Chipped

A science fiction novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat with it's "James Bond" twists! Preview available. This novel is in progress...stay tuned for more!

Chipped

Terrible pain shot through through her arm, fresh blood tracing her veins down her skin, cooling as gravity controlled it. No time like the present for a gunshot wound Lia thought, holding her breath and gritting her teeth to keep silent as she held perfectly still behind the closet door. The male voices in the room were still speaking, two sounded Russian, while a third spoke what sounded like broken Russian with a heavy French accent. The fourth voice she had originally heard in the mix had been silenced with a bullet moments before. Lia squeezed her eyes shut as she pressed her good hand firmly against the open wound on her upper arm.

The scene flashed in front of her eyes again…the view from her balcony position of four men in the casino below, casually discussing something over a game of blackjack. Knowing she had moments till their game ended she casually wandered down the hallway turning down the east corridor to find the first room on her left easily opened with her deft fingers and lock pick set. The interior was grand, plump gold embossed cushions strewn about rich, red, leather couches, an old oak bar set at one side of the room with a large matching oak desk sitting on the opposite side. Lia worked the lock on the top drawer of the desk and slid it open to find what she was looking for, a wooden box with the initials “ER” etched with precision on the top. The sound of a key in the door lock caught her attention. She snatched up the box and placed it in her purse, shutting and locking the drawer swiftly and slid behind the already open closet door. Hidden from any viewpoint in the room, Lia froze in her spot and stilled her breath, willing her heartbeat to slow in her body so she could focus better. Everything seemed to step into slow motion. 

Four men entered the room, the door shut with a secure click. The deepest Russian voice spoke in anger and was responded to in Spanish. Lia could make out the words “final days,” “the traitorous bastard,” and “box.” Then the guns went off. Loud, ringing, two shots fired almost simultaneously. One hit its intended mark and Lia heard the body slump to the ground. The other had flown past its target, straight through the closet door and sliced through her arm cleanly. Intense pain blossomed outwardly through her body from the injury and Lia felt her nerves clench on the idea of freezing her mind to the pain. She did not want to let the computer take over, that would put her in simulation mode and she needed to be coherent right now. 

Tick, tick, tick. The clock in the room sounded deafening to her ears. A few more heated lines were exchanged in Russian, then the deeper voice spoke in accented English, “Gabriel, take care of the body. No one needs to know he was here tonight, we have twelve hours to find Eli Reiv, move!” Only a few more moments Lia thought to herself, she could do it. There was some movement in the room and the sound of a dead weighted body being dragged across the floor towards the back of the room. Two doors opened, feet shuffled through them and then they clicked shut. Silence stretched around the room for a few long moments before Lia dared roll her dice and step out from her hiding place.

She was alone again. At the bar Lia found a fifth of vodka and stuffed it in her purse, then wrapped her arm with a wad of paper towels she found under the sink. Hoping it would stop the bleeding, Lia snuck out of the room and ran down the corridor to the stairwell at the end where she quickly descended to the garage floor. Two people had just driven into the garage, one black SUV rolled up next to her and she dropped her head as if she could hide. A window opened and a male voice said, “Get in, I know ER.”

Lia halted in her tracks and looked up, the garage was too dimly lit to see the man’s face in the car. “ER? How?”

“Just get in and I’ll explain. Or don’t, and the Russians will be pulling guns on you in forty-five seconds when they reach this floor, they already know what you've taken.”

Lia tapped into the computer, letting her brain slow again, she heard the faint sound of elevator doors and the elevator beginning to descend floors. She stepped around to the passenger door and slid in, careful not to jostle her arm. The man slowly accelerated away and was exiting the garage just as Lia heard the elevator doors open and a slew of Russian men file out with guns, searching for her.

“Who are you?” Lia asked the man. In the sunlight outside of the garage now she saw his facial features better. A hard jawline, clean from a fresh shave, narrow nose, short dark brown hair and a body under a black suit that looked like it worked out regularly. He tilted his head towards her, she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her though because his black sunglasses hid his eyes perfectly.

“We’ll get that arm fixed up when we reach my place,” was his only reply.

“You said if I got in you would tell me how you know ER. Tell me. Now.” Lia responded curtly.

“I am ER. Emergency rescue at your service.” The man chuckled and said, “Tell me what ER stands for and I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Eli Reiv.”

“I am Eli Reiv.”

“And I’m the queen of England.” Lia retorted, her quick tongue getting the better of her. Her computer zinged in her head, warning her to quit.

“You are Lia Mozarno, ex double agent for MI6 and the CIA, now internal special agent for the ER Corporation, also known as my personal special agent as of yesterday.”

Lia couldn’t find a response momentarily and stayed silent. So he was Eli Reiv, the illusive secretive man who owned half the world practically and apparently now owned her. She knew she would be a “possession” once she signed on at ERC but that’s what she had expected. Though she had not expected to meet Mr. Reiv ever, let alone on her first day on the job.

The sky opened up suddenly, pouring rain down around them as they drove in silence. Weather was finicky in Niagara Falls in the summer, sunny humidity one moment and sluicing rain that cooled the earth the next. Lia stared out the window as the scenery changed, hopping tourist city, to quiet suburbs and finally farm fields. Thirty minutes outside the city they pulled into a dirt driveway that was lined with gorgeous flowing willow trees all the way back to where the house sat on a little knoll. House was an understatement, Lia thought, as they rolled up to what was more like an English Tudor mansion.

“Come on, lets get inside and get your arm cleaned up.” Mr. Reiv said as he entered the grand foyer, “Go straight on back to the room on the left at the end of the hallway, take your purse with you, and don’t touch the gun in the desk unless you want it to explode.” He walked away, leaving her alone to twirl around while staring upwards. The place was three stories tall with the grand foyer room completely open all the way to the top of the third floor. An ornate black onyx staircase extended upwards, curving around the cylindrical shape of the foyer all the way to the top floor.

Mr. Reiv came back into the foyer and Lia heard his footsteps pause and a soft snort come from his direction. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to stare?”

Lia shot a glare at him, masking the guilt at being caught, and effectively shutting the computer’s warning down at the same time. She followed him into the room he had indicated and noticed he had yet to remove his sunglasses.

“Sit on the edge of the table so I can stitch you up.”

Lia sat as instructed and gingerly began to unwrap the paper towel bandage from her arm. Fresh blood started as soon as the air hit the wound. Mr. Reiv set a medical case down next to her on the table and removed his sunglasses as he began to thread a needle. He looked up at her and Lia gasped, his eyes were two different colors. One was a purple tinged with red edges while the other was ice blue with green flecks visible in its depths.

“Your eyes! What….” Lia’s computer shut her question down cutting her off.

“Yes my eyes are different. They weren’t always like this, once upon a time they were just boring and brown.”

She found herself drawn to the myriad of color she saw in them. He looked down at her shoulder, breaking their eye connection and began stitching. Lia’s computer took over once more and she let it numb her arm. She fake winced and made some painful noises so he wouldn’t think she was inhuman.

As he finished the last stitch he said, “Lia you are terrible at faking painful noises so don’t let your computer numb you again unless you’re in a situation that doesn’t call for faking pain.”

What? He knew she had a computer? She must have been staring at him because he looked up at her and raised his eyebrow at her. She lowered her gaze momentarily. He stood up so he was close to her injured arm again. He reached back and lifted her hair from the back of her neck and let his fingers rest at the base of her skull. She felt a humming in her body as his fingers touched her entrance site where the computer had been implanted when she was a child.

“I know you have a million questions right now, I will answer them, I promise. Hand me the box and I will try to explain.”

Lia reached in her purse and extracted the box, handing it to him. His fingers brushed hers as he took it and he smiled a quirky half smile that seemed to warm her insides. Her computer didn’t like that reaction and zinged her neck once in warning.

“I am about ten years older than you Lia, though it may not look it.”

She could have sworn he was close to twenty-five as she was.

“I met you when you were seven, you had come to the orphanage two years earlier when your parents were killed in the crash. I had just turned seventeen and I was preparing for my second college degree at MIT, but I needed service hours so I volunteered at the orphanage. You were in my group the first day when we went on the field trip to the zoo…”

As Mr. Reiv spoke, Lia’s memory began to take hold, slowly filling in the image she had forgotten about so long ago…

The mistress of the orphanage had said they were going to the zoo with their “keeper” that day. Lia had tried to stay hidden at the back of the small group the whole time, her nerves kept her worried and anxious about something all day. The keeper was a new one, Lia hated that. Change upset her small fragile world and when the keeper kept trying to get her to talk all day she clammed up and withdrew even more, taking her mind to a place where eyes were two different colors, buildings were built on diagonals and her dreams were real. The keeper finally said something that sparked her voice, “Can I make you better?” 

Lia had looked up at the gangly teenage boy with the dull brown eyes and the scruffy unkept hair with her own green eyes and pushed a golden curl out off of her forehead. 

“Yes.” She had replied quietly in her musical voice. 

Now Lia looked at the man sitting at the desk again and recognition hit hard. He was her keeper.

“I knew you had to be the first one…”

Lia cut him off, “Wait, what? Sorry I zoned out, the first one of what?”

“The first computer host.”

“Wait, you were the driving force behind implanting one in me?” Lia’s voice raised an octave, her computer zinged in warning.

“I designed them Lia. I tested the first one on myself because I had no reason to endanger others if it wouldn’t work. I coded the eyes so you would always remember me though when it was time for me to be your keeper again years later.”

Pointing at the box that she had recently liberated, that now sat on his desk he said, “And that needed to be recovered because it is the only physical piece of technology existing in the world that links me to you, that can break any implanted computer host, and that could start a technology war that could wipe out the world as we know it.”

Ringing had started in Lia’s ears as her blood began boiling and her skin heated as he spoke. Her computer zinged her hard, trying to reign her in again to proper social standards, she winced at the zing and then exploded, “WHY DID YOU THINK THAT IMPLANTING A COMPUTER IN A TWELVE YEAR OLD CHILD WAS A GOOD IDEA?”

Her voice lowered an octave again, dangerously cold, “That night I came back from the hospital after I apparently fell down the stairs the only thing I knew was this damn computer telling me what to do and what not to do! I couldn’t do a thing right it seemed! I still can’t! And I still don’t have all the memories I used to have.”

Mr. Reiv stood and rounded the desk to her, “Well clearly you figured out how to override the system if you can yell like that.”

“It only took years of being hurt to figure out how to override it. You know it’s not like you put an instructors manual with the implant package.” Lia’s voice dripped in loathing.

“Lia, I asked you if you wanted me to make you better and you said yes.” Mr. Reiv’s face was slightly pained as he said that, as if he too was remembering the broken scared little girl from the past. Lia knew she no longer resembled that girl, now she stood tall, had a body made of perfectly toned muscle, a mind sharp as a grandmaster, and all the hate in the world for the man who had made her this way. The only things that remained of the little girl from the past were Lia’s still bright emerald eyes, and her silky golden curls.

Icily she replied, “With all due respect Mr. Reiv, I didn’t think that you would implant a computer in my head when I answered that question at seven years old.” She ground out the last couple words through clenched teeth.

“Eli. I’m not Mr. Reiv to you, I’m Eli, your keeper.”

“Whatever you are to me, all I am to you is your employee.”

“You are more than that Lia, you know that. I spent years allowing your training to be perfected with the CIA and MI6, I made sure that each operation you worked on I had an eye on secretively to keep you safe. Each thing you did was in training and preparation for when you walked into ERC headquarters yesterday afternoon. Can’t you see that?”

He stepped towards her now, closing the gap between them until he was mere inches from where she still sat on the table. He reached his hand out and gently traced a finger across her cheek bone, his roughened touch felt soft to her. Her body hummed again and her computer zinged her in warning. She leaned away from his hand, her eyes warily watching him. Eli tilted his head slightly like a confused puppy and said, “Why do you not trust me?”

Lia gazed into his multi-colored eyes for a few moments and replied, “Because you trained me to be this way.”