Generation of Liars Read Online Free PDF Page A

welts.
     “Dangerous,” I husked, “is
letting some phony play doctor on me.” I told myself that I was only flirting
with him to kill time and avoid making a phone call to Motley that I was
dreading. But the truth was that there was something very addictive about this
man. “My name is Alice Fix, by the way.”
    “Well, Alice Fix, what really
sounds dangerous is you being involved with a boyfriend who is crazy enough to
shoot at you.”
    “Who said anything about a
boyfriend?”
    “You just said you received these
injuries during a lover’s quarrel.”
    “I’m not involved with the guy who
shot me. This isn’t some tale of star-crossed lovers. He’s an ex. I hadn’t laid
eyes on him in three years, and trust me, Paris is the last place I expected to
run into him. This wasn’t about love.”
    “What was it about?”
    “A computer disk.”
    “A computer disk? That seems like
an awfully stupid thing to get shot over.”
    “Not if it’s a disk documenting all
of our Social Security numbers from before the November Hit.”
    His fingers were moving fast now,
twining gauze over my wounds, blood pumping through the lilac veins in his
hands. I saw his shoulder shake slightly and I realized that he was laughing to
himself. “Excuse me if I tell you that your story seems a little farfetched.”
    It felt like thorns, the bandages
pressing onto my tender skin. I jerked away. “Watch it, would ya?” I barked.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t
realize how tender it would be. Hold on a second and I will get you some
medicine for the pain. You will need it anyways once the shock wears off and
the soreness kicks in.”
    “Thanks.” I looked down at my
knees, focusing on the exposed patch of shocking white skin between the hem of
my skirt and the elastic of my striped stockings. I was swinging my legs back
and forth over the side of the cot, maudlin and childlike, as I waited for the
pills.
    The doctor grabbed an opaque bottle
and dumped three pills into his hand. He filled a paper cup with tap water and
carried it to me. I grabbed for the pills. He closed up his fist and pulled it
away from me. “You’re saying there’s a computer disk with all the Social
Security numbers just floating around out there, and you have it?”
    “I didn’t say I had it. I said I
got shot over it.” My eyes were beaming covetously at his fist covering the
pills.
    His palm sprang open, surrendering
the little white gems. “No offense, Alice, but the likelihood of that being
true is about the same as the possibility of your story about falling off the
Eiffel Tower.”
    “You’re right. Please forget I even
mentioned it. I really shouldn’t be talking to you about it anyways.” I popped
the pills into my mouth and threw back my neck to wash down the concoction.
    “It’s a very hooking premise, I
will give you that.”
    As soon as the pills landed in my
stomach I saw a haze enter the room. My hands felt heavy and then light and
then not like hands at all but like wings. The doctor was suddenly blurry, and
the surface of his coat was covered in beams from white hot auroras. My eyes
started to close, but I felt a sudden jolt and it made my legs shake like I was
experiencing freezing, even though I was covered in a film of sweat. “It’s not
a premise,” I grumbled. “It’s true. There is a way to get to back everyone’s
Social Security number.”
    “Impossible.” His steel-focused
eyes were guiding his hands to carefully apply the gauze. “Everyone knows that
the worm that erased the government databases spread to every public and
private database. Trust me, I worked in a hospital at the time of the November
Hit and all of our patient records were obliterated, even the data that was
backed up on the supposedly impenetrable servers.”
    I shagged my head to the side,
which carried the whole room with it. “No, no, not everything was obliterated.
The disk I’m hunting was created before the November Hit, and it has