Page 89 of Static/Cling

“Yes,” Leif agreed. “The question isn’t who was right, but what do you do now?”

They glared.

“You should take me to the computer guy,” he suggested.

“Why would we do that?” one of them asked.

Leif waved around the room. “Computers? He’ll know what to do about this.”

They glanced at each other.

“You don’t want to bring me to George. Not until you can tell him about this.”

“Tell him what?”

“That’s why you want to bring me to the computer guy.”

They both nodded. “Right. Come on.” One of them waved their gun, and Leif moved to comply. It wasn’t ideal. His logic made no sense, but so far, they hadn’t noticed, and he wasn’t dead yet. So maybe he could keep them off balance just long enough to get to Kassian.

Then, well… Then he’d figure out what came next.

CHAPTER 11

REUNITED

The world blinked.

Kassian blinked.

“The hell was that?”

He waited, but nothing else happened. His screen stared back at him, waiting, paused on the cusp of him setting the whole thing irrevocably in motion.

The cursor blinked incessantly and for a split second, he panicked that it would go out and never come back.

“Stop it,” he rumbled at himself, and for once, his inner muscle-head wasn’t griping at him, but soothing. “You know that’s not how this works. You got this. It’s your superpower, right?”

“Right. Thanks.”

Not that it was his superpower. His power, such that it was, was decidedly not super.

Grunting, he rolled his shoulders and absently went back to rhythmically tugging at the chains. The cadence helped him ease back into the steady flow of typing. He never would have thought he would miss the thumping of Roger’s bouncing ball, but here he was.

“Code’s not going to write itself,” his brain reminded him.

“It’s noisy. Something’s going on.”

“You let me worry about that. Type.”

Slowly, he managed to filter out the sounds slithering through the cracks of his prison. He stopped trying to place them as they ebbed and flowed on the other side of the door. If someone was on their way to rescue him, he had to get this done first. If they were coming to put a bullet in his head, at least he could manage the successful completion of this one mission before that happened.

He didn’t strain to hear a voice he might know. He’d rather not hear that. If he didn’t hear them coming for him, it might mean they were already away and safe. He could hope.

He had to hope.

He had to get to that last line of code, to the last set of “if/then” and hit Enter.

Which he did.

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