Code Zero Read Online Free PDF

and get a job kicking Siberian tigers in the nutsack—I’d be safer and have a better chance for retirement.
    “When are you going back?” asked Violin, trying to make it sound casual.
    “Tonight.”
    “She’s expecting you so soon?”
    I looked at her. The question was clumsy, and she colored as she realized how it sounded.
    “Violin…,” I began, but she shook her head.
    “I’m sorry, Joseph. That was wrong.”
    We had some coffee. A young father walked by, holding the hands of two little kids, a boy and girl in raincoats. He smiled at us and we at him. I listened to the sound of little feet in galoshes, pleased that each footfall made a true “galosh” sound.
    Violin tried it again. “This is serious, then? With you and that woman?”
    “Her name is Junie.”
    “I know her name.”
    “You never use it.”
    She sighed. “This is serious with Junie ?”
    “It’s serious.”
    Violin looked into my eyes, into me . She was very good at reading people. Not as empathic as Junie, but no slouch. She sighed again and looked away.
    “Okay,” I said, “what gives? What’s with the heavy sighs and leading questions? Since when were you a love-struck schoolgirl? This isn’t like you, Violin.”
    After a long time she said, “You know that’s not even my real name.”
    “Yeah, but you won’t tell me your real name.”
    She shook her head.
    We sipped. She petted. Light rain fell.
    “It gets lonely after a while,” she said.
    Jesus. And what do you say to that?
    “I know,” I said, aware that it was both lame and more than a little disingenuous. Okay, sure, I did know about loneliness and loss. And heartbreak. All that. But at the same time I was five degrees past insanely in love. Happier than I’d ever been in my whole life. So … lip service felt like talking shit.
    Violin said nothing, and I kept my dumb mouth shut.
    The rain gradually stopped and the day began to brighten as the clouds thinned. Violin adjusted her hat and sunglasses.
    “Joseph,” she said, “I’m sorry I said anything. It was weak of me. And impolite.”
    “No.”
    “Yes. Please … let’s forget I said it, okay? Let’s go on being us. Allies in the war. Can we do that?”
    “Absolutely.”
    She glanced at me, read me, nodded. And measured out a thin slice of a smile. “I worry about you,” she said. “I suppose I always will.”
    “Believe me when I tell you that I worry about you, too.”
    She shrugged. “I’m used to this life. I know what’s in the shadows.”
    “So do I.”
    “No,” she said, “I don’t know if you do.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    She said, “Have you ever heard of someone called Mother Night?”
    I stiffened.
    “Ah,” she said, smiling, “apparently so.”
    “How do you know Mother Night?”
    “A woman who goes by that name has become a player in some dangerous games.”
    “What games?”
    “Theft of science. Two weeks ago an Arklight team hit a lab in Warsaw sponsored by the Red Knights. It was a group of scientists working on computer viruses. There was some Iranian money involved, but their principal clients were the Upierczy . They have been trying to obtain as much information as possible about gene therapy and transgenics. They want to force their own evolution. They want to become indestructible, invincible. They want to be like the vampires of movies and books and they’re convinced genetics will accomplish this.”
    “It might,” I said sourly.
    She nodded. “Yes, and if it happens we’ll lose the fight against them. But my point was that when we hit their lab it was already in turmoil. Someone had hacked into their systems and stolen everything. Research, testing data, backup files, the works. We used Oracle to hack their system but we couldn’t find anything, not even a hint as to who’d stolen the data. It was so clean and thorough a job that we thought it was the Deacon using MindReader, but he said that it wasn’t the DMS.”
    I said nothing.