The Long Dark Complete: A Post Apocalyptic Survival Thriller by Partner Kevin Partner

Author:Partner, Kevin Partner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribbleit
Published: 2024-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Annabel sat beside Shi Chin Ho, pretending to listen to him drone on about his programming work. She nodded when it seemed appropriate, but he wasn't really paying much attention to her—he seemed happy to have an audience, even an inattentive one. The fact that neither of them spoke perfect Mandarin made communication challenging at the best of times, but she couldn't spare the effort needed to follow the minutiae of his cleverness.

"Yes, well, that's all amazing, Ho, but how close are we to being able to deploy version 2.0?"

Ho stopped mid-sentence and blinked, as if only just remembering that she was there. "We have not yet received our final orders, honorable Annabel. The package is ready, once they transmit the payload."

Annabel ground her teeth in frustration. She was used to being entirely her own boss and being at the beck and call of the Chinese did not sit well with her ego or need for control. But they had injected huge amounts of money into the project, hiring an entire team of coders working in the newly built Lee Building in Shenzhen. Shi Chin Ho was the figurehead though he, like Annabel herself, was not Chinese. He'd been offered to China by North Korea after a stellar career spent disrupting the West. The North Koreans, it seemed, were keen to learn about this implant technology so they could create their own while also seeming to support their allies and benefactors in Beijing.

The two of them had begun their working relationship in suspicion but over time this had become grudging respect and then, after six months or so, something approaching friendship. Or, perhaps, comradeship would be a better word. They shared with their Chinese masters an ambition to bring the western world to its knees, but Annabel's desire went so much further than that.

"Did you speak to the esteemed Scott?"

"I did, but his answer was the same," Annabel said.

Ho shook his head. He was only in his mid-twenties, so his double-chins hadn't had time to become jowls, but thousands of hours spent at a keyboard had not produced an athletic physique. That, and the polio he'd suffered as a child in some backward farm commune in North Korea. It had been his mind that had saved him then—that and the doctor who'd noticed it.

Was it ironic that the two people most closely involved in the forthcoming upgrade had been crippled by disease? Or was it fate?

"I do not understand. Doctor Lee has graciously given me access to all his code, including documentation, except for one series of modules that he had siloed. I cannot determine what those modules do, except that they send and receive data from the main codebase. They cannot be redundant."

Annabel shrugged. "I don't know what to say, Ho. He is particularly territorial about it." She was lying, but then she was a good liar. Three men were intimately involved in the upgrade, and each of them blamed the others for their frustration. Annabel was a puppet master and they her playthings.

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