Herculean by Jeremy Robinson

Author:Jeremy Robinson [Robinson, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure
Publisher: Breakneck Media
Published: 2015-08-24T23:00:00+00:00

29

Belem, Brazil

Getting past her own front door had been hell for Cintia Dourado. Each step after that got progressively harder.

“I can do this,” she told herself, repeating the words like a mantra. The affirmation had gotten her across the city, all the way to the airport, but she remained unconvinced.

She had survived the taxi ride by keeping her head down, staring at the floor. But now, out here on the edge of the runway at the Val de Cans International Airport, with nothing but wide open sky above, the simple act of standing seemed as daunting as escaping the event horizon of a black hole.

Though she had never consulted a mental health practitioner or received a professional diagnosis, Dourado was well aware of her condition. Agoraphobia. An irrational anxiety associated with public places and wide open spaces. Her paranoia was almost certainly the result of psychological trauma sustained in early childhood. She had no memories of life before the debilitating panic disorder had clamped down on her like steel manacles, and in truth, she did not want to know. She had escaped the slums, and had no inclination to revisit them, even in her mind’s eye.

She had discovered computers at age twelve and quickly mastered cyberspace, roaming its vastness like a buccaneer, plying the deep web, trading in secrets and taking whatever she needed. Strangely, the possibility of being caught had not frightened her at all. Even though she had known that being arrested for her computerized transgressions would shatter her world, the risk did not trigger her agoraphobia. Rather, it had become her own version of an extreme sport, supplying an addictive endorphin rush that not only caused her to feel alive, but pushed her to new heights. Made her better. Smarter.

Smart enough to crack the Herculean Society.

That had been a transformational moment for her, making it possible for her to trade the squalor of her single room apartment in Tenoné for a luxury condominium in the upscale Nazareth neighborhood. Not that the surroundings mattered much. The digital landscape was her true home now, the only place where she felt safe and in control. She could go anywhere, know anything she wanted to know, without ever stepping outside. Everything she needed for physical survival could be ordered online and delivered to her doorstep, with a bare minimum of human interaction.

So why had she volunteered to do this?

On an intellectual level, she knew the answer. The Herculean Society had given her the one thing she had not even realized was missing from her life. A purpose. She was a part of something important, no longer living just for herself. And now the Society needed something from her. People that she cared about, even though she had never met them, were in danger, and she was in the best position to help them. The calculation had been simple enough. A very real, life-and-death situation outweighed irrational panic every time.

That much was enough to get her through the front door. She had hoped it would get easier after that.

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