Upgrade: An Immersive, Mind-Bending Thriller From The Author of Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Author:Blake Crouch [Crouch, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529045352
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2022-07-06T22:00:00+00:00

“Have you been following this?” Miranda asked.

“No, what’s going on?”

“Apparently some sort of virus.”

I stared at the television screen, but the closed-captioning wasn’t enabled. All I could see was that hovering drone. The screen switched to a view of soldiers in hazmat suits and respirators walking down the middle of what could have been Main Street, Anywhere.

Aside from my general curiosity in a breaking news story, there was something else about the headline that bothered me.

I could feel my subconscious tunneling for the connection, but Miranda was already talking again, asking where I was off to next.

I tried to stay polite and engaged for the rest of the meal, stowing my curiosity into a distant corner of my mind to return to later.

When Miranda left to use the restroom, I paid for my meal and hers and was sliding off my stool as she walked back toward the bar.

“You’re leaving?” There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.

“Long drive tomorrow,” I said. “Which means an early start.”

And then she embraced me, the tension of untouched need and isolation like vibrations in her bones. If I’d chosen to allow it, I could’ve been leveled by my empathy for her.

“I really enjoyed meeting you, Robbie.”

I wished her safe travels.

Then I walked out into the cold, spitting rain.

Even though I was in a town, my phone had no cellular service.

It was too dark and wet to risk the climb from the beach up the bluff to my rental house, so I ran south on the road out of town.

Faster and faster.

One of the few unapologetic joys of my transformation was my improved physicality. My body hummed like a perfect machine. I wasn’t just as good as I’d been at twenty. I was exponentially better. My bum ankle that had never fully healed after a nasty sprain in my thirties didn’t bother me anymore. Neither did the arthritis in my left knee. I could have six drinks, sleep a few hours, and wake as fresh as a daisy. And I never got sick. I’d been a runner in my younger years until the aches and pains of my middle-aged body finally relegated me to the ellipticals and rowing machines of air-conditioned gyms. But now, I had no problems. I ran marathon distances just for the hell of it. I raced up mountains. Swam alpine lakes. My energy was bottomless. I felt invincible.

As I glimpsed the lights of my seaside cottage, I realized what it was about that headline that was buzzing around in my brain like a fly. On my flight home from China to America, when I left my mother’s lab for good twenty years ago, I’d read an article in an in-flight magazine featuring Glasgow, Montana, as the most remote city in America. The parameters were specific. What is the place with a population of more than a thousand, which is farthest from a metro with a population of at least seventy-five thousand? The closest metro to Glasgow was four and a half hours away.

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