VOLITION (Perception Trilogy, book 2) Read Online Free

stood statue still as my mind went to
the worst possible places. Noah mugged, lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or
captured. Someone had recognized him and turned him in.
    How long should I wait? What would I do if he didn’t come back?
    I had no plan B. I had no plan at all.
    Then I saw a man approach. I wiped the condensation off the
window to make sure, and let out a long breath. It was Noah. He was hunched
over against the wind and held a package tightly to his chest.
    I opened the door just as he reached it. Cold air blew inside
and a chill ran down my back.
    “What took you so long?” I asked, hearing the scolding tone in
my voice. “I was worried.”
    “I wasn’t gone that long.” Noah removed his coat, and then
unpacked his prize. “I had to scout down a used computer place and then
convince the guy to take cash.”
    I wrapped my arms around myself and pinched my eyes closed
until I had my crazy emotions under control.
    Noah opened the laptop on the table and booted it up. His brown
eyes brightened with expectation.
    “You look excited,” I said.
    His hands were red from the cold and he rubbed them together.
“It’s been awhile.”
    I honestly felt a little spooked when the window went live.
“You’re sure it’s secure?”
    He nodded. “It’s what kept me from getting back earlier. I
stayed at the shop until I was certain.”
    His fingers flew over the keyboard, then he sat back and waited
for his blog to load.
    “Well, hello there,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
    I hovered over his shoulder and stared at the blog banner: DOWN
WITH GAP POLICIES! A stark reminder of our baseline difference. I was GAP and
he wasn’t. Even if I renounced the policies myself, it would never change who I
was. I couldn’t undo my GAP status.
    My genes had been altered before I was even born. It was why I
looked the way I did—my hair and eye color, my height, my skin tone, even my IQ,
were all chosen by my parents. This included gene manipulation for an extended
life. When Noah was old and bent over at ninety with no hair and a face full of
wrinkles, I’d still look like I was in my forties. This was Noah’s biggest
resistance to us becoming a couple in the first place. That I
remembered.
    Noah glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. I took it to mean he
didn’t want me staring over his shoulder as he worked. I went to the bed and
lay down; listening to Noah’s frenetic typing.
    “What are you saying?” I asked.
    “I’m responding to comments. People are wondering why I
disappeared.”
    “What are you telling them?”
    “Not the truth, obviously. Just that I had to leave town but
now I’m back.”
    I got up to turn on the TV. The humanoid commercial I’d seen
earlier was on again. Noah’s typing stopped.
    “Those things creep me out,” I said.
    Noah rubbed his forehead and sighed. “For good or for bad,
they’re the future.”
    “But don’t they freak you out a little?”
    “Yes.”
    I sat up straighter on the bed and leaned against the wall.
“Pretty soon they’re going to be everywhere, doing everything. Then what?”
    Noah scoffed. “Then it’s the end of the world.”
    “I’m serious.”
    “So am I.”
    The next commercial started and Grandpa’s face burst onto the
screen.
    I pointed. “There he is!”
    I jumped off the bed to turn it up and we listened to his
rhetoric: how he’d suffered personal loss and could relate to the common man,
how he had great plans to rebuild a country suffering from the ravages of
global warming and growing economic unrest.
    I felt like puking. “I don’t trust him!”
    “No kidding.” Noah’s fingers flew over the keyboard again. “I’m
working on a blog post right now. I’m also sending out a newsletter to over five
thousand people on my list, exposing Vanderveen for the criminal and fraud that
he is.”
    “He’s not going to like that,” I said.
    Noah didn’t look up. “No, he’s not.”
    I clasped my chest, surprised at how hard my heart