Cyber Sparks Read online

  Cyber Sparks

  By Robert Appleton

  My name is Allegra Mondebay, and this is the story of my last days on Earth…

  Unlike my sparsely populated home, on Earth everything and everyone is plugged in. As a blacklisted model who needs to reboot my career, I can no longer resist the ultimate in virtual-reality networking: the omnipod. At first, altering the sights, sounds and scents around me seems harmless. Then I hear the voice.

  Do not adjust your headset. You are in danger…

  He says I must help him warn the public about the perils of the omnipod. I think he’s just a hacker—until innocent people start dying, and the police want to hold me responsible. Now, I’m on the run in a stolen shuttle, trying to figure out why he needs me. And if I don’t do as he says, he’ll kill the woman I love.

  32,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  August has a special feel for me. Not only is it my birthday month (and I’m firmly in the camp of celebrating a birthday month—one day just isn’t enough) but since I’m in North America, August is also the last hurrah of summer. It’s the time before my daughter goes back to school and lazy weekends at the beach start drawing to a close. In my professional life, August is also the one month of the year I try to take a break from the crazy travel schedule.

  So with all those things combined, you know what that means, right? I become self-indulgent and get in as much reading as possible. That’s why I’m thrilled we’re kicking off the month of August with the first book in the fun and flirty new contemporary romance trilogy, Aisle Bound. Planning for Love by Christi Barth releases the first of August, and I hope you love it as much as I do. It’s got all of the elements I adore in a contemporary romance: humor, passion, likable characters and, best of all, a happy ending. Christi is a wonderful, fresh new voice in contemporary romance. This book was so much fun to edit, and if you love contemporary romance, please check it out!

  Not only do we have Planning for Love releasing in August, we also have quite the lineup of debut, new-to-Carina and returning authors in a variety of genres. This month, I’m excited to introduce debut authors Bronwyn Stuart, Ruth Diaz and Jacqueline M. Battisti, each writing three very different genres, but each bringing us three amazing stories. Bronwyn presents us with a passionate historical romance, Scandal’s Mistress, while Jacqueline blazes onto the writing scene with her first romantic urban fantasy, The Guardian of Bastet. Ruth’s book, The Superheroes Union: Dynama, is exactly what you might imagine it to be from that title: a fast-paced superhero female/female romance.

  Also offering up urban-fantasy fare this month in the GLBT category are authors Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane, with their co-authored male/male urban fantasy The Druid Stone. And if the male/male genre is what you enjoy, make sure you also check out L.B. Gregg’s August re-release of Men of Smithfield: Mark and Tony, a spicy contemporary male/male romance with a lighter edge.

  If you’re a fan of romantic suspense, we have two to help you indulge your cravings. Tina Beckett offers up In His Sights, while fans of Adrienne Giordano’s Private Protectors series will be pleased to see her back with another action-packed installment in Relentless Pursuit. If you’ve never read Adrienne’s books, Relentless Pursuit is an excellent place to get attached to her sexy heroes and strong-willed heroines. Or, if you want to start with something shorter, check out Adrienne’s novella, Negotiating Point in the Editor’s Choice Volume I collection.

  New Carina Press author Kaily Hart kicks off her paranormal romance series Fabric of Fate with Rise of Hope. Will fate alone determine their future or can they carve out their own destiny?

  Rounding out our August releases are three returning Carina Press authors. Joely Sue Burkhart’s The Bloodgate Warrior is an erotic fantasy romance sure to knock your socks off! Robert Appleton returns with another science-fiction offering in Cyber Sparks. And bestselling author Rebecca York brings us the sequel to Dark Magic with the novella Shattered Magic.

  I think you’ll find something in this month’s collection to help you indulge. And, hey, since it’s my birthday month, celebrate with me by indulging in more than one. I won’t tell!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  For Christina

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Deb, whose suggestions never miss. And to Heather Massey and her intrepid passengers on The Galaxy Express, for championing science fiction heroines into the twenty-first century…and beyond.

  bond: n. that which binds: link of connection or union

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  A Rain Cloud Just for Me

  Washington, D.C.

  Earth

  The Twenty-Third Century

  My strange fall from fame and rise to notoriety began on the day I forgot to take my umbrella to work. Funny really, in a world where tech constantly nipped at Mother Nature’s heels, in terms of ingenuity, how something as simple as keeping my head dry would be my undoing.

  Call it vanity. All twenty-eight of us Semprica models were arrayed several feet apart around the central podium on the roof of Semprica Tower, and damn it, I didn’t want to be the only drowned rat on live TV. It was the most important press event of the year for the world’s number one cosmetics company, as its founder, Oliver Semprica himself, was being awarded the prestigious Freedom of the Inner Colonies, for his lifetime of philanthropic endeavors (a.k.a. strategic political palm-greasing). The ’razzi bots were out in force, buzzing about the rooftop like metal mosquitoes you wanted to swat with a squash racquet. The rain sheeted down and the emcee shouted up—he wasn’t happy with the master camera angle covering the ceremony, so the technicians had to adjust it from their hover ship above.

  Lenore Reichert, my first and best friend at Semprica, waved to me from the opposite side of the podium. An over-excited girly wave. Just about everything to do with Lenore was high school and sunny and addictive, including her unbelievable physique packed into a too-tight yellow ensemble that left precious little to the imagination. Precious because I’d dreamed about it for years, and about her, and about how I might finally pluck up the courage to tell her how I felt. Um, that would be the bittersweet—mostly sweet—churning sensation in my calorie-deprived stomach.

  I grinned in reply, then hugged myself, demonstrating how wet I was getting. She rolled her eyes and shook her head slowly. The production assistant I’d asked to fetch me a spare umbrella was a no-show, and the show was ready to begin. Hopefully the back-slapping wouldn’t last too long.

  Umpteen corporate bigwigs from the inner colonies were among the VIP guests seated under a small awning in front of the podium. Earth’s Interstellar Planetary Administration representatives were also in attendance, as well as select showbiz types and some very pale-looking hombres from the outer colonies. A clawed hand lightly squeezing my shoulder identified the other VIP on the roof, the one I’d plumb forgotten about…
>
  Tandy Semprica. The one I’d rather forget.

  “Allegra, my moon bird, how are you? It’s been forever. Much too long, sweet thing. Much, much too long.” Her claws caressing my shoulder blades and the line of my back I could handle, but not her sickly treacle twang oozing into my earhole. Imagine a billion-dollar Barbie with zero class, the shallowest cronies ever hatched, and the keys to the cosmos—now imagine her ravenously trying to get into your pants and share you with said cronies, in private, zero-g orgies in Earth orbit, where money and taste were no object.

  “Not now, Tandy. We’re live.”

  “Ah yes, so we are. In that case, we can huddle together under my umbrella. Daddy would hate for you to get soaked on his big day. And this is such a big day for Semprica, isn’t it?” She yawned. “And we’re such…close friends, you and I.”

  That would be a no—to the close friends part, at least. Even the thought of her filled my throat with bile, and I’d managed to rebuff her advances for over a year. But this was different. I had nowhere to go—I was contractually obligated to stay in this spot—and she had the solution to keeping me dry. Being under the dragon’s wing for half an hour or so wouldn’t be too bad. We were, after all, on live TV. She’d have to be on her best behavior.

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks for that.”

  “My pleasure, hotness. Ah, here we go.”

  The emcee began his long-winded introduction, waxing on the various commercial and so-called charitable exploits of Old Man Semprica, whom everyone clearly revered. He’d been a kind of benign uncle figure to us models over the years, and he’d personally given me my big break in the industry, hiring me as the Face of Semprica three years in a row. Decent enough guy, ruthless at business, fond of imparting folksy morals, liked to grandstand at holiday banquets. Not someone you’d want to make an enemy of, and he wouldn’t give away a single clip without it benefiting him in some other way.

  Partway through a speech by the mayor of D.C., Tandy slid her hand inside the back of my cocktail dress. I elbowed her arm. She desisted. When I noticed Lenore frowning at us from across the roof, equal parts shame and anger burned my cheeks. Sunlight flickered down through the spinning spokes of the giant horizontal commuter wheel above, signaling an end to the rain. But not an end to Tandy’s seduction.

  Quick as you like, she leaned in close and slid her hand inside my dress again, this time reaching around the side—all the way around—copping a feel. “I knew you’d be all natural, moon bird. Just like your girlfriend over there?” Lenore’s umbrella visibly shook in her grip as she watched us. “I’ve seen the way you two look at each other.” Tandy moved her talon down below my navel. “Let’s see if you’re moist for me as well…like she is.”

  Disgusted, I lunged forward out of her grasp and spun round. She stuffed a fist between her teeth to stop herself from laughing maniacally. On live camera. In front of billions of viewers.

  Something snapped inside me. One second I was reeling in shock, the next I’d landed a stinging slap on Barbie’s kisser. To me it was louder than a rifle’s report, but I didn’t care if it stopped the ceremony in its tracks. I followed it with another slap, for me, for Lenore, for a world that hated Tandy Semprica but daren’t say it publicly. Not when her daddy was master of the universe.

  I didn’t care. There may have been gasps and spotlights and ’razzi bots aimed at me but I saw only red, heard only the thrilling smacks of righteous and long-overdue retribution.

  While she staggered to maintain balance, one of her high heels snapped. A glance down at that thousand-credit shoe, then up at Daddy fuming on the podium, then into my victorious gaze, forced a bloodcurdling scream from her that made everyone cover their ears. She wrenched the broken shoe off her foot—“You’re dead, you little slut. You’re both dead!”—and swung it at me with all her might.

  I ducked, grabbed hold of the nearest object on the floor and hit her a third time, not bothering to see which weapon I’d used.

  By the time security personnel dragged me off her, I’d sprained my wrist, bloodied her nose, and left her in a wailing heap.

  I was the Face of Semprica.

  The last time I saw Tandy, moments before I was manhandled away, her umbrella lay broken next to her, its spines twisted and glinting in the sun.

  I’d gotten to use one after all.

  * * *

  Against everyone’s advice, I made no apology, public or private, and neither did Tandy. The next morning, I received hundreds of messages from viewers who hated the heiress bitch as much as I did. Unfortunately, I also got my contract termination alongside a court summons. Rudy Moncada, my old-timer agent, managed to quash the latter, and after a few days no one seemed to remember my little outburst. No one except those who really mattered—the modeling companies.

  But I wasn’t about to let that little moneyed Medusa take away everything that, unlike her, I’d worked long and hard to achieve.

  Back on my home world, Ireton Four, if I’d had a bad morning I’d have simply taken the glider up for a soar, ridden the convection winds over the thermal glades and then maybe had a cup of McCormick’s with Mum at her chalet. We’d have talked until my stress subsided or I at least had a plan of action to phase it out. Mum was like that—the eye of any storm—because she’d lived through her share and learned how to see through them to the fair weather on the other side. Mum had been a deep-space scout flier for Kuiper Wells; she knew how to prioritize, how to assess the world from different vantages.

  Me? I’d taken the catwalk to my destiny. Slinked into fame and fortune across the legendary brass bridge in the Selene lunar pageant seven years ago. I’d made the final five, too, not to mention landed this real clip-spinner of a contract at Semprica. Women all across the colonies would gladly donate vital organs to have half of what I’d had. Everywhere I went, everyone kinda recognized my face. And about zero-point-one percent knew my name.

  It hit me on DuPont Circle during my sky cab ride home, when my latest holographic Semprica ad flickered to nothingness over the skyway bollard and was replaced by one for animatronic mythical creatures as household pets. A baby dragon, of all things. All of a sudden, that particular ladder to fame and fortune was rungless and standing only by the strength of my denial. How could my dream, my place at the top of my profession, be off-limits to me? So I made a solemn pledge, there and then, to reinvent myself, to become more than just a face, more than billboard déjà vu to passing sky cabs.

  I vowed to make my name the most famous in the galaxy.

  It’s Allegra Mondebay, by the way, in case you’re wondering. And this is the unusual story of my reinvention.

  Chapter Two

  Corn in the Cyber Storm

  Stress—some say it’s viral, that you can contract it physically from the world around you—an environmental sickness transmitted straight to the brain.

  I don’t know about that, but I can tell you one thing: Earth is the stress Mecca of the galaxy.

  “Good afternoon, Allegra. Shall I make you a mug of your favorite drink?” My room always greeted me this way—creepy, I know, a room as a licensed persona—when I returned home from my latest round of auditions and interviews. Exhausted, I dropped my bags at the door and slumped onto the settee.

  “Mm, sounds good,” I mumbled into the settee cushion.

  “I’m sorry, was that a yes? Allegra?” Nag-freaking-nag. “Shall I make you a mug of your—”

  “Oh, for chrissakes.” I leaped up and hurled the cushion at the nearest wall—the voice had its choice of about three dozen speakers dotted about the apartment—I was bound to hit one. “Yes, I’ll have a freaking McCormick’s. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, Allegra.”

  The hurtful arrhythmia in my chest seemed to be heading for a crescendo, so I lay
flat, massaged it and imagined myself gliding over the dusky hues of Ireton Four. But no matter how hard I tried, Earth seemed to be conspiring against me. I’d hit every pedestrian queue on the way home, then every red light in my sky cab, after being told that my bank account was under investigation for fraud. Not my fraud—some digital hackers had randomly picked me for a political stunt. They’d paid millions from my account into a top official’s, to get his personal finances red-flagged and his shady dealings exposed.

  Did it work? Who cares? I’d been the one robbed, not the asshole politician. At least I was off the hook in the ensuing investigation—the bank had pinpointed the third-party breach, exonerating me.

  Those trillions of data waves jostling through the air outside might be invisible, but they scared the hell out of me. Everything and everyone was plugged in, and how did they know who was monitoring what? Or manipulating it? The giant, reflective edifices and the billion fish-egg cameras littering the city reminded me that every time I stepped foot outside, I was logged and locked into a brain with a sacrosanct memory. Whatever I did could be watched and remembered.

  How does one glide in a place like that?

  “Set to nighttime.” Magno-locking my door and closing the steel blinds in the middle of the day was a peculiar habit I’d adopted for ensuring a peaceful nap. To recharge before the next round.

  “Shall I reroute incoming calls to the answering service?” The room’s dry, mellifluous tone never altered.

  I was expecting a call from my agent. “No, I’ll take all incoming.” A very important call—worth cutting short my much-needed nap for. In the three months since Semprica had canned me, I’d had precious few promising call-backs from potential employers, but it hadn’t perturbed me. Rudy reckoned he could snag a few more interested clients if I was willing to lower my asking price.