Dark Application: ONE (The Dark Application Series Book 1) Read Online Free

Jones called the class to attention.
    “Alright
folks, I’m going to come around and check your phones to make sure they are
off, and then I will lay your exam face down on the desk. DO NOT flip the
test over until I say go,” he said.
    Luke
picked at his fingernails nervously. Outside, the sky was cloudy and the
rows of juniper trees in the quad ruffled and jerked in the sharp wind.
When Professor Jones came by, Luke held up his phone, pressing the
buttons and indicating that it was off. Professor Jones grunted and
placed the paper on his desk.
    Luke
tossed his phone down on top of his backpack on the floor.
    “Okay,
you may begin,” said Professor Jones.
    Luke
flipped the paper over and began to read through each problem, knowing that he
was completely unprepared. Each question was as equally incomprehensible
as the last. He turned and gazed again out the window into the quad.
A short lady in high-heeled boots clicked across the sidewalk with a black
umbrella. The grass was matted down and drowned by large muddy puddles
mottling the green with brown and gray. Rainfall obscured the reflections
of the sky in the puddles, making everything seem like one conglomerate mass of
gray and brown. He began to wonder about his mom and his brothers, how
they were all doing. Forgetting the time, figuring the exam was a lost
cause anyway, he zoned out, thinking about home. He had been on a mission
since grade school to get out of poverty. After sharing a room with two
older brothers, growing up on government cheese and rice, never meeting his
real dad… it had been his life’s dream to make something of himself, and to
show his mom and brothers that he could be somebody . And what was
he doing now, sitting here failing a test? Luke, you dumbass he
thought. Just try! You can at least guess…. That’s better than
sitting here like an idiot… …
    He
looked at question one. What would be the volume in liters of 640 g of
oil if the density is 0.8 g/mL?
    Luke
pulled his fingers through his hair and began to panic. It’s just
math, Luke. C’mon. You are good at this stuff. You know this stuff.
    A
strange noise came from under his desk. He peered, frowning over the
corner, and saw his phone lying on his backpack. Slowly, he looked left
and right to see if anyone had noticed the
noise. Everyone else was still bent over their exams, writing away.
Professor Jones was leaning over a textbook, taking notes on a paper.
    Luke
peered closer and stared intently at the phone. Sure enough, it vibrated
again, but not like the long buzzing vibration that phones usually made.
It was three short bursts; buzz-buzz-buzz. And that was it.
    In
horror, Luke realized his phone was about to turn on. Whatever I
downloaded from Kevin’s terminal yesterday and that DARK server must have had a
virus! Can mobile phones even get a virus? He wondered.
He’d forgotten to check it out and erase it off his phone last night.
He shifted nervously in his seat, waiting for a moment to reach down and
flip it under the open flap of his backpack. He reached slowly down,
letting his arm drop beside his chair. As he put his hand out to grab his
bag, he saw the screen of the phone change. A series of numbers flashed
across the black screen in a dim blue color, and then they were gone.
    Luke
straightened up a bit. It had said, “ 0.8 .” At least, he
could have sworn that’s what it had said. He looked at the problem in
front of him. If he first converted the grams to milliliters… using the
density as the conversion factor… then converted that back to liters… he would
end up with an answer of…
    0.8 liters.
    Luke’s
face turned a pale shade of gray as the blood drained out. He moved on to
question two. Again, a series of buzzes, but this time two short buzzes,
and then a flash of numbers across the screen. Very
brief and dim. Apparently no one else saw. He worked through
problem two, feeling a flush of adrenaline as he did the problem backwards and
realized