Dreams in the Tower Part 1 Read Online Free Page A

while?”
    Instead of answering, Jason pulled his own tablet out and said, “Inbox.” The dark screen lit up with his recent mail. The only unread message bore the headline “URGENT: All Emplo yees.” He tapped it, and a video popped up of a poorly-animated middle-aged man in a blue suit: an HR bot.
    “Active immediately,” the bot droned, “the offices and facilities of Sanon Software, Inc. are closed to all employees and associates. All Sanon employees receiving this are hereby placed on unpaid leave until further notice. Thank you, and have a nice day.”
    Steph was right , thought Jason, the shit is getting deep and I could get soaked . He had the crazy idea of going straight back to his apartment, pulling out his old print copy of Untraceable: Deleting Your Imprint in the Digital Age , and separating his identity from any Anti-Corp relation.
    “That was quick, huh?” Seito said, but Jason hardly noticed him; a new message appeared in his inbox which he tapped instinctively.
    The headline of the new message was “Jason Delaney: Suite 2 Immediately.” There was nothing in the message body. He stopped dead and stared at the tablet screen. Suite 2 was Silte Corporation’s office at Sanon, notorious around the company as the last place people went before being either transferred…or blacklisted.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    3
     
    The hazy August morning was slowly fading, and still the bottom fifty-four floors of Silte headquarters were empty. Mike Torres, in his spacious office on the 58 th floor, was growing uneasy. The headquarters of the largest corporation in the world had suddenly placed over eight thousand employees on indefinite leave; it was as if someone had lopped off all but a tiny (though extremely important) portion of a brain and expected it to maintain control over its body. What’s going on up there? Mike asked himself. Have Silvan and the board gone insane?
    The truth was, Mike had caught occasional whiffs of something foul during his time as COO of Silvan Ventures on Wall Street, but now that he was here, at the bright center of the Silte galaxy, it was more like a rank stench that seeped down from the 78 th floor penthouse suite and pervaded the rest of the building—the rest of the world, even.
    “Mr. Torres.” Elle, his virtual secretary, popped up on his desk screen, “Monika Leutz is approaching.”
    “Good,” Mike said. Bad , he thought. “Send her on in when she gets here.”
    “Shall I send anything up?”
    Mike thought for a moment. “Liquor,” he said. “Whatever’s her favorite.” He could use the liquid courage. He had been thinking about this meeting with a taste of bile in his mouth since Leutz messaged him about it early in the morning, but now he was positively dreading the inevitable confrontation. He had to demand answers, had to know why he had arrived to a nearly empty building this morning. “Crisis Procedure” was all he had gotten out of anyone on his level, but Leutz was Silte Corp’s unofficial second-in-command.
    And it hadn’t taken him long to find that out. Officially, Monika Leutz was Senior Vice President of Operations up on the 61 st floor—Mike’s own boss to whom he had been reporting since getting this position as Senior Operations Manager. But everyone knew she was the only one who ever went through those archaic oaken doors to Silvan’s suite upstairs. She was also the only one to receive and relay orders from Silvan himself, without going through a bot or virtual secretary; and no one, not even the executives above her, dared refuse anything she asked of them.
    A noise behind Mike made him jump and turn swiftly in his chair. The drinks , he realized, calming himself. This office had everything : 3D conferencing panel, top-of-the-line smart desk, kitchen nook, private bathroom, an exquisitely comfortable couch he could lie down on, and this office delivery unit that brought him most anything he could