Freeman assembled the last piece of code for his planned attack. He had been working on it for hours and didn’t feel comfortable working in new environments.

By now all of my bots should be in place. They will help me spread the nasty zero-day exploit code, Freeman thought.

He connected his computer to the gigantic flat-screen television that took up most of one wall of his hotel room. After considerable fiddling with the televisions controls so his computer would connect to it, he brought up a dashboard and sent the results to the big screen.

“I hate traveling,” Freeman said to his empty hotel room.

At least this hotel is pleasant. It’s old. But it has one hell of a Wi-Fi connection.

A rapping at his hotel room door interrupted his train of thought. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard and a video feed of his hotel door appeared. An older woman dressed in black, and a young red-haired girl appeared. He opened the door.

“Hello, Freeman,” the girl said, “may we enter?”

Freeman locked eyes with her. His heartbeat rose and other parts of his anatomy went rigid at the sight of her. She appeared disinterested.

“Yes . . . come in,” Freeman said.

“Are you ready to deliver?” Dahlia asked.

“Ah . . . yeah, I can monitor the malware’s progress from here. I’ll also monitor various dark web news feeds for chatter about the worm,” Freeman said.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Worm?” the girl asked.

“A worm is a piece of software that scans infected machines’ connections for other connected machines. If it finds a compatible match, it will infect it. Once it is installed, the process replicates. When enough machines are infected, I can send the instructions to detonate. Once that happens, all infected machines will destroy all data on the machine, rendering it useless.”

“How long will it take to delete everything?”

“It will wipe the machines in seconds. If it disrupts enough computers, the affected businesses cannot function. I have excluded certain medical devices that run the High Tower OS. We don’t want to kill people in hospitals,” Freeman said.

“Exclude nothing, we need to affect as many businesses as possible. We need to keep the worker bees busy while we collect our prize,” Dahlia said.

Do I want to be responsible for the deaths of innocents? He shifted uncomfortably at this thought.

“Is that a problem?” Dahlia asked.

“No . . . not a problem,” Freeman said.

The red-haired girl gave him a faint but noticeable smile. Freeman’s heart soared at the girl’s reaction. An excitement overcame him as a tingling sensation embraced the more sensitive areas of his body.

Maybe I can get close to her later? I would love to touch her—

“Freeman, are you with us?” Dahlia said.

“What?”

“You seemed to fade out for a moment. I need you sharp.”

“Sorry, it’s jet lag, I’m more than ready. I was born for this,” Freeman said.

“Just be sure not to become overconfident. You don’t want to end up like Gregor.”

Freeman nodded, then held out a red flash drive.

Dahlia took the drive. “What’s this?”

“Here is the other code you asked for. All you need to do is plug it into any free computer connected to the target’s network.”

“So, this will hack any network we plug this into?”

“It’s designed for one target. Once the drive is on the network, then the distraction will begin. Then I’ll download everything off of our target’s network.”

“Good. Make your final preparations. We will come back when it’s time,” Dahlia said.

“Will I see you at the celebration later?” the red-haired girl said to Freeman.

You better not screw this up if you want to get close to that girl again, Freeman thought, responding with a smile.