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Synopsis
In a fast-paced, cyberpunk world of love, betrayal, political intrigue, sex, and surfing, two women must decide to live by the code, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice.
Charli Riven, a prototypical Gen-Xer who works hard and plays harder, is known as CharliX to the Consortium, an elite community of coders, hackers, and crackers. She thinks out of the box, manipulates code, and makes money hand over fist for the hedge funds her employer manages. When she’s not shattering glass ceilings and showing the code-boys how it’s done, Charli turns her relentless focus to surfing the Atlantic—and to Anna Pendleton, her brilliant colleague, the only woman she’s ever trusted, in or out of bed. What Charli doesn’t know is that Anna is a CIA plant, hot on the trail of a rogue agent, John Romello. And neither of them knows that Charli is the object of Romello’s quest, that he believes she and other Gen-Xers hold the genetic key to his new world order. When the system is breached and the waves begin to collapse around them, will Charli and Anna solve for X in time?
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© 2009 By JD Glass. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-466-9
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: February 2009
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri([email protected])
By the Author
Punk Like Me
Punk and Zen
American Goth
Red Light
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Acknowledgments
Beta Readers: Cheryl Craig; Dr. Cait Cody, MD; Eva; Jeanine Hoffman; Jenny; Paula Tighe, Esquire; Dawn Vincent, Sys Op Manager. Thank you for your tremendous patience and careful feedback during the creation of this book.
Special thanks to Commander DJ Glass, USN, and to Erica Friedman.
To the publisher and editorial staff of Bold Strokes Books, my gratitude always for the opportunities and the lessons learned.
And Ruth? I love your mind.
Dedication
For everyone, always.
Dave the Rave…I love you. Thank you. Can we go surfing now? And no hammerheads this time, ’kay? That kinda sucked.
Shane…nothing would happen without you. Te adoro.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
The following is an excerpt from the first direct communication (apart from the manifesto that arrived four weeks ago). Herein he has made references to specific operations:
A Letter to the Wolves:
Let me begin, as many things should, with a quote by no less a personage than Isaac Asimov: “The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.”
You know what I’m talking about; I know what you’ve done. Because I’m an honorable, ethical man despite your best attempts, I give fair notice: I will use them—quite deservedly—against you. This is inevitable. Survival of the fittest means survival of the best. You are most assuredly not that. Darwinism has come to eat you. Call it EuGenX, if you like.
There is in fact more (addendum to follow), but it is obvious that the situation is no longer quite as contained as originally hoped. Responses now include fighting fire with fire: the assembled outer field operatives will include agents with the strongest “I” designation. This team will be on a need-to-know footing and are being given the strict text of the manifesto, with a breakdown of the rogue agent’s history. His letters, however, are eyes only and will remain so for the duration of the op.
There is currently no need to deploy Gate Team. Standard declassification timeline—fifty years, and then only after appropriate redaction—will be maintained; Delta protocol plausible deniability options (disseminated through usual channels) still in effect.
SECRET/SENSITIVE
# ping –c 1 –w 1 xxx.xxx.x.x
Open Session
* * *
Consortium Chat Month/Day 00:00:03
* * *
Open Session
00:00:03 haze: is it set?
00:00:04
00:00:05
00:00:06 Lex: ha ha – you don’t know?
00:00:07
00:00:08 Drgn0: work hard – party harder!
00:00:09
00:00:10 critter: check your text messages in …5
00:00:11 critter: ……4
00:00:12 critter: ………3
00:00:13 critter: …………2
00:00:14 nyrdmstr: got it!
00:00:15
00:00:16 IMcre8tor: I’m so there!
00:00:20 haze: X is coming?!?!?
00:00:21
00:00:22 Drgn0: stunned…
00:00:23 webmnkee: yo X!!!
00:00:24 hac10: let’s go let’s go let’s go
00:00:27 CharliX: Everyone’s got to start somewhere
00:00:29 Stealth: hey X!
00:00:30 nemesis: yo!
00:00:31 IMcre8tor: surprised you’re stepping away
00:00:32 IMcre8tor: from keyboard!
00:00:33 CharliX: lol! It happens sometimes :-)
00:00:34 CharliX: back to work for me – see ya!
00:00:35
Session terminated
* * *
Consortium Chat Month/Day 00:00:35
* * *
*
Anna knew even before the location was texted to her PDA that she was going, had known it even before, or perhaps at the same time as, the board—or the Consortium, as this elite online group of coders, hackers, crackers, and technical creatives somewhat officiously called themselves—had learned X would be there.
Of course she had to go; she needed to network, to touch base with the members of this highly skilled and scattered community, both the white and the black hats. Things were happening all the time—new groups, new alliances, new technology and applications—and this was the best way to find both those and the people that led and created them. And this particular gathering, composed by invitation only of the best of the best (and every member knew it) had ties to them all.
For any of them, herself included, it was not enough to be cutting edge. She found herself mentally repeating the credo her group worked under: Wanna lead? Gotta bleed. That, she reflected, applied to so much more than just the technology.
All the research, all of the painstakingly slowly collected scarce evidence told her change was coming, events were almost right on top of them. This particular gathering would be a good opportunity to maybe, just maybe, find some of the people—or at
least connections to the ones—who were leading the charge. And there was definitely someone at its head.
Anna knew who, not only because of the directives she’d been given but also deep in her gut, that nebulous place where information was gathered, sorted, analyzed, and concatenated into new configurations, new probabilities and solutions at such speed the calculations themselves could only be discerned after the fact, via reverse engineering.
It was these analytic and accurate flights that had initially made her valuable in the field. But it was after a second op, where the same explainable-after-the-fact solution had been employed, that she had been temporarily pulled from the field. The official explanation she’d been given was that her skills would be put to even better use in another, more challenging setting. So, after two months of tests and training, her file was given an “I” designation and she herself given a dual mission.
One was intended to serve the other, and did, with even better results than initially expected, since she was now in the right place to find the proof, the definitive link between the mastermind and the minions, and from there hopefully learn whatever she could of their ultimate plan. This social cyber celebration was one of the places to seek the information she needed, and— She mentally shook her head. Even with all of that, Anna also knew there was one more very personal and very compelling reason to attend, and as she nodded hello to everyone she passed, she couldn’t help but remember not only the reason she actually wanted to be there, but also the reason she would behave the way she would when she saw her.
It had been a great surfing weekend, one of the last ones before the season ended, and before it had even really started, they’d slept together.
It really shouldn’t have been a surprise; after all, they were both single and attractive, they worked together and got along well. In fact, there had been on that day the sense of a certain inevitability about the whole thing. And so there had been the first time, after an amazing wave set and a great barbecue back at the house the company—in its new-breed high tech and higher energy enthusiasm—had rented for the second summer in a row for any and all of its employees’ free-time use.
The second time between them, with its subtle shift in power, the evolution from mutual seduction to…well, it had been different, anyway, sweet and savage and had held a “we definitely should do this again” feel.
But it was the third time, the third time that something had…what had been a little casual with a deeper sort of friendly thrown in had suddenly become more. She couldn’t name it precisely, but she remembered exactly what had happened.
Anna woke up suddenly, fully, not really sure why and glanced over her shoulder as she sat up to find the bed next to her empty. The fact that the sheets under her hand were cool but not cold meant it had not been too long, and the clock on the nightstand revealed it to be an hour before sunrise, just in time for dawn patrol, as the die-hard surfers called it. Not a bad time to hit the beach, considering the forecast, she mused, but still too dark to be something safely done alone. It would be their last day there, and probably the last ride for a few months. More than likely, she decided, her companion had gone foraging—the term she preferred for excursions from the office for food or caffeine.
Well, she mused with a grin, between the surfing and the after-hours activities, a snack wasn’t a bad idea, and she pulled on a T-shirt and the board shorts she’d discarded earlier, before she headed out the door and down the hallway, work, research, and her investigations far from her mind.
The several other coworkers who’d joined the excursion had either only come out for a day or were sleeping soundly in one of the other shared rooms, filling the house with deep-sleep quiet. She could hear the roar of the ocean only a few dozen yards away—the surf was pounding—and a quick glance out the window into the predawn gloom showed the faintest hint of exactly how hard those waves were hitting.
Hope it lasts a few more hours, she thought as she flipped on the low light over the stove, then poured herself a glass of water. She heard the back door slide open and the sound of bare feet across tile as she peeked into the fridge.
“Hey.” The voice was low, raw, and when Anna glanced up in the half-shadows of the room, all she could see was the damp silhouette, the tear in the right shoulder of the rash guard, and the dark gleam on the exposed skin, changing the warm friendliness of welcome she originally felt to the beginnings of concern, mixed with alarm. She took a hurried step over and reached for her friend.
“Are you all right? What ha—”
The face that pressed against hers was damp, cold, but the kiss she received was hot, hungry, and ignited an answering burn. “Baby…please.” The words whispered into her ear in the same low and aching tone. The soaked rash guard transmitted the heat and the beat of the heart it protected. “Make me come.”
The fingers were gentle even as they demanded, pulled on her, framed her length, drew her tee along skin as they moved through the hallway, and the pulse under her lips was jagged and wild. Palms fit and pressed over curves, over points they raised and hardened, teased until she caught her breath, desire a cool burn that crashed through her with the sound of the surf outside. She allowed herself to be drawn back to the room they’d both left and once more through the door. Those same fingers tugged at her shorts until they fell unheeded before the bed.
They tumbled on it together, a tangle of arms, legs, skin. “What happen—” She tried again through the building haze of desire, of sheer physical need that had muted the initial alarm she’d felt in the tone she’d heard, in the tear she’d seen, an alarm that rang again at the not-quite-silent “mmph” of pain that escaped the lips she kissed when they peeled the body-hugging shirt off. But she was shushed once more by another kiss, the delicately sensual tongue play, and the warming hands that guided hers.
“Make me come.” It was a breath against her neck under the sensitive spot of her jaw even as those hands touched her again, touched her with knowledge and need.
Anna willingly moved to comply and discovered this was not the body of a woman ready with want, with desire, despite the urgency of her words or the insistent touch of her lips, the sure slide of now-heated fingers exactly where they’d be most effective.
Low gray light seeped under the windowshades, too low and too dark yet to know if the sun would shine, and something stirred in her, a feeling she couldn’t name as she carefully took those hands in hers, then shifted the thawing woman beneath her.
Any other woman who’d asked her, asked her in the way she’d been asked, there would have been no problem, no question, no doubt. She would have already been happily buried within her, moving along the same path and stroking out her request. But not this time, and not this woman—somewhere along the path, there was a complete disconnect from the words, to the heartbeat, to the body, and she was too well trained not to notice.
Yes, the breathing was hard and fast, the way she was held desperate, close, too close to mistake the throb against her chest for anything other than what it was—and she recognized it: fear. In that instant, she knew something more. She had watched her surf, the way she attacked the waves, how she threw her body into them, almost daring them to knock or drag her down. The risks seemed outrageous, but they were carefully calculated; she’d worked with that mind too long not to know how it operated. Wanna lead? Gotta bleed.
She added that information to the early hour, the hammer of the foam she had seen and heard outside the window, to the tear in the rash guard that prevented a deeper one on the skin it had protected. Something had happened, something strong enough to take this woman, to take her and drive her to need, to ask for, a closeness that she craved through a contact she didn’t really want.
This woman, she realized quite clearly, the woman she worked with, surfed with, had just spent two nights with, was testing her, testing her and testing herself.
And so Anna did something she never had done before as she smoothed her hands along silken
strong legs and guided them around her, rocked carefully against her, and pulled her into her arms even as she wondered why.
“Easy, baby,” she murmured into her ear, then gingerly pressed her lips to the very edge of the forming bruise that surrounded the scrapes along her shoulder. “Ease down.” Anna raised her head and carefully stroked away the long, damp strand that fell across her face to land against her chin, brushed against a finely boned cheek that hadn’t fully lost the chill of the Atlantic. “All right? You’re all right.”
What she saw as she gazed through the early gloom into the face below her made her throat hurt, because it resonated through her whole body—the deep, shuddering breath her coworker, her surf buddy, her friend took as she closed her eyes. The momentary tightening, the stiffening of her entire being, before she let it out, and let her body relax. “Okay,” her friend breathed and nodded slightly, opening eyes that held a hint of amber glow even in the low light. They focused on her. “Okay.”
In that moment, Anna forgot who she was, who she was supposed to be, forgot everything she was supposed to know and remember as the naked truth stared up at her. They had touched before, had enjoyed sharing their bodies, but if she wanted to really touch her, and right then and there she knew that’s what she wanted, to touch all of her, this wasn’t the way. A child stared up at her, a trusting, scared child, nakedly vulnerable, waiting to see if the trust she offered would be broken.
She had already lied to her, not intentionally, not cruelly, just part of the job. Perfectly logical, understandable, necessary, even, but she was being offered something that, if she took it, she knew no amount of logical explanation would erase the hurt she was suddenly very certain her nondisclosure would cause. It shouldn’t have mattered, they were friends, they had jobs to do, and even this could be a part of it, but suddenly it did matter—a lot.
American Goth
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Red Light