Page 115 of The Chase
I scrunched up my nose. Lovely.
According to the article, Tobias was also a hero to gamers, after developing snazzy goggles for larger-than-life worlds that prevented the usual nausea associated with 3-D technology.
“I’m having trouble finding you in the system?” She piped up. “Let me try his private office. Maybe his secretary didn’t sync.”
“Thank you.” Though with no appointment, I hoped she’d let me go ahead anyway; I was going to have to play it cool.
Skipping to the end, the article summarized Tobias was considered a high-tech equivalent of Albert Einstein when it came to gadgets.
Not everything he’d invented had come out a winner—two years ago he’d applied a neuron and synapse system to a computer that resulted in a neural awakening. Unfortunately, that experiment crashed the hard drive. The artificial intelligence had taken on a mind of its own and not in a good way.
I’d been flirting with a mad scientist.
Who was quite possibly Icon.
The receptionist set a key card on the counter but kept her fingertips on it. “Sure it’s today?” She frowned at her screen.
I swallowed hard and kicked myself when she caught it. “You’re not showing on his calendar, either,” she said.
I grabbed the key card and bolted for the stairs, sprinting faster than I’d ever run. The clue that Tobias had a meeting with someone called NG kept spurring me on. I was damned if I was letting him get away with stealing my beloved possessions.
I was getting my paintings back. Today.
A guard sprang from out of nowhere and closed in on me. He cut me off from the entry to the stairwell.
I bolted right and in a blur of adrenaline and desperate heaves of panic, my legs carried me into the lift—even as my brain screamed against it.
I shoved the card into the strip on the wall panel...that guard looming closer and threatening to join me in here.
Frantically searching for buttons and not seeing any, one small gold knob to the right of the panel was my only choice.
I slammed my palm against it.
“Executive suite,” came a virtual female voice. “Transparency mode activated.”
“What?” I snapped.
No longer terrified by the guard whose hands reached out—the doors slid shut as he pulled his fingers free.
My scream echoed out on my final breath as I shot upward at a million miles an hour.
Terror gripped me as I watched the floor transforming from a steel base into see-through glass exposing the sheer drop below.
I dropped to my knees and froze. My ears popping.
Zooming upward like a rocket.
Finally, my walled prison came to a stop.
The doors slid open.
Twisting my head slightly, I made out the blurred image of a vast open floor plan. Stark white walls. A patterned couch and chairs were positioned to the left for guests who’d survived this face-off with death, and would need a place to sit and contemplate this miracle.
I crawled out on all fours.
Sucking in a gulp of air and hating this sense that the ground was unstable, I scrambled to my feet.
There he stood—
