Drained: The Lucid (40 page)

Riley abandoned the task of organizing her clothes. The action was supposed to be therapeutic, helping her regain control over something tangible like the unruly order of her closet when the rest of her life seemed to be spiraling. But rather than a welcome distraction, even this task had unhinged her.

She sat down in the center of the walk-in closet with her phone in hand. She typed in the first few letters of Amber’s name, intending to text her to find out what time she planned on being home after visiting family. She had a nagging feeling that after meeting with Sean, she’d need to see a friendly face. When she typed out the letters A, M, and B, the contact information for two people appeared on the screen—Amber and Morgan Ambre Sullivan.

Her thumb hovered over Morgan’s number. All she had to do was press down. Instead, she pulled up their most recent text message conversation. She had yet to reply to Morgan’s admission that being without her wasn’t a good option. Rereading the words caused her throat to involuntarily tighten. She didn’t know how to respond without tipping her hand that she missed the sound of her voice. She even missed Morgan’s damn, dreary childhood home with its faux wood paneling.

Riley flopped onto her back and tossed her phone out of reach to avoid further temptation. The device bounced harmlessly on the carpeting in the closet. Riley rested her hands on her stomach and puffed out a deep sigh. She still had to pick out clothes for meeting up with Sean. When she gave a cursory scan of her closet, her gaze landed on an outfit she hadn’t thought about since her time with an old mark, Ms. Manners. A peculiar smile slid onto her face. If she was going to return to the Red Sea Tavern, she might as well look the part.

• • •

In the end, it was either leather or the green cable-knit sweater with the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer embroidery she’d won at a White Elephant exchange. The leather, ultimately, won out. Riley had returned to the far back corner of the cubare tavern to wait for Sean’s arrival. She shifted in her chair, and the black material of her pants creaked with the movement. In front of her was another gin and tonic, but it remained untouched. Condensation dripped down the sides of the well drink to form a circular puddle on the tabletop.

The bar was far emptier than it had been the night before. The same cocktail waitress had served her, but this time Riley wasn’t so distracted as to ignore her. She fiddled with the functions on her Trusics watch. Her quota had yet to be met. It was the first time in recent memory that she hadn’t achieved the monthly benchmark so late in the month, but she still had a week to reach her mark. Now that she would no longer be visiting Morgan, she could get back on track. A few extra hours in the realm over the next few days would catch her up.

She pulled out her phone in the absence of physical company. The time displayed on Riley’s phone matched the time on her watch. Sean was half an hour late. She sent off a quick text asking about his whereabouts.

She’d put the ringer on silent upon entering the bar. She found a missed message from Heather, reinviting her over for a Christmas movie marathon later. Even though the prospect of watching
White Christmas
was tempting, Riley returned another cordial refusal. She could only hope that Heather wouldn’t take her refusal as a cry for help and end up on her doorstep.

As for Amber, she hadn’t heard from the redhead since she’d left town to be with family. It hadn’t surprised Riley when she didn’t receive an invite. They were just starting to rebuild the trust that had been broken. Extending a holiday invitation to be spent with family was something serious couples did. Riley wrote and sent a text to ask Amber when she expected to be back in town. It was the message she’d intended on sending earlier in the day before thoughts of Morgan had derailed her.

As if to punish herself, she pulled up Morgan’s text conversation for the second time that day. Her fingers worked without her permission:
Merry Christmas.
She sent the message before she could rethink it or write more and sabotage herself.

Riley put her phone on the table and took her first sip of her gin and tonic. By now the ice cubes had mostly melted and the drink was watered down. She made a face at the water-and-pine taste and shoved the glass to the other side of the table. The heavy condensation left a wet trail across the dirty surface. It was probably for the best. She didn’t need to be drinking two nights in a row. It would only lead to three and then four.

Riley tried Sean again, this time calling both numbers she had for him. Instead of a voice recording, a computer recited the phone numbers back to her. She decided against leaving a message, but felt her frustration grow exponentially when she hung up after the second phone-call attempt. Sean had been the one to suggest they meet here at the same place and time.

If Riley had possessed even a shred of holiday spirit, being stood up by Sean had destroyed it. She wasn’t going to waste any more time on the incubus who had deserted her years ago. She tossed some money on the table to cover her barely touched drink and gathered her things to leave. She was almost to the front door when a bartender, a man she hadn’t seen behind the bar before, flagged her down.

“Oy, are you Riley?” he called out.

She clutched her bag tighter to her body. “Who wants to know?”

The bartender tossed a dirty rag on the bar. “Some bloke called this morning and left a message for you,” he drawled. “He said to be on the lookout for an angry-looking brunette around this time.”

Riley’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. It was typical Sean to have called the bar rather than her directly.

The tavern employee moved some empty bottles and glasses around. “I wrote it down. I swear it was here a second ago.”

Riley’s phone vibrated in her bag. She retrieved the phone while the bartender continued to look for Sean’s message. After the day she was having, she had no idea who to expect was messaging her on the evening of Christmas. The text was from the number Trusics used in its company-wide messages:
Our Database is currently unavailable. Access to marks has been temporarily suspended. Do not panic.
 

If it were not for the final three words of the text, Riley might have dismissed the message. Computers were fallible. Technical glitches happened.
Do not panic
.

“Easy for you to say,” Riley muttered.

“What’s that?” the bartender said, still shifting objects on the bar in search of the misplaced note from Sean.

Riley shoved her phone back into her bag. “I can’t stay, I’m sorry. There’s been an emergency, and I have to go.”

“Oh.” The bartender frowned. “I’m sorry about the message thing. But if you give me your number, I can call you when I find it. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

Riley hesitated momentarily before heading out the door. “I’ll be back for it.” She didn’t need to be leaving behind evidence that she’d been to the cubare bar. If it was that important, Sean knew how to get a hold of her. For now, she had something more immediate to worry about.

• • •

The parking structure where Riley typically parked was full. She circled her vehicle up the tower, only to find every spot already taken. It was the fullest she had ever seen the parking lot, let alone after-hours on Christmas night. She was forced to use the special pass on her key fob to gain access to managerial parking on the restricted sub-level instead. Her calves protested the hike to the sixteenth floor, but even without her issues with elevators, the overflow of employees had packed the elevator lobby and even the stairwells. The company-wide alert had caused hysteria among the employees. Riley sought the sixteenth floor and the one person whom she believed would know what was going on with the servers and access to the database.

On the sixteenth floor, phones rang unanswered in empty offices. Clusters of employees jammed the corridors, talking in hushed, but panicked voices.  

Riley spotted her friend standing alone by a water cooler. “Josh,” she called, waving to catch his attention.

When their eyes met, he pointed two fingers at his temple and pantomimed a shooting action. It had to be bad if Josh wasn’t finding an odd sense of entertainment from a work challenge.

“What is going on?” Riley jumped out of the way, narrowly avoiding a collision with an unidentified woman who ran down the hallway, hands overflowing with computer printouts.

“It’s crazy here.” He shook his head as they both observed the chaos on the floor. It looked like a scene out of a doomsday movie, not their typical work environment. “After a few of our news partners called, I had to turn off my cell and office line. Everyone’s blowing me up for answers, and I don’t have time to play customer service.”

“Niall might kill you for doing that.”

“Well, if we don’t get this fixed soon …” He motioned to walk to his office, and she followed in tow. “If we don’t get access to marks again, some of us might be dead.”

“
Literally
dead?” No one in Trusics used the D-word lightly in conversation.

Josh nodded stiffly.

“What are you talking about?” Riley closed the door behind them and sat down in an empty seat. “We have the reserves for that. You’ll have this fixed before that’s gone.”

Josh’s face paled at her words. He hooked a finger into his collar and loosened it. “That’s the thing …”

“What?” Riley eyed her friend, and her brow furrowed with concern. “What are you not telling me?”

“I may have overheard something that I wasn’t supposed to overhear.” He squeaked out his words. “Basically, most of the reserve is missing. It’s like a year’s supply is gone,” he rushed out in one giant breath. “There’s only a week or so of energy left.”

Riley sat stunned, unable to respond. Her gaze dropped to the ground, and her frown lines deepened. Without the reserve many of the employees would become fully human again. Illnesses that some had contracted before employment with Trusics would come back, and their mortal clocks would begin to tick again. For the cubare members, they’d have to find sources to feed from and fast. Although the task wasn’t impossible, the truth was that with the conveniences of the database, some had become rusty in the old method of finding marks. With a few clicks of a button or taps of a finger and the conveniences of their watches, they had a selection of millions at their disposal. The database was their gourmet buffet, and they had no need to practice hunting or preparing their own meals.

“Maybe whomever you overheard was misinformed,” Riley offered hopefully. The optimism didn’t reach her tone, however.

“Yeah.” Josh nodded as he bit his fingernail.

“It could be speculation at the watering hole. Let’s focus on the server for now.” Riley stood from her seat; her legs felt restless. “Don’t we have backups?” she inquired. If personal devices could manage automated backups, then a global company could, too. “Couldn’t we restore it?”

“If it were that easy, we would have done it hours ago. But these are ongoing attacks on all of our servers, which means the public can’t access our membership websites.”

“But we can?” Riley was more technologically savvy than the typical cubare, but even she couldn’t follow his logic in the situation completely. “Wouldn’t that mean we can still access the database?”

“Very good, my young apprentice. The attacks are one issue,” he ran both hands through his hair, “but the hackers also got their grubby hands into our database while we were focused on the diversion. So, issue two is our local backups are partly corrupt, and your watches can’t work properly because of it.” He leaned across his desk and lowered his voice even though the office door was closed. “Honestly, our tech gurus messed up. They dragged their feet on updating our system’s infrastructure, and now this happened. It’s like that time I told you backup your computer and your hard drive crashed the following week.”

“Don’t remind me.” Riley shot a glare at her friend. It had been an awful experience to say the least. “Is there a way to stop the attack?”

It was a simple question with a long answer.

For the next fifteen minutes, Josh rambled off about spoofed IP addresses, proxies, traffic pipes, waves of attacks, and hordes of zombie computers. There was also something about a Trojan, injections, and corruption. The latter sounded much more related to their line of work. Ultimately, what Riley could conclude from his lecture was that the attacks were nearly impossible to trace, and they had to get another branch’s older copy of a full database backup. The files were a million times larger than a home computer, so it took more time and effort to smooth out the kinks during the restoration process. When he started to turn blue in the face from his nonstop talking, Riley had to stop him. Having Josh pass out from lack of oxygen to his brain was the last thing she needed.

“Times like these, I really miss the old pen and paper system.” He lightly slammed his head against his desk. “This isn’t even my job.”

Riley smiled sympathetically. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”

“Shouldn’t you be more worried than me?” Josh lifted his head up. “I’ll get a few grey hairs, but you and the other cubare … you’ll …” He cleared his throat, unable to finish his sentence.

“We’ll figure something out.”

Josh’s office door swung open. “Turn on your damn phone,” Kelly from public relations ordered, her hand never leaving the doorknob. She looked slightly frazzled, but her demeanor was as professional as ever. “One of the local channels has been blowing up my personal cell to talk to you. Not worth my time to play your secretary.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Josh scrambled to plug in the office phone line. “If they call you again, tell them it’s on now.”

She rolled her eyes and slammed the door.

Riley flinched at the loud departure. “Earlier, you mentioned something about our news partners contacting you about this, right?”

“Yeah, a couple of them were asking about what the hell was happening.” He picked up one of his stress balls and tossed it between his hands.

“How early on was this?”

“I don’t know, but I wasn’t even aware of the downtime when the first call came in.” He frowned. “Don’t ask me why they’d be keeping tabs on our websites. But then again, we
are
involved in the TMI of everyone’s lives.”