Hard Wired Trilogy DeAnna Pearce (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt) 📖

“Yes,” someone confirmed.

She closed her eyes again and went back in the same way. The less time alone with Maxim the better for Tricky. Ari blinked a few times to get oriented; switching back and forth could make her dizzy.

“File received,” Ari told Tricky, who remained near Maxim. With weary eyes, Ari tried to warn Tricky to cut her losses and leave. They wouldn’t get the other information. Not today.

But Ari’s eyes weren’t as expressive as she thought, or maybe Tricky didn’t care to get the message.

“Good,” Tricky purred softly, like a cat ready to strike.

“Nice to have business taken care of.” Maxim ignored the fire in Tricky’s eyes and moved his fingers further up her hip.

Tricky grabbed his hand and bent it at an unnatural angle. A sickening crack sounded. Even in VR, Maxim would feel that to some extent, his mind telling him it was real. That was the difficult part of VRs. When the program could duplicate real life down to the hair on a head, the human mind struggled to differentiate.

Maxim yelled out in pain. Before he could instinctively flee the VR, Tricky changed the landscape to that of his real world apartment, a penthouse suite with views over the city. Ari and Tricky had scoured through all the research and pictures they could get a hold of. Tricky’s recreation could be close or very far away, but the fact that Maxim remained in the program caused Ari to think that maybe Tricky got it right.

Tricky created this scene as if he was just waking up from his VR chair. A sleek black reclined chair stood in the middle of the room. Tricky’s clothes changed as well, her features still beautiful but not exaggerated perfection. In a fitted black suit, she leaned towards the frantic man. “Oh, dear Maxim, business is just getting started.”

Chapter 2

Ari quickly altered her image as well, even though Maxim’s attention was all for Tricky. Still a man, she changed into dark jeans and a black shirt, and moved to the other side of Maxim. Things were escalating quickly. Once Maxim figured out that he wasn’t in real life, he would flee and they wouldn’t get a chance like this for months, maybe more.

“What the hell is this? How dare you invade my private—” Maxim struggled to get up.

Ari grabbed the sides of his head and forced him back down. He had no power in this realm and, as long as he remained here, Maxim was at their mercy. Speed was of the essence.

He continued to rant as she dug at his connection to the real—which was harder than she expected. Sometimes information traveled between the real and the virtual, things like files or cryptos. To most people it was fine. With a warper around, it left the person’s information vulnerable. Yet even though Maxim wasn’t a warper, he had highly trained programmers and possibly other warpers at his disposal. He could use any number of abilities, back exits, or defenses. If only she could find an address of where he was coming from…

The yelling stopped, and his eyes became cold and calculating. “How did you get by Stevens?”

Tricky didn’t miss a beat. “Your security isn’t as good as you think.”

An unnerving smile grew on his face and Ari knew Tricky got it wrong. That phrase was probably a security question, many people had them on in the inside. He had figured out they were still in the program. Code sped by, something unique that she couldn’t decipher.

Then in a flash he was gone.

Tricky swore, her empty fist grasping onto thin air.

“We need to go before they start digging for us.” Ari noticed her breath coming out in pants.

Tricky looked up, and the anger in her eyes made Ari flinch. “Yeah, we better.”

In a flash, they were back in the basement. Laying on her back, Ari woke to a ceiling fan spinning above her. Lights and noise surrounded her, people rushing to see how things went.

Tricky’s anger was evident in the tirade of swearwords. Her notorious temper didn’t faze Ari. She lay there a minute, making sure everything was alright.

Pulling her tight hands up from the arm rests, she went over her mantra in her mind. I’m Ariana Mendez. My friends call me Ari. I’m eighteen years old. I’m fighting for freedom, for my family, for me. It was something she tried to say every time she left the VR. Something that rooted her in reality.

Pain pricked behind her eyes, threatening a migraine. The cost of going in the programs and of changing the program with such ease. Every warper had a shelf life, and she planned to make the most out of hers. This mantra helped her remember who she was, and why she was doing this. I’m Ariana Mendez. My friends call me Ari. I’m—

A warm hand touched her arm. “Welcome back.” Patrick’s warm eyes looked down at her.

“Hey.” Ari moved to take out the cable in the back of her neck. “Glad to be back.”

“Quite the adventure, huh?” He motioned to Tricky.

Ari only glimpsed the sight of Tricky’s long blonde hair as she stormed off, probably in search of her twin brother.

“It didn’t go as planned. I screwed up. Maxim did an out-of-program transfer, then fled before I could get much more from him.”

Patrick offered a hand, then helped pull Ari up to a sitting position. “He was always slick. Weapons traders usually are.”

“If someone else was there, they would have gotten it.” Ari rubbed a sore spot under her port.

“You tried.” Patrick smiled and handed her a mug. “A drink for your headache.”

“Thanks.” She took the warm drink. “So, you knew we would fail?”

He shook his head. “We got a list of known politicians involved in the underground trade and their IP addresses. Only Tricky would think of it as a total failure.”

“True.” Ari swung her legs over the side of the chair and took a sip. The herbal concoction helped with her headache and supposedly