Ninety-Five by Lisa Towles

Author:Lisa Towles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime thriller, young adults, cybercrime, crime action, new adult, tech thriller, actionthriller, college crime, crime ficiton, college adult
Publisher: Indies United Publishing House, LLC

Jane fumbled with his hands, performing some operation with an object positioned on a shelf that seemed to come out of the concrete wall. Pupils dilating finally, I could identify more detail within the sea of gray. My spine straightened. I caught a glimpse of the object—he was mixing something in a bowl. Jesus, not again, I mused, thinking only of the notebook in my pants, which they would easily detect if I were again incapacitated by one of their bootleg substances.

As much as I needed to hear about Wade, I felt overwhelmed by a desire for lights, for a private men’s room stall, or a shear of sunlight to help me read the notebook stuffed down the back of my pants for the past day. Sunita, my ayahuasca fairy, combined with the SmartNotebook technology that I guessed had been developed by Stavros’ girlfriend Carla, could address a lot of my questions. But at what cost? Riley was my confirmation that Point A still existed, but there was no way to check my phone while I was here with Jane. I needed time alone to stand in the stairwell.

“Why are you here?” Jane asked.

There were only two ways I could answer: with another question in order to evade answering, or with a real answer. Fatigue conspired with gravity and pulled at my limbs, my bones toward the floor. Body and brain at dangerous levels of exhaustion, I couldn’t even remember food, and Jane’s cups of water only increased my hunger.

“I found two sets of coordinates on an embed from a cash receipt, the night you took me to that convenience store, the night of my trip.”

His face was deadpan.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. “You sent me here. You lured me here with your little slips of paper embedded with conspiracy theories and secret codes, knowing who I’d contact for help, knowing the reality of—”

“I didn’t know. Not specifically. We never do,” he said in a quieter voice. “When you fish, there’s a chance you’ll catch something based on what bait you use, your equipment, and your technique in how you use that equipment. There are a lot of variables here, Zak. I doubt you can understand that. A lot of unknowns, constant risk, very little reward.”

“You mean except for the billions of dollars your army of sliders rake in on expired pharmaceuticals?”

“That’s one of our revenue streams, it’s true.”

This scared me. If he was admitting it to me, here out in the open, where anyone nearby could hear us, he’d obviously planned for me to never leave this place.

“There’s a massive market,” he went on, “among the sick population who don’t have, or can’t get insurance, or they have insurance but can’t get the specific medicine they need to live free of pain, and I’m not talking Motrin. I mean Inositol for patients in cancer remission. Medicines to help low-income infants around the globe who are born with AIDS or cerebral palsy or blood disorders, and there’s not only no insurance but no doctors, no hospitals, no clean water or infrastructure for them.

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