Page 2 of Sloth
Maybe they were right. Maybe this emptiness inside her was as good as dead.
Somewhere deep in her soul, emotion stirred but retreated when the scientist’s despair flared, casting a wedge of sin in her gut and blocking all else out.
Hidden danger was everywhere—such was the nature of sin. Even these scientists who boasted and preened to Julius about their latest breakthrough, even they had sin, festering away in their hearts and minds. Their despair revealed more truth than words. None were confident their project would succeed. Rid the world of sin, so those free of it could flourish.
The thing was… it was getting harder and harder to ascertain who was without sin.
Perhaps that’s why the scientist despaired. Perhaps he already feared the future shape of the world.
A world with no one in it.
Let he without sin cast the first stone.
Except...
She looked down at her tickling palm. No one was without sin. Especially not her.
One
It all boileddown to zeros and ones. A no or a yes. That was how computers thought. I was how humansshouldthink. It would make life a hell-of-a-lot easier for Sloan Lazarus, but, no. Humans didn’t think in binary. They thought in the vast gray, messy expanse that laid in between: Life.
And Sloan was about to serve up a bucket load of messy life to one poor, unsuspecting ex-army officer she used to date—Maximilian Johnson.
She snorted. Her sister Liza was right. The guy was a big dick. Giant. But she couldn’t tell him that. He’d probably just wink at her and saythanks. So instead, she pranked him.
Earlier that day, she’d tapped into the closed circuit video feed of Nightingale Securities across the street. It wasn’t hard to hack, considering they shared a network, and the company worked for the Lazarus family. So it was almost like he’d asked for what happened next.
Sloan tapped the “up” button on her keyboard, remotely increasing the temperature on the thermostat in Max’s office. She’d picked this day to exact her revenge because the weatherman had forecasted record summer heat. She’d picked this day because it had been long enough since her previous prank that Max would most likely fail to connect the dots, leaving her open to commit more prank crimes. Any minute, he’d be sweltering.
Nothing to do now, but sit back and wait.
Wait for the suffering to be unleashed.
She grinned and scooted her wheelie chair to the next monitor where a countdown ticked over, tracking her pizza order. Four minutes and it would arrive by drone to her fire-escape. Four minutes. She thrummed her fingers on the desk.
Waiting sucked.
Three minutes and thirty-five seconds.
Waiting.
God.Why is waiting so hard?
Two months ago, she was the queen at waiting. But ever since that jackass turned up, she’d been reinvigorated with the sole purpose of making his life a living hell. Now she had more energy than she could contain. It was almost like she’d been intravenously hooked up to an energy drink.
Sloan wheeled to her third monitor where she created a program that converted binary code into abstract visual patterns, making a code that took months to crack, decipherable in hours. This kind of project was precisely why she couldn’t afford to waste time on efforts that would give her no gain or pleasure.
She had learned that lesson in fifth grade when her eldest brother, Parker Lazarus, also known as King-Know-It-All, or King Pee, had been caught manipulating another child in his class to sit the history exam for him. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know the answers, in fact, he was too smart. While his chosen student sat the exam, Parker had been creating his own experiment in the science lab. He’d recognized his time was precious and more efficiently spent in the lab, so paid someone to do the other.
Now Sloan was the queen of misdirected effort. She wasn’t too lazy. She was too smart. She saved herself for more important things. That’s what she kept telling herself, anyway. There was no one else to tell because she hadn’t left the haven of her apartment in the Lazarus House complex for weeks. No one came in. Only she went out. Sometimes. Occasionally.
Rarely.
It had been two months since Sloan left the security of her room. Two months she’d spent holed up, updating algorithms in her personal computer queendom, tracing money trails left by a recently discovered affiliate of the Syndicate, hoping to crack their investigation. Two months since she’d discovered her ex had somehow weaseled his way into her personal life.
Whatever.
A beep sounded at her fire escape.
