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

suit on, Ari stood across from Niomi at what looked like a park of some kind. Cement paths curved around large grassy areas. Large trees were scattered around, providing cool shade as colorful flowers dotted the landscape, adding the perfect amount of color. It would have been a great place to spend the day with Reed, instead Ari stared at Niomi who looked ready to fight someone.

“Do you remember the first profile in the notebook I gave you?”

Ari thought of the strawberry blond woman and nodded.

“Become her.”

“Now?” Ari had never assumed another personality, though she’d been taught how.

Niomi looked around, her shoulders raised. “Anything better to do?”

“Okay.” Ari closed her eyes, thinking back to the woman, Kari. Most people would consider her attractive with wavy strawberry blond hair and dark blue eyes. Though Kari tried to hide her large forehead with bangs, her full cheeks took up a lot of real estate on her face. Her body was thin, except for a large chest, which Ari didn’t look forward to wearing or creating.

Taking a deep breath, she began the writing code. Instead of manually writing code number by number, with Ari’s gift, the world morphed around. Her heart picked up with exhilaration as she recreated herself, pulling from Kari’s picture. When completed, Ari opened her eyes.

“Look at yourself.” Niomi brow slanted in annoyance. “This ‘close your eyes’ thing has to go.”

Looking down, Ari saw the problem. She exaggerated all the physical aspects she remembered. This version of Kari could have passed for a cartoon character. Her chest was double what Ari remembered, while the rest of her thin frame lacked any muscular definition. Her face warmed at the embarrassing rendition. “I guess I need some work.”

“You guess?” Niomi cocked a brow, but her mouth twitched as if tapping down a smile. “First rule, keep your eyes open so you can make adjustments along the way.”

Ari lifted her arm and focused on the code that laid underneath the image. It took her a few minutes to complete the arm perfectly, and to add the freckles to the right locations. A perfect imitation proved harder than she thought.

With a huff of breath, she dropped her arm. “I can’t be expected to do this every time I enter a VR. I can’t possibly memorize every freckle and hair for every person you gave me. I may be a warper, but I don’t have a photographic memory.”

“That’s where your suit comes in. It can memorize files you create and recall them for you.”

“Really?” Ari chuckled with relief.

“You still have to create them all yourself and learn to do it fast.”

Nothing could be easy with Niomi. “Why? Why does everything have to be the hard way with you?”

“What if your suit malfunctions? What if you have to become somebody else to survive?”

“I didn’t think about that.” Ari swallowed, embarrassed for her overreaction.

“The VLEX is a world unto itself with a whole different set of rules. Imagine sneaking into a top-secret meeting, the punishment for which was life in prison.”

“Wait, wait a moment.” Ari rose a hand, grateful to find it hers. “What I’m doing could make me end up in prison?”

“If they could catch you or us, yes, but they won’t. It is that serious though. They will track you down if they can. Warpers have always been banned from VLEX. Not that it stops all the powerful countries and corporations from sending their spies in.”

“Then why am I going there?”

“To find out information about a new bill that has been introduced to the world council. They will not let private corporations in on the dealings, only governments, and we can’t trust them to tell us what this bill entails. Information is power and some small message or captured conversation could be worth millions.”

Ari paced for a moment inside the program. She knew what she was hired to do couldn’t be easy, not for what she made, but the realization of what she had to do was a bit daunting. Steeling her resolve, she lifted her hands and began again, forming the arm into Kari.

Minutes, then hours passed as they worked on perfecting Kari. Ari felt almost embarrassed how intimately she knew this woman’s body. When they were complete, they saved the data and worked on the different ways the woman liked to style her hair. She looked forward to someone with a simple short crew cut, maybe a man.

If it ended at looks, maybe Ari could have handled it, but then there were even more things to perfect. The sound of her voice, how she took her coffee, her education, and they even covered her past lovers—which Ari found disturbing. Ari’s mind felt like a pile of mush. The thoughts of all the files on her computer overwhelmed her as well. Just when she thought she couldn’t do any more, Niomi had one more test for her.

“Kari,” Niomi began, she’d been referring to Ari as Kari for some time now. “What would you do if I did this?” Niomi shoved Ari backwards.

Ari stumbled back in surprise. Her training kicked in and she took a defensive stance. Niomi attacked, striking with her fists. Ari blocked, spun under to force Niomi to turn. Her face tightened, her lips pulling down in a scowl. Without warning, Niomi lunged forward, tackling her to the ground. It took mere seconds before Ari was on her stomach pinned to the ground eating grass.

“Give.” Ari mumbled from her position. With Niomi’s fierce attack, Ari tried to figure out what the hell was Niomi trying to prove here.

“There is no give, here.”

“What?”

Niomi dug her knee into Ari’s back. She grunted with pain. Ari had seen Niomi pissed before, but not like this.

“If you remember anything, remember this. You are always in character. Kari wouldn’t fight back. She’d be scared, startled, probably scream. And if she fought back, it’d be like a girl who had never fought before.”

“So, I’m supposed to just take it.”

“Yes, you are. You can take pain. Distance yourself in