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

easily. He’s been making friends in VLEX for a while. He can pay the board members to look the other way when countries complain about his international violations. His end game could be sitting on the board to get a free pass to do what he wants, like a little boy who doesn’t like being told no. And so far it’s working and there’s nothing we can do about it.” Tricky began getting worked up, the agitation evident in her voice and her white knuckles.

“Maybe they hired more than one to see who would succeed?”

“That’s likely. Maxim paid a lot and nothing that bastard touches is good.” She threw a pen at the projected images. It hit the wall and fell to the floor.

“We’ll get him,” Ari promised her.

“How many more lives will he destroy until then? How many innocent people killed or tortured or abused until he’s gone?” Her voice tightened with emotion.

Ari sensed there was something else eating at Tricky. Her friend had been more fragile and raw since she woke from the coma, but Ari couldn’t help but wonder if she was missing something. “What is it?”

Tricky pushed back from the table and ran her hands through her platinum blonde hair. “I’ve met him once, you know?”

Ari’s mug plopped down in surprise. She knew that Maxim killed Tricky’s mom, but not the specifics. “What happened?”

“I was sixteen.” Tricky stared off in the distance as if she was in another place. “We were poor. Dirt poor. Lucky if we got one meal a day. My mom knew Blur and I were special. Finally, she contacted someone who contacted someone. She only wanted a better life for us.”

Tricky took long pauses as if it were a struggle to relive it. Ari remained silent, giving her time. Tricky continued, her accent thicker than Ari had heard it.

“We worked for someone and once they realized what we could do, what we could really do, they moved us to a different city. We worked and worked not seeing our mom for weeks. We had soft beds and full stomachs but kept asking about our mother. So, we ran away in hopes to find her.”

“They dragged us back, beat us, and then killed our mother in front of us. And there in the corner, Maxim sat watching the whole thing.” Her eerie voice faded out as she continued staring off while a silent tear fell onto her cheek.

When it was apparent that she was done, Ari reached out a hand and placed it on her arm. “We’ll get him, Tricky. I promise.”

She shook her head, coming back to the present and wiped at her face. Then she returned Ari’s gaze. “It’s me or him Ari. One of us will die very soon.”

Chapter 30

Patrick came back in the morning and in less than thirty minutes everyone was seated around the table in yet another meeting.

Tricky leaned back in the chair, feet on the table. Something she would have never gotten away with before her accident. “You know while you were gone, we went three whole days without a meeting, and we survived. No spontaneous combustion or anything.”

Harini snickered and covered her mouth with a hand. Only Tricky or Sketchy could get away with that attitude.

Patrick smiled at her. “I missed you too.”

Blowing him a kiss, Tricky put her feet down. “How did my brother get out of this?”

He turned his attention to the group. “He said he was working on something and would be a few minutes late.”

“Lucky,” Sketchy said from the opposite side of the table, which was ironic since he wasn’t required to attend. He came to this one though because he’d been working with the others on the hardware problem. He might not be able to explain what he is doing, but his hands worked with a brilliance of their own.

“Okay.” Patrick ignored Sketchy’s remark. “The guy I worked with was not willing to help us or, more specifically, I couldn’t trust him to help us.”

A couple people moaned or echoed dismissive tones.

“Money or promised protection was not enough to get him to take on the board that runs VLEX. He had been on the run, avoiding them for some time and was pissed I even showed up at his place.” He glanced at Joe who had found this guy from another friend on a different group. “In exchange for me telling him how we tracked him down he did offer me a small nugget of information.”

Ari set down her mug and straightened at the mention of information. This team could do a lot with a nugget. “Which is?”

“I have a list of machine models that are safe to use. The new models came out about ten years ago.”

“Ten years?” Sketchy asked incredulously. “Ten years might as well be one hundred years in tech age.”

Marco and a couple of others voiced their agreement. Finding an old VR machine that had the capabilities to sign into any of the current worldwide realms would be hard if not impossible. Even Ari worried about their ability to do that.

Joe, who remained quiet to this point, spoke up. “We may be able to find them but getting them back here undetected will take a lot of time and makes us vulnerable.”

“We don’t have time.” Tricky slapped the table. “They just started with this program. Give them time and they’ll have killed off all of their opposition.”

“She’s right.” Blur appeared in the doorway, breathing hard.

“What did you find?” Patrick asked.

He tapped on his HUB and projected it to one of the large screens in the room. News accounts scrolled past with photos of comatose people, hundreds of them. So many that they lined hospital rooms. The news reporter mentioned India and a widespread sickness that triggered VR comas. Planes and other transportation were shut down. The whole country was on quarantine.

Patrick muted the feed. “How many?”

“Thousands so far. There isn’t an official total yet.” Blur’s bleak eyes held rage behind them, and he looked more