Digital Idols by Jon Frater

Author:Jon Frater [Frater, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Desperate Measures Press
Published: 2016-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Corwind dragged the heavier of the two thugs into the trophy room. The job nearly exhausted him. The guy had about seventy pounds of dermal armor in his chest and upper thighs, which made him stiff as a tree, even before rigor mortis had a chance to set in. He managed to squeeze both bodies into the small room, locking the door with a coded key. It wouldn’t keep out police or professional burglars, but it might deter building security for a while. As an afterthought, he reopened the door, tossed in the two tazers he’d expended on the intruders and re-locked it.

The reporter didn’t want to be optimistic at the moment. If the situation became as hairy as he thought it could—considering that Jack Madrid had panicked and was now not even answering her phone, then any clue that he might leave would be discovered sooner or later. Better just to pack up and head for the hills.

“Effie,” he called.

“Answering.”

“Got those IDs for me, yet?”

“Estimated time to completion, two minutes,” answered the AI.

Corwind chastised himself most severely for having no solid idea of what exactly had been happening to his charge. He couldn’t discern the magnitude of the whole picture. He simply hadn’t enough clues yet.

Fact: Jack had dropped Norma off at his place because something that she’d discovered about Norma or herself, or about something that had scared the living hell out of her.

Fact: Norma had been spoken to by the director of the RECON division, had been offered an opportunity to both be a corporate resource and to be well paid for her work.

Fact: Less than twenty minutes ago, two lunatics had barged in waving high-caliber automatics and demanding one Norma Samuels. If Effie hadn’t alerted Corwind to their presence outside the front door, they’d have blown him and his whole apartment to hell in a second. Such were the times when a little precaution and forewarning, and a pair of tazers came in handy. The intruders had used authorized key-cards; he shuddered to consider how they’d gotten them. He’d settled for using his imagination as he’d fed the coded account numbers into Effie so that she could trace them. Neither had carried any other form of ID.

There was a story here. A huge one. Unfortunately, the story that he imagined bordered on the unthinkable.

“Search complete.”

“About time, bitch,” Corwind growled. I am not well. Anyone who curses his computer is not well.

“File not found.”

“There’s no record of them in any of the CDA databanks?” he asked.

“Correct.”

All right, they hadn’t been conned or coerced into doing this by CDA. Maybe RECON was responsible instead. “Do a search of all Tri-Star personnel files. It’s possible they were on the payroll of a different department.”

Minutes later, Effie reaffirmed her announcement. The two tresspassers absolutely did not exist as far as Tri-Star Technologies or its subsidiary corporations were concerned. Which meant that either someone had hired them from some place that Tri-Star rarely went, or had erased their PINs and histories from Hera.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.