggled doctors were waiting.
I took another sip, only to find out that the bottle was empty. Damn, I shouldn’t have driven the nurse mad until I got a refill. Well, I will do better next time.
I looked at Wallace and held up the bottle.
“I can’t get you to fill the bottle back up, can I?”
He smiled. “Sorry, Kitten, but guard duty only. I can’t leave the room. Why don’t you use the call button?”
Okay, that was evil, but I could not fault him.
“Too bad. The call button is useless at the moment. I could of course send a message to the nurse's desk, but that would create questions. Well, Doc Schaeffer should be here in a few minutes if I gauged him right.”
The doctors looked collectively like scolded puppies, and Schaeffer shook his head in disgust before leaving the room.
As I predicted, a few minutes later, Doc Schaeffer came in.
“Hello Veronica, Hello Ryan.” Ryan mumbled a “Hello Doc”, while I managed a “Good morning Doctor.”
Then he concentrated on me. “Well, you look much better, and it seems that you can speak in whole sentences again.”
“Yes, it is a bit scratchy but tolerable.”
He took out his tablet and apparently studied my file.
“You are surprisingly alert for somebody who has a bad concussion.”
“Two reasons for that. We Pures have a jacked-up regeneration and I have a relatively smart nanites controller implanted, including a relatively big nanite colony. They had begun to repair the damage to my brain and throat.”
He looked a bit surprised.
“Strange, I looked, but I did not find any recipes that would help with either.”
“2nd gen fab, 3rd gen nanites, I only gave you recipes that your nano fab can produce. They only got the necessary fine control with the 5th gen for tissue damage like the throat, and with 8th gen for neural tissue. I have a 12th gen swarm.”
“Oh, that explains that. I can’t do this?” I shook my head. “Not until I can build you a modern fab, sorry, and honestly, if your doctors here keep abusing the fab for their amusement I will think long and hard before I give you a better one.”
Now he looked shocked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your doctors ignored an overflowing waiting area to amuse themselves by dissolving rats with nanites. I hope you understand that I will be reluctant to give an even more dangerous fab to such infantile idiots. Even if the rats were cloned, they still feel pain. If the research needs it, then yes, we have to sacrifice them, but simply torturing them for fun? No way.”
He looked at me thoughtfully, before sighing hard.
“Now what happened to the nurse here?”
“You mean the one who had too much to do reading her bodice ripper romance and eating candy to react to a relatively simple request? I think she is gone for now.”
“What do you understand under simple request?”
“I simply asked for a tablet and an OPB cable. It was even the second time, but the night nurse simply drugged me into sleep. The nurse today ripped into me that she had no time to provide toys for me, and advised me to get a book, before storming out again.”
“You know the nursing staff is under pressure, right?”
“As I said, she was busy reading her trashy romance and eating sweets.”
“How do you know that?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I needed, not wanted, the tablet and cable to reboot my implants. After your nurse brushed me off in such a friendly manner I borrowed Mr. Wallace’s tablet and cable and started them back up. After that, I inspected my status and optimized the nanite activity. Then I took the chance and actually looked into her activity. If you want I can give you… one moment please.”
I watched the security video of the nurse station in fast forward and looked for when she was reading.
“I can give you roughly three hours of video of her sitting on her butt reading and snacking. That should be enough”
He shook his head.
“Did you just hack our computers?”
“Just? No, I just logged in now. I hacked your network a bit over 20 minutes ago.”
“You just admit that?”
“Why should I not? It isn’t as if it would not come out. Especially as I talked with Mr. Wallace about it, and Mr. Walker should be aware of it any moment now, considering that I blew the whistle on Mr. Reyes.”
He massaged his temples, and I felt kinda bad about bombarding him so, but he had let the clinic run into chaos. Sometimes one had to be cruel to be kind.
He took a deep sigh.
“Now what has Hector done?”
“Besides letting the clinic turn to ruins? He stole 11 million from you. Well, from Mr. Walker through you, but that is semantics.”
“At least I agree with that.”
He took out his com and dialed.
“Hello, Ben”… ”I am already here.”…”Yes, I just heard about it.”…”No, I don’t know about any E-Mail.”…”Miss Sinclair told me about it.”…”Yes, obviously she is awake.”…”No, she hacked the network here in the clinic.”…”How should I know? You can come down and ask her yourself.”…”I assume that Hector will be, ah, retired?”…”If he really has done it there will be no choice I fear.”…”Yes, see you then.”
He ended the call and put the com back into his pocket.
“Well, you can explain everything to Ben in a few minutes.”
“Can you remove the tubing in the meantime? Especially the catheter, if you would?”
How nice, he blushed, but then turned to Wallace.
“Ah, Ryan, ehm, could you give us a bit of privacy?”
Thank goodness Wallace complied. A few minutes later I was once again free to roam the world, or at least limp around.
It hurt quite a bit, but my right leg carried me well enough, yet I still quickly sat down back onto the bed.
Then Mr. Walker stormed into the room.
“What the hell have you done?”
Sigh.
“I found out somebody had stolen more than 11 million bucks from you, and, friendly as I am, notified you of it.”
He snorted.
“We have only your word for it. We both know that it would be easy for you to forge anything inside a computer.”
“Partially true, with enough time I could have falsified the records in that way, but keep it real, it would have taken me several days to create something like that. All the references, the accounts, the electronic trails, not impossible to forge, but that would be anything except fast. I am in New York for six days now. Three of them I spent being raped and tortured, and two mostly unconscious.”
He calmed down a bit.
“You could have prepared all that beforehand.”
That surprised me.
“Why should I do that? 10 days ago I was planning to stay in Seattle. Only eight days ago I decided to go somewhere else, and only seven days ago I decided on New York. I learned about your territory a few hours before I made the appointment. I learned about this clinic when you led me here.”
“You can prove that? Or shall I kill a man on your word alone?”
“Well, luckily for you, whoever set up your security system here was smart enough to create offline backups in hard burned crystals. It would be easy to get any halfway decent computer user to find the pertaining files inside there, and please, don’t try to tell me that I could have planned this over the last three years.”
Maybe not the best way to talk to the boss of the territory, but I had gotten quite a bit irritated by his accusations.
“Damn it. A fine mess you got me there.”
He walked a bit up and down.
“There’s no helping it. Reyes has robbed us. He has to pay.”
It seemed that this topic was finished, finally.
“What about the other chaos you caused?”
On to the next fight, it seemed. Sometimes I wondered why I even bothered to try to do the right thing.
“Do you mean teaching the rather unprofessional and rude nurse the meaning of work? Or scaring the lazy doctors hopefully into realizing that a nano fab is no toy?”
He sighed, walked to a chair, and sat down.
“Damn, you make too much chaos.”
“Would you have preferred that they kill somebody by casually using dissolver nanites? Or simply by playing instead of doing their job? There were somewhere around 100 people in the waiting room and no doctor around as they were torturing rats to death. I have to say, if they behave in this way in the future, then I won’t sell this clinic a modern fab. That is way too risky.”
Doc Schaeffer began to protest, but I waved him off.
“I don’t think you understand what they did. They used dissolvers in an unsecured environment without any precautions, in shirtsleeves in massive amounts to torture rats to death. They treated it as some sort of magic trick. I can’t even begin to describe how irresponsible that is, but the ONLY valid uses of dissolvers are biohazard removal and extremely carefully for anti-cancer treatments. If not for that I wouldn’t have included them in the recipes, but they are valuable for that.”
I carefully relaxed my hands, which I had balled into fists automatically, trying to ignore the pain my right arm gave me in protest.
“The amount of dissolvers they used was enough to kill everybody on the ground floor if something had gone wrong. The manuals I gave you have 12 pages of warning about dissolvers. 12 fricking pages, most of it written in fire engine red, to tell anybody who bothers to read it exactly how this stuff can kill and maim people. I know for sure that the fab throws a warning every single time somebody wants to make dissolvers. So they were warned but still played with it like a toy. As it is, you have to send in some bots to recycle the dissolvers to make use of the room safe again.”
Damn, that took more energy than I thought, something was wrong. When I called up the diagnostics I got a blood sugar alert. It seemed as if the last few days had depleted my emergency reserve.
“Damn… sorry, my blood sugar is falling. Can you send for some glucose?”
Doc Schaeffer stood there with his mouth hanging open but then shook his head.
“Uh, yes, yes. I had no idea that these things are that dangerous. I thought you said that nanites were much less dangerous than most thought.”
I smiled sadly at that.
“They are. Even dissolvers can’t start a grey goo scenario, and you have to confirm at least three different times that you are sure you want to make dissolvers. At the amount they made it should have been more like a dozen times. It takes active stupidity on an unbelievable level or malicious intent to make them dangerous. That is exactly why you should weed out your staff. If I had not been knocked out I would have talked about this with you, and helped you program the access to the fab accordingly.”
Then a nurse brought a bag, giving it to Schaeffer. He reached for the drip stand, but I shook my head and reached out for it.
With curiosity in his eyes, he gave me the bag and managed to open it with my teeth, slurping the glucose down. Nauseatingly sweet, but exactly what I needed. Within minutes my blood sugar was back up, and the excess was stored in the reserve.
When I finished the bag, I noticed the stares of the three men.
“What?”
It was Schaeffer who answered me.
“That, wasn’t that disgusting? How could you drink that?” He shuddered in revulsion.
“Yes, it was a bit nauseating, but I needed it.”
At the blank stares, I sighed.
“I am a Pure. All these enhancements come with a price. I need roughly 5000 kilocalories a day, and my nanites need another 1000 in addition. I know you put me on intravenous feed, but you gave me less than half of what I needed. I got even less the days before. I have an emergency reserve in an implant near my stomach that holds a bit over 25000 kcal or I would have nearly starved, but that ran out sometime this night.”
I dropped the empty bag on the nightstand.
“Now, can somebody tell me what the heck happened Monday?”
Schaeffer grimaced and took the last chair in the room.
“Well, you had just told me that you would use your cranial board, and then you simply stood there doing nothing. Then out of nowhere Oleg Hopkins, one of Ben’s men came in, grabbed you by the throat, and crashed you into the wall. When the other men tried to intervene he threw you to the side. You got a concussion, a broken arm, a bruised hip and a bruised throat out of it.”
It took me a moment to realize that he had finished.
“That is nice. I now know the name of the giant who attacked me. The rest, well I was there. Is there anything besides the name I did not know?”
Walker answered me.
“Somebody drugged Oleg, and more or less convinced him that you were poisoning me.”
I suppressed a few curses, before asking Walker: “Have you found the bugs?”
Schaeffer looked surprised, Wallace let out a small snicker and Walker looked at me calmly.
“Yes, we have, in my and Richard’s offices. How did you guess?”
Schaeffer now looked a bit shocked at Walker, but I ignored him.
“Between the time when I told you that I might be able to save you until the attack it was barely three hours, and only one and a half between when I told you that this is an attempted murder and the attack. On both occasions the number of potential leaks was small. I know that I was not responsible for somebody I don’t know trying to kill me, I simply assume that you won’t kill your only chance for survival, Doc Schaeffer could theoretically be the culprit, but I think that is extremely unlikely considering that he seems to be your general practitioner and had ample opportunity to kill you in a way that will not create suspicion and if you can’t trust your bodyguards this whole scheme to kill you with CRS would have been unnecessary as well, as any of them had the access to you to lead you into a trap or an accident. As there was nobody else in the vicinity the only possible options that remain are some well-placed bugs or a hacker that appropriated your webcam and microphone on the respective computers.”
I shook my head.
“From the way the computer security here is set up I can’t exclude the hacker, but the system is good enough that anybody who could do it without getting found out is expensive with a capital E. To waste that kind of money on simple surveillance is… unlikely, considering that the bugs cost only a few k. So the bugs it is.”
The whole affair became uncomfortable in a hurry.
“What was the quality of the bugs?”
“High end, microscale, environmental powered. We only found them when we used an RF scanner in a multi-band modus. From what my people tell me, it is Commonwealth tech.”
“Somebody wants you dead for sure. I don’t think it is easy to get commie bugs here.”
“Could you get or make them?”
“Huh? No idea where to get them. If I would still be in Seattle I think I could get them, but here? No way.”
“That answers getting them, and making them? You said you had a degree in electronics.”
“A degree in nanoelectronics, geared towards nanites and implants. I wouldn’t even know where to begin…”
I could use audio and visual implant tech as the basis. I would need to… no, that would make the signature too great, but if I instead used… yes, that could work. How to make the data transfer, though? I could use… no that is the tech I won’t sell, frequency hopping? An RF scanner would be able to find it, maybe… if I could get the emitter small enough… yes, that could work and would be nearly undetectable. Powering it would be easy. Just use environmental charge. Just how to place it? Should I make it mobile? That would increase the size by 50% at least, but it could be disguised as an insect. Should I build in an EM scanner? A discrete cough ripped me out of my thoughts.
I looked at the men, and they looked back at me with amusement.
“What were you just doing?”
I felt myself blush.
“Oh, sorry, that happens sometimes. I get an idea and run away with it.”
Walker chuckled.
“Am I right in the assumption that you just now designed a bug?”
“Uh, yeah. I would have to test it of course, and at the moment I don’t have the equipment to build it, but yes, it seems surprisingly easy.”
“Easy you say?” He lifted one eyebrow and looked at me quizzically.
“Yes, implant tech has many of the same constraints as a bug. It has to be small, has to be energy efficient and it can’t irradiate or heat its surroundings. When I thought about it, it was easy.”
I tried to clear my head.
“Well, where were we? Oh right, somebody has a strong wish to kill you. That is way too much effort for some, sorry to say it so, small-time mob boss in New York. Whoever they are, they have sunk serious money into it. For a fraction of that they could have simply paid a killer with a sniper.”
I was seriously considering repacking my equipment and cutting my losses, moving to the CSA.
“Dang it. You know that this is quickly becoming more trouble than it is worth for me.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose again and was weighing my options. In the end, I saw not many benefits to keep helping Walker. Whoever was on his case was unlikely to stop.
Still, they tried to kill me, and I had given my word. I may not have to go much for me, but my word was sacred for me, always was, always will be. At this moment I cursed my bruised hip that prevented me from pacing. I had no way to release my anxiety.
“Dang!” I had made my decision.
“That is way too much effort for getting you out of the way. There has to be more.”
I shook my head, and then looked at Walker.
“They’ve gone a long way to keep me from rescuing you, and they may have succeeded.”
All three men gasped at that, and Wallace accused me.
“So you will run?”
“What? No, of course not! What gave you that idea?”
I held up my right hand and waved it around.
“That is what may prevent me from helping. I need both hands to work on the replacement parts. It will take roughly two weeks before I can use that hand again. Two weeks may be more than Mr. Walker can afford.”
Walker was sinking back in the chair but said nothing. Schaeffer on the other hand perked up.
“What exactly do you need two hands for?”
“I need to disassemble the heart, sheath it in the bioreactor, and then reassemble it. Both disassembly and reassembly need two hands.”
Wallace interceded.
“Can’t you use a bot or an android?”
“Sorry, but not enough computing power. I would have to take each model apart manually and then make a program for each.”
“But these things are made mostly by bots.”
“Yes, of course, but these bots are part of an industrial complex and have been painstakingly programmed for each step. Give me this program, and I can have my bots disassemble and reassemble them. Or give me enough time and I can build a specialized machine for disassembling cyberware. That was my plan anyway, but my timetable was quite a bit more relaxed. I did not plan to have my first customer here for the next six to nine months. Then it would take me between four and six days to convert the Pulse III, and a week to nine days to convert an Excelsior, but I had just begun designing the necessary equipment when my need to relocate came up. I took only the pieces I can’t replace with me, the nano fab, the experimental bioreactor, and a few other toys.”
Walker threw in the next question.
“What do you need to build the equipment you need?”
“I need a chip fabber, a winding machine, an industrial fabber, and a carbon extruder.” Or my NADA up and running, but I like heck I would tell them that.
“Sadly that will still not help you. Even with all that it will take me a couple of months to make the equipment.” Of course, the NADA would reduce that to a couple of days, but telling anybody about it could be, no would be disastrous.
Doctor Schaeffer had, in the meantime thought about something.
“What if… what if you have somebody else be your hands until your arm heals?”
Possible, but still…
“I have just come to NYC. I don’t know anybody who could do the work.”
“I have a student who wants to branch out into implant surgery.”
He wanted me to teach one of these idiots? Was he crazy or simply kidding?
I struggled to find the right words.
“I… I really don’t think that any of your doctors here is suited for the job.”
“You don’t know my doctors here.” It was easy to tell that he was perturbed, but I was not sorry for him. He had let the situation here crumble.
“We had the discussion just a few minutes ago. If you think I let any of these idiots that you call doctors and that abuse dissolver nanites for fun even into the same building as my 8th gen nano fab then you have to think again.”
He got red, seemingly a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Yes, I can see that you don’t want any of them, but I did not think of one of them. The girl I meant is not yet working here. If she did not want to be an implant surgeon I would have her of course, but cyber tech is one of the fields we don’t do here.”
OK, that sounded quite a bit better.
“That could actually work. She needs a very steady hand, but if she wants to go into any kind of surgery she needs them anyway. I reserve the right to throw her out if she shows any proclivity for the kind of stupidity your other doctors showed.”
I thought about what the fact that somebody was moving heaven and earth to kill Walker meant for me.
“You know as it stands, I will not come back here until this shit is resolved. It is way too open and too dangerous. If anybody needs treatment, he or she has to come to the fortress.”
They seemed surprised, but Walker slowly nodded his head.
“I actually feared that you would cut your losses and run, so I can’t complain. Anyway, what is this fortress you are talking about?”
“Oh please, as if you did not know that the Sedgen building is a fortress. You would need a veritable army with heavy weapon support to breach it.”
He nodded.
“Yes, you are right. If it were located more central to my territory I would have moved there, but as it stands, I will send two of my men with you. At the moment you are way too valuable for me to take any risks with your security. Ryan here is one, the other is Justin O’Donnell. They will accompany you everywhere except your bedroom and the bathroom.”
That was, well it was unexpected. On one hand, it would give me some additional protection, even if I would not leave the fortress again in the near future. On the other hand, I had some things to do that I did not want anybody to know about. On the gripping hand though, he was the boss, and any protest would be futile.
Reluctantly I nodded.
“OK, as long as they understand that if I need my peace I need my peace. They can be in the same room if they want, but need to keep some distance and leave me mostly alone then.”
“That would be no problem. Now then, as we have the important points out of the way, what do you think is actually happening?”
Where the hell was that coming from? Did he think my last name was Holmes or Maple or something?
“How the hell should I know? I have seen exactly four buildings in New York from the inside, if I include the airport. I know less than 20 people here by name. I only knew that this was your territory by researching it on the net. I can at best give you a superficial report about the political and territorial situation in NYC by compiling net sources.”
He looked me into the eyes before he answered.
“Anybody walking the Abyss is somebody who has resources far beyond what we normal people have.”
I had to suppress my surprise, and my opinion of his intelligence rose a few notches.
“What makes you believe that I even know what this Abyss is let alone walking it?”
He smiled.
“Don’t be coy. You told it to me yourself. Every broker is a hacker of high standing him or herself, and one of the privileges for the so-called hangers-on is access to the Abyss. You are most likely a way better hacker than whatever we find here in New York.”
“OK, you have me there, but that still does not give me any insights into the rough situation here in New York, never mind the intricacies. What I can do is look into who manipulated your database here. For the rest, I simply lack information.”
Schaeffer asked confused: “What is the Abyss?”
I looked at Walker inviting, and his smile got a bit smugger than before.
“You remember what I told you about the Dark Web? The Abyss is one step deeper. It is some sort of exclusive utility for some of the best hackers in the world. Only they and their hangers-on can enter there.”
He looked at me and dared me to speak up. What could I say, challenge accepted.
“Nearly right, but not quite so. It is more of an exclusive club than a utility but generally on the same level as the deepest of the Dark Net. Technically everybody can get there, but unless you really know what you are doing and can get the people there to acknowledge you, it would be vastly better for your continued wellbeing to not go there. If you annoy the trolls in the dark web it can become uncomfortable, or even costly up to including your life if you are unlucky, but if you manage to aggravate the trolls in the Abyss enough, well the last time somebody did that was in June 2241 and he was from Hyderabad.”
It took a moment for Schaeffer to place the date and the city I named, but then he paled.
“They… they used a nuclear weapon to kill one man? What monsters are they?”
Hyderabad did not exist anymore, as an ICBM of the Indian strategic command had a glitch and launched its six two-megaton MIRVS onto the Indian city on June 26th, 2241. Nearly 600 thousand people had vanished in the inferno. A glitch called 5h3ph3rd that is.
“Some of them are monsters, yes. Others are… better, but you have to understand that the standard test that they send you will destroy the computers of 99.9% of the hackers in the world. The ones who can withstand that are the elite of the elite. Quite a few of them are arrogant monsters that view anybody who is not one of the ultra-elite as a step above vermin. If you are extremely respectful they may, and I stress the word may here, may tolerate you. The hangers-on are divided into two types. We call them groupies and minions.
Groupies are brownnosers that tell their hacker how wonderful he is or in some rare cases somebody who actually has an affair with the hacker. They are essentially bootlickers of the Abyss.
Minions on the other hand are hackers of the secondary or tertiary order who work for one of the elites in one or another capacity. Most of us are brokers, or in other words, people who can be contacted with job offers, some are research assistants or work on social engineering, and some are even technical support. As Mr. Walker said, one of the privileges a minion gets is access to the Abyss without having to go through the test. Minions are mostly immune from the harassment, while groupies should keep their time in the Abyss to when their master is present.”
“But… somebody there used a nuclear weapon to kill hundreds of thousands of people. You know who it was. You have to do something.”
I let a sad little smile on my face.
“You confuse me with somebody who can do something. I am a minion. The one who launched the missile was in the top 20. Of course, he has gone way too far, but nobody there can out him. It would be a death sentence. Not that this protected him when a few of the top 10 decided that he has gone way too far, and eliminated him. They drove him mad, destroyed his computers, his network, and soured his contacts. For a year they destroyed everything he touched. From what I heard, he committed suicide in August 42. By the way, I was ten when he launched it. I may be a bit faster than average, but that was way too young even for me. Spectre was not on the scene then, so I had no master to bring me into the Abyss even if I would have had the abilities needed there.”
I saw it working in their minds, all except Walker. He had a grim expression that told me that he knew most of it already. He shrugged his shoulders before he talked.
“Back to the topic, if I understand you correctly you can look into the computer side of this mess but further help is unlikely.”
“Yes, that sums it up. Is there anything else?”
Walker waited for a moment before answering.
“Not from my side. Ryan will bring you back to… “He made a short pause, “your fortress.”
Schaeffer then continued.
“I will have Mia come to the Sedgen building then. I hope you two get along. The rest of the day I will be busy chewing out my staff as it seems.” The last was pretty dejected.
I felt sorry for him, but it was crucial for him to get his house in order. A nano fab simply was no toy.
Then I noticed the strange, unnerving grin Walker was giving me. I could not understand how Doc Schaeffer’s plight could lead to it, and it managed to make me feel a bit insecure.
“Why are you smiling?”
I hoped that I kept my uncertainty out of my voice when I addressed him.
His grin got quite a bit wider.
“Well, you are aware that you are wearing only a hospital gown?”
Where the hell did that come from? Of course, I knew that I wore a hospital gown. I was a patient in a clinic. What else would I be wearing?
“Yeees? Your point is?”
“My point is that I know for sure that you are wearing only a hospital gown.”
The way he emphasized only made me pause. Then I followed his gaze towards my legs and my gown that shifted from calf-length thanks to my height-challenged frame and one size has to fit all mentality, to barely covering my crotch. Immediately I felt the heat rising on my face, and I was proud about neither the screech I let out nor the haste I scrambled back under covers with.
I was sure that I would glow red in the dark at this very moment.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
His grin got quite a bit lewd.
“I was too busy enjoying the view. You have nice legs, you know.”
Goddang it, sometimes I really, really hated my life.
