The Blueprint (The Upgrade Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

deadly and Jeremy wouldn’t want to be there if that happened.
    He was forty-two, which meant that he belonged to the generation they called these days “The Disconnects.” He got a glimpse of normal life as he was growing up, then the world became progressively divided and by the time he was eighteen there weren’t that many options for a son of a hotel concierge and stay-at-home mom.
    He enlisted in the NAVY with hopes of staying just long enough that it would pay for his college but then, unexpectedly for himself, he liked it. The camaraderie, the travel, the adrenaline of combat missions appealed to his adventurous side. He also discovered that he was good at it. In fact, he was better than the vast majority of his peers. He applied to join the Navy SEALS, was accepted, and graduated on top of his class and joined one of the Teams. He loved the work, but as the time went on and Sykes got older he knew he needed a way out.
    Joining the private sector was easy and surprisingly lucrative. People of his skill were hard to find. The job was just as dangerous as his old gig, sometimes even more so, as he had to deal with the corporate rivals who, unlike ragtag terrorists were equipped with the latest weapons and technology, then there was the obvious requirement to keep things on the quiet side. Jeremy couldn’t just hit a high profile businessman or a political advisor with a hand grenade, not that sometimes it didn’t come to that. His job was to make hits look like personal vendettas, random gang drive-bys, or better yet a complete accident if at all possible.
    He took the elevator down to the street level and walked to his car flanked by two bodyguards. Jeremy took the driver seat with one guard in the passenger seat and the other in the back of his car. The day was over, but his job wasn’t. He needed to know every step of today’s operation. Luck sometimes played a part in any military strategy, but Sykes wanted to make sure that was all it was. He reached for his cell phone and dialed the towing compound, where his totaled car was taken.
    “Jimmy,” he said, when the line opened, “you got anything yet?”
    “No sir,” the man on the other end answered. “They just brought it in. Didn’t have a chance to take a look at it yet.”
    “I want you to check
everything
. If there’s anything that doesn’t look kosher I want you to text me right away.”
    Jeremy hung up the phone and started the engine. He sat motionlessly for a few moments before putting his car into gear. Something was amiss and he was too experienced to ignore it.
    “Everything okay, boss?” asked the guard sitting next to him.
    “I’m not sure,” he said, “but keep your eyes open.”
    “We always do,” replied the man without a smile.
    To a certain extent he knew what bothered him. On the one hand, the never-ending conflict between GA and Guardian had been intensifying over the past few years. Some warehouse buildings were blown; a few unimportant people had been killed. On the other hand it felt artificial. Too much of a tit for tat. No crucial information stolen nor gained, at least he wasn’t aware of any and his clearance was high. The police stopped getting involved at all and that bothered Jeremy more than anything else. The cops were no longer the absolute power that ruled the streets with an iron fist, but Sykes struggled to find an explanation for this total lack of involvement. His phone rang.
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s Jimmy,” the man said, “I haven’t really had a chance to dig in but this doesn’t look right.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “The tire that blew out looks funny to me,” Jimmy said. “Like I said I can’t prove anything yet, but if I were you I’d watch out. My guess is that somebody fucked with your wheels.”
    “Thanks, Jimmy,” he said. “Text me when you have more.
    He put his foot to the floor listening to the comforting roar of the turbo engine. The silver Mercedes shot down the street