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

even arrive on the ship?” He spun in a circle now. “I know you say you’re my Ari, but something’s not right.”

She concentrated for a moment, analyzing the code around her. People turned into streams of numbers and letters. The dancers vanished, music stopped, and a light shone overhead, like high noon in the summer. She kept the river and the basic frame of the boat. The bright light showed her father’s worn and tired features, something he couldn’t even hide in the VR.

“What in the world?” He squinted against the bright lights, blankly searching for the others.

For a moment Ari thought she’d gotten through to him. She held her breath, praying it had worked.

Then something odd happened. The world resumed to normal. Like a rubber band, everything she’d torn down snapped back to perfection. What was happening?

While she stood dumbfounded, he moved toward the staircase. “I think I drank too much tonight. I better head back to my room.”

Ari rushed after him and grabbed his hand. “Please stop, it’s me.”

He turned back, his breath choppy and labored. Confusion creased his eyebrows, and she wished she could be that eight-year-old little girl again with two long braids down her back. Then the thought crossed her mind that she could change herself, or at least his perception of herself.

She closed her eyes and imagined a picture of herself at that age, specifically the one from her eighth birthday. She was blowing out the candles with her brother next to her, wearing her favorite purple shirt. It took longer than Ari liked, and when she opened her eyes again, she realized she might have made the wrong choice.

His eyes bulged, and he stumbled back. “I need a drink.” He turned to the bar.

In anger, she deleted the code again, wiping away the bar and the people.

Even though nothing stood there, he continued going through the motions, ordering a drink and mumbling thanks to the non-existent barkeep. With nothing there, he appeared like a child playing make-believe.

“Dad.” Her voice cracked as silent tears fell heavy on her cheeks. “Mom wanted me to bring you home. She’s worried about you.”

He exhaled loudly, looking familiar with this argument. “Oh, I know. I’ll be up to join her in our room shortly. She was never one for staying out late. It’s okay, sweetie.”

“She left her room. She’s at home waiting for you.” With emotion tightening her throat, the words came out small.

“How could she possibly leave? Just give me a minute.” He tipped back a drink that only he could see.

“There was an emergency. She’s hurt.” Ari struggled to make up anything to convince him to go. “She’s in bad shape, Dad. We have to go now.”

She reached for his hand, trying to budge him, but he remained glued to the invisible bar. Even though he wasn’t in his right mind, his brush off tore at her. She couldn’t give up though.

“They would have come and got me. I spoke to her a while ago. She’s fine.”

Roughly wiping her tears away, she shoved those years of hurt into a box, the same box she had struggled to keep shut for years. Ari was no longer that little girl. An ocean breeze curled around her, and she focused on the code and what she could change.

She obliterated the ship, the sea and the surrounding lush landscape. Letters and numbers flew like a tornado around her head, breaking apart and morphing into something new. When she finished, Ari and her father stood on a plain dirt road, like the one that ran behind their apartment.

Turning in a circle, he stumbled over his words. “I gotta go back to our room. Maybe one more drink.”

“There is no room, Dad. There is no cruise, no boat, no damn river. You are in a VR and your only way out is to leave with me, to go back home.” She clenched her fists ignoring the pain in her palms. “You need to come home to me and Marco and Mom. Please, Dad. Come home.”

Ari’s words appeared to be lost in the air. He mumbled something about code and finding the loophole, but Ari couldn’t make it out. She reached out and shook him by the shoulders, pain turning to frustration. “Dad?”

He didn’t bother to even glimpse her way. He ripped his arm out of her grasp, and she fell backwards in the dirt. He walked away from her, stumbling towards an empty oblivion. Her whole life he had been walking away from her, and the pieces of her heart that he held, fragile and broken as they were, shattered.

The sick man, who was no longer her father, continued down the street to an old door, talking to people that were not there, and mumbling incoherently. A numbing sensation poured over her as she watched him in his own make-believe world, knowing she would never have her father back. Her father was dead. The only thing left was this VR recording, a shell of his former desires and wishes stuck on repeat.

Closing her eyes, she pinched the bridge of her nose, not able to look at him anymore. She morphed back into the older version of herself with jeans and a black shirt. It hurt too much to look at her childlike hands. Ari knew this could happen, but some part of her, that little girl with pig tails, wanted more. She had wanted a purpose for the past few months of her life. What would she tell her mother the next time they spoke?

Before she left the VR, a slow methodical clapping echoed in the program. It sounded nothing like her father, so she opened her eyes. In front of her stood Advisor Williams.

Chapter Thirty-Three

How long had Advisor Williams been watching her from inside the VR? Standing there in his perfectly pressed gray suit and blue tie, his old blue eyes gave nothing away.

She stood, trying to keep her features calm as her blood raced. “Why are you here?”

“Oh dear,