“Boss! I didn’t know that you’d arrived.”

Jeremiah looked up and saw Gregor approaching, who met them just inside the massive round door.

“When did you get in?”

“Last night. I have everything set up.”

“How is Operation Aldoor coming along?” Jeremiah asked.

Gregor gave Jet a judgmental stare.

“What is she doing here?” Gregor said.

“She will be . . . helping,” Jeremiah said.

“It’s not my place to question you, but do you think it’s a good idea having her here? What if she contacts Nigel?”

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“Not a chance that will happen. I’m keeping her on a short leash. Now, answer the question,” Jeremiah said.

“Our new hire, the hacker known as ‘FreemanRising,’ did his job. He has our changed malware droppers on every game client for the Colossal Machine. When the time is right, we will send additional instructions to our zombie network.”

“Zombies?” Jeremiah asked.

“Oh—I call the infected clients ‘zombies’ because they don’t know we have infected them. The code is so good it will evade most anti-virus scanners,” Gregor explained.

“Good to hear. Anything else I should know?”

FreemanRising also has been disrupting the Colossal Machine for some time—he has been griefing players for weeks,” Gregor said.

“Why is that a problem?”

“Griefing is when someone attempts to ruin someone else’s gaming experience. Not only is it a problem for all players involved, it can damage a game’s reputation. People are already complaining about it on Pretzelverse Games’ support forums. A new patch is being developed. If it is deployed before we are ready, our efforts will have been wasted.”

“Time to rein him in—or at least stop him. Tell him that if he doesn’t stop, final payment will be withheld,” Jeremiah said.

“Got it! Anything else?”

“Leviathan has had trouble hacking into AlphaFour, the Black Iris AI. See if you can help with that effort,” Jeremiah said.