The Trust (The Downlode Heroes Book 2) Read online

  A smile flickers across Sanjay’s lips. At last. This is the moment she’s been waiting for.

  She clears her mind, ready to activate the new mod. Take it easy, she tells herself. Remember the rules. The AGILE mod is illegal and she can only use it in short bursts. She bought it off another player, a guy with the game tag Rhombus, and he told her the mod could be detected by the game; the longer she uses it, the greater the chance she’ll find herself on the wrong end of an enforced termination. I can’t risk a bad desync, she tells herself. My goddamned brains are scrambled enough already.

  Sanjay smirks and lowers her head, sighting through the scope of her Elite Assault D59 sniper rifle. No one is going to terminate her game. Not today.

  She relaxes into a state of perfect preparedness. A sensation of warmth and comfort floods through her body as her training kicks in and her muscle memory comes into play. She rests her finger gently on the rifle’s trigger and then remains perfectly still. With one eye she focuses on her scope, and with the other, she monitors the data in her UI.

  The patrol is closer now: five red dots in her target indicator ranged out in a ragged line. She hasn’t heard them yet, nor has she seen any sign of them in her rifle’s scope, so whoever they are, they must be good. They’re pro players, she thinks. The real deal. She purses her lips. Concentrates. Sure, she’s expecting the enemy to show a certain level of skill, but her scope is the best that credits can buy, and if she can’t see the patrol, no one can. This is going to be tough, she thinks. And that’s the way I like it. A thrill of excitement flutters through her stomach. This is why she gets up in the morning. This is why she ditches her dumb friends and skimps on her studies. This is what she lives for. There’s no fun in taking pot shots at newbies and amateurs, but this mission is something else. This is a game-changer. And this is her moment.

  Sanjay switches her attention to her UI. A single thought is all that’s needed to fire up her new mod, and she focuses on the command now: Activate AGILE.

  A burst of interference twitches across her UI, and a jumble of chatter erupts in her earpiece. Sanjay sets her mouth in a grim line. A goddamned glitch! So much for the ultimate threat detection Rhombus promised. She waits, her throat tight, her breath trapped in her chest. Every muscle in her body is screaming for action. But the damned mod doesn’t kick in. She’s wasted her time. Wasted her credits. Rhombus has sold her a piece of junk. You asshole, she thinks, and flush of hot anger roils in her guts. Just wait until I get my hands on you, you piece of… But her thoughts are cut short when the chatter abruptly dies away. What’s the hell? Her UI is resetting. A new schematic unfolds rapidly across her field of vision. It’s a map. No. Wait. The image resolves rapidly, growing sharper by the split-second. Holy shit!

  This isn’t a map, it’s an overhead image, from a drone or maybe a satellite. She can see every boulder, every clump of bamboo. But something isn’t right. If this is an aerial photo, it would show nothing but the jungle’s leaf canopy. So the image must be incorrect. She scans the photo, searching the terrain, looking for a landmark to latch onto. As if reading her mind, her UI rapidly magnifies the image, zooming in and shifting its point of view. And Sanjay’s eyes go wide. Even though she’s given the AGILE mod no commands, it’s responding to meet her needs. AGILE is giving her an impossible viewpoint, its camera swooping closer to the ground, speeding forward, accelerating and soaring through the trees, like an eagle hunting its prey. And a whirling rush of vertigo swirls through Sanjay’s mind. Her stomach muscles clench as she fights the urge to lean into the turns, to duck beneath the looming branches. This is crazy, she thinks. It’s too much. But her dizziness fades, and she smiles, sending her senses out on a spree, allowing her mind to reach out and explore the unknown terrain. And that’s when she sees them.

  There are five enemy soldiers in the patrol, moving slowly and with great care. And Sanjay understands the power of AGILE. The image she’s seeing in her UI is no simulation, but a live video feed updated in real time. And with this level of intel, she is invincible.

  She swallows hard and forces herself to take a gentle breath. She can see the patrol so clearly. They’re closing in on her rapidly, using the winding curves of a dry river bed to hide their approach. Sanjay runs her eyes along the river bed and the display scrolls smoothly in response as if it’s understood her intention. And as the terrain unfolds before her eyes, Sanjay clenches her jaw. Goddammit! The patrol’s tactics are rock solid. If they stay on that path, it’s going to give them a perfect angle of attack on her position. It’s almost as if they know exactly where she is. But that can’t be. Can it?

  She turns her attention back to the soldiers and follows them as they move forward. She’s almost hypnotized by their stealth, their easy grace; it’s like watching a pride of lions stalking a gazelle. With an enemy this talented, it’s a miracle she’s survived so long. “Who are you?” she whispers. And in that moment, the soldiers stop. As one, they drop to their knees and shoulder their rifles.

  Sanjay’s heart is in her mouth. Gently, she moves her rifle, and a red, circular reticle appears at the center of her display. She ignores her rifle’s scope and concentrates on the new reticle, intuitively adjusting her aim until the reticle hovers over the nearest soldier. A list of commands pops up on the left of her UI and she focuses on the words, Tag target. A red cross appears over the soldier and a message appears:

  AGILE—TARGET ACQUIRED

  Sanjay stifles a smile and swings her rifle across the group, centering the reticle over each soldier in turn and tagging them one by one. But just as she tags the last soldier, a burst of white noise hisses in her earpiece, and a quiet voice murmurs, echoing like a distant whisper:

  “Beta Zero One, this is Beta Zero Four. Target is acquired—sharing coordinates to team target system now.”

  “Copy that, Beta Zero Four. This is Beta Zero One, confirming the target now. Beta Patrol, all units—tag those coordinates and standby for kill order.”

  Sanjay swallows hard. What the hell? She shouldn’t be hearing this. The patrol’s voice channel must surely be encrypted, but somehow, the AGILE mod has automatically hacked into the enemy’s comms. That’s some pretty impressive shit, right there, she thinks. How is that even possible? But this is no time for idle questions; she has to assume the enemy players have pinpointed her position. Her only chance is to strike first. But she still hasn’t seen the patrol in her scope; she only has AGILE’s tags to guide her attack. And if she shoots and misses, she’s as good as dead.

  A message scrolls across the top of her UI:

  AGILE—FIRING SOLUTION COMPLETE—INITIATE AUTOMATIC STRIKE?

  What have I got to lose? Sanjay thinks. She moves her rifle to center the reticle over the soldier on her far left. But before she can take the shot, there’s a hissing rush of noise in her earpiece and a garbled stream of voices:

  “What the hell are we waiting for?”

  “If we’d moved faster like I said, we’d have found the jerk by now.”

  “I’ve had it with this shit. There must be a better way. I’m getting hungry. Can’t wait to log off and get something to eat.”

  Sanjay frowns, her mind working fast. A second ago, the patrol were all calm professionalism. But now they’re chattering like eleven-year-olds. What’s going on? Is she picking up the comms from another unit in the area? If the patrol has reinforcements standing by, she’ll need to find their location fast, otherwise, she could be flanked and cut off from her escape route. It doesn’t add up, she thinks. If there’s another team, the mod should’ve picked them up by now.

  Another voice in her earpiece derails her frantic thoughts:

  “Beta Patrol, this is Beta Zero One. Target confirmed. Kill order is authorized. Prepare to fire on my command.”

  Sanjay narrows her eyes. She’s out of time and out of options. She’ll use the mod’s targeting system to neutralize this patrol, then she’ll move out fast. If she makes contact with another unit, she’ll h
it the dirt and take care of them the old fashioned way. But just as she forms the necessary command in her mind, her finger freezes on the trigger.

  “I’ve got you,” the voice whispers in her earpiece. “Maybe now they’ll take me seriously for a change.”

  And a chill races across Sanjay’s skin. “Jesus Christ!” she whispers. Because now she understands why she’s been hearing two sets of signals from a single patrol. The AGILE mod isn’t just intercepting their voice comms, it’s listening in on their conscious thoughts. AGILE is hacking into their minds.

  “Say goodbye, asshole,” the voice whispers. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Initiate automatic strike! Sanjay thinks and takes a wild guess at how the damned thing works. She pulls the trigger and holds it, at the same time sweeping her rifle from left to right, covering the tagged targets as fast as she can. As the reticle passes over each red cross, her rifle bucks in her arms as a shot is delivered.

  It happens in a heartbeat: a surreal split-second of sound and fury. And then it’s all over.

  “Holy shit!” Sanjay hisses. And as she takes a breath, the message on her UI changes:

  AGILE—CONFIRMED KILLS—5/5

  THREAT NEUTRALIZED—DEACTIVATE AGILE?

  Yes, deactivate mod, Sanjay thinks. The live feed disappears from her UI and she blinks as her field of vision returns to normal. Slowly, she pushes herself up from the ground and staggers to her feet.

  While she’d been hiding, she’d tuned out the continual noises from the teeming insects and raucous wildlife, but now the jarring sounds of the jungle rise up all around her. She lowers her rifle and raises a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. “I’ve never…” she murmurs. “I don’t even…”

  She stands, staring out across the verdant wilderness of crooked tree trunks and trailing vines, her sharp mind already filled with questions. For one thing, she has to know where Rhombus got his hands on that mod. The guy always struck her as a small time hacker, and when he spun her a line about coding the mod himself, she didn’t press him for the details. But the situation just changed. She needs to find him fast, and then she’ll get the real story out of him one way or another. “Whatever it takes,” she mutters. Because AGILE has to be hers, and hers alone. There’s no way she can let anyone else get their hands on it. She needs to make sure Rhombus isn’t selling the same mod to every kid who comes along. And if that means she has to shut him down, then that’s too bad for him.

  She takes a last look toward the dry river bed, the place where the patrol was hiding only a few moments ago. At this level, their abrupt exit from the game will have sent them into a rough desync; scrambling their senses, flooding their minds with excess electrical energy. At best, it will have shaken them up, but you never knew how a bad desync was going to take you. For some, the muscle spasms caused crippling pains that could last for days; for others, there were splitting headaches and waves of nausea. And for some players, the experience was devastating to their confidence.

  But they all knew the risks when they logged in, and when it came down to it, she had the best gear, the best instincts and the fastest reactions. She beat them fair and square.

  “I never even had them in my scope,” she murmurs, and the thought makes her lip curl in a wry smile. Her scope cost her a small fortune, but AGILE just made it obsolete. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. From now on, things are going to be different. She turns away and heads north, scanning her UI. Now that she’s neutralized the enemy, the exfiltration zone should appear, and according to the mission brief, it should be somewhere on the south bank of the wide river that runs through the jungle from east to west. She’ll need to make her way through some difficult terrain, but then she’ll be home free. I could use AGILE to scout ahead, she thinks. But she won’t risk using it again. It’s not worth it now the mission is all but over. The illegal mod served its purpose; it helped her achieve everything she wanted. But if she uses AGILE again and the system detects it and throws her out the game, the whole mission will be wiped from the records, and her kills will count for nothing. “That can’t happen,” she mutters. “I’ve worked too damned hard to throw it away.” But as she walks on, her legs start to ache, the muscles throbbing with exhaustion. And it’s a long and tedious march to the river. If she could only find an easier route, she could save hours. And she has the means at her disposal.

  She bites her lower lip. “I can’t help it,” she whispers. “It’s just too good.” Activate AGILE, she thinks. But instead of her UI resetting, it displays a single message:

  ERROR - AGILE ALLOWANCE DEPLETED

  “What the hell?”

  Sanjay shakes her head. She must’ve made a mistake. She tries again, but the same error message reappears. Display AGILE status, she thinks. And now the message reads:

  ACCESS DENIED - AGILE LOCKED BY OWNER

  “Rhombus!” she hisses between clenched teeth. “That two-faced little jerk.” He must’ve done this deliberately. He let her use the mod, just so she’d understand its potential, but he limited it somehow. Maybe he fixed it so she could only use it once, or maybe the mod was set up so it locked itself down once the final target was taken out. That made sense, in a way; the less the mod was used, the better. But at least Rhombus could’ve warned her. Unless…

  Sanjay stops walking. “He doesn’t know how it works,” she murmurs. “He doesn’t have a goddamned clue.” The truth is obvious. If Rhombus had understood the real power of AGILE, there’s no way he’d have kept it quiet. Rhombus is a game-head, a two-bit loser. So someone must be using him as a middle-man. Someone must want to sell the mod while keeping their identity secret. But who would do such a thing, and why? AGILE is the most powerful mod Sanjay’s ever seen—it must be worth big money—so why would anyone entrust it to a moron like Rhombus? It just doesn’t make sense.

  Sanjay picks up her pace and marches quickly through the trees, but she doesn’t run, and she keeps a wary eye on the undergrowth, checking every tree trunk as she goes. Most of the snakes in the jungle aren’t venomous, but their bites still hurt like hell, and among the creepers and trailing vines, they’re almost invisible. I’ve got to get out of this place, she thinks. She’s ready to get back to the real world; there’s so much she has to do. First, she’ll need to access the system files and make sure she covers her tracks. The system tracks all online activity and anything as powerful as the AGILE mod will have left an indelible footprint in the security logs. She smiles to herself. She knows her way around most of the security systems, and though she can’t wipe out logs from the past, she’s certain she can hide them well enough. But she’ll have to be careful. She can’t afford to make a single slip up; she has so much within her grasp. And so much to lose, she thinks. She pushes the thought away and carries on with her internal to-do list. As soon as she’s sure the mod can’t be traced back to her, she’ll grab a drink and freshen up. Then she’ll log back on and straighten out the situation with Rhombus. She’ll go in hard and frighten the life out of him. And the only way she’ll let him off the hook is if he tells her where he got AGILE, and agrees to give her full and exclusive use of the mod from now on. She won’t take no for an answer. Then she’ll meet Sue Derrick online and demand to be given access to the Beta Program. After that…everything will be different.

  It’s a whole new game, she thinks. And I intend to play for keeps.

  CHAPTER 4

  AS SOON AS HANK OPENS THE FRONT DOOR of his house, he knows there’s no one home; the place has that pervasive atmosphere of melancholy loneliness. He closes the door behind him and the sound echoes around the empty rooms. Hank stands in the hallway for a moment, staring at the wall clock. It’s only a few minutes after two in the afternoon, so his dad will be out at work for at least another two hours. Since his dad took on the job of groundskeeper for the private school across town, Mervin has a new lease of life, and he puts more effort into his working hours than Hank could ever have predicted; no lawns were more carefully cut,
and no hedges were kept so neat. His dad is hardly ever away from the school during the day, so he must’ve dropped into the diner especially to say hello. Goddammit, Hank thinks. He picked one hell of a day to make an effort.

  But that isn’t fair. None of this is his dad’s fault. “I made a choice,” Hank tells the empty hallway. “I guess I’ll have to live with it.”

  Hank goes straight up to his room and lies on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He’ll break the news about losing his job as soon as his dad comes home. Just get it over with, he tells himself. It’s the only way.

  But when Mervin finally comes home, Hank lies very still on his bed, and he finds himself holding his breath, listening. His dad is whistling a tune and generally making a cheerful racket as he kicks off his shoes and hangs up his coat. And then it sounds like his dad is making himself busy in the kitchen; Hank hears the clattering of pans and the dull thud of the refrigerator door. Oh man, he’s in a good mood, Hank thinks. It’s a damned shame to burst his bubble. A few minutes later, his dad comes to the foot of the stairs and calls up, “Hi, Hank. I just put the dinner on. Got some chicken. Should be ready in half an hour or so.”

  “OK,” Hank says. But he doesn’t get up from his bed. Not yet, he thinks. I’ll tell him at dinner.

  ***

  During dinner, neither of them say much. Mervin has the newspaper open on the table, and he runs his eye over the sports pages as he eats. Hank pushes his food around on his plate and watches his dad carefully, trying to pick the right moment to spring the bad news. But every time his dad looks up, Hank’s mouth is full of food.

  Eventually, Mervin puts down his fork. “This chicken is dry. I guess I must have overcooked it.”

  “It’s fine,” Hank says. “Really.” He takes a forkful of chicken and chews it earnestly, but the pale meat is bland and fibrous, and it turns to a tasteless mush in his mouth. He picks up his glass and takes a sip of water to help him swallow.