Into a Raging Blaze by Andreas Norman & Ian Giles

Author:Andreas Norman & Ian Giles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Thrillers / General
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2014-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

26

Stockholm, Monday, October 3

The apartment thronged with people she didn’t know. The loud music enveloped her in her chosen spot by one of the speakers. She looked around, sipping the beer someone had handed her. Greger had vanished. The last time she had glimpsed him, he had been in the kitchen, talking about something to do with computers to a guy with a clean-shaven head who was as fat as a Buddha.

She hadn’t even met Alex, the host of the party. She and her friends were old hackers, Greger had told her on the way over in the taxi. They were different, lived an existence far from the nine-to-five of everyday life. Alex had done completely wild things. Greger had excitedly begun to tell her about when they had tried to get into NASA’s systems. Carina had refrained from asking questions; she didn’t want know.

In the middle of the floor, several people had begun to dance to the music. A heavy bass pulsed between the walls in the small apartment. There was an unbelievable crowd; the entire living room was a mass of bodies moving in the darkness. She watched them while she finished her beer, before forcing her way into the kitchen, getting a new one, and then changing her mind and pouring a large whiskey from one of the bottles on the counter. She still had no job to go to in the morning and might as well get a little drunk. Tomorrow, when she had slept and things looked clearer, she would call Jamal.

Around her in the small kitchen, people were pressed together, talking animatedly. She sat down at the kitchen table. The whiskey stung her throat. It was good, smoky. She got another.

“I’ll have one, too, please.”

She looked up. A guy with long blond bangs was standing next to her.

“There aren’t enough girls who drink hard liquor. Girls should drink more hard liquor in general. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

“What’s your name?”

“Carina.”

“Martin.”

“Hi, Martin.”

He swayed but regained his balance by leaning against a cupboard door. “How do you know Alex?”

“I don’t know her. I came with Greger.”

“Ah, Greger. I know him. We do stuff together.” He grinned. “It’s cool that so many of us are here, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Don’t you know about Alex’s site?” he burst out. “It’s sick. I thought everyone knew about it.”

“What’s it about then?”

“Different projects. We build game environments. Things like that.”

Alex, he explained, worked at EA but did fantastic things with open source code as well. EA? Yes, Electronic Arts. They made computer games. He looked at her in amusement. “You’ve no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No.”

He smiled.

“No, I know nothing about computers.”

“But you drink whiskey; that’s a good start.” He reached for the bottle and sploshed a little more into his glass and then hers.

She ought to say no, but part of her wanted to get hammered. She held out her glass. It felt good to talk about something completely different; for a short time, she had gotten away from all the thoughts whirring in her head.

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