Free Tech Tack by Viola Grace Page A

mother ever teach you that manners matter?”
    He looked like he wanted to strike her, but instead, he walked out ahead of her and led the way through the building to a rear exit. They were followed the entire way by nervous guards and the empath.
    She was bundled into a transport with the hostile administrator, and she tried to guess where they were headed. Shock ran through her when she saw the government buildings looming in their approach.
    “Where are we going?”
    “If you can do what you said you can, you will have no problem dealing with a small sabotage problem. Once that is dealt with, you will be assigned to a variety of positions around the globe.” He sneered.
    She had never been on the receiving end of a sneer before. She stifled the urge to smack his smug face.
    Half a world away from her family, she had no one to run to and couldn’t hide even if it was an option. From the moment that the weasel at work had handed her name in, she had been stuck. There was no company that would take her now. No way for her to earn a living until she was under the thumb of the telepath-run government.
    She was stuck.
     
    Guards with blank faces lined the walkways of the house of law. She was taken to a lower level where computer banks lined the walls. A terminal in gutted disarray was waiting for her.
    “What happened here?”
    “I told you, sabotage.”
    She winced at the mess. “I need a tool kit. This is going to take some time.”
    “The tool kit is on the way; you have the rest of the standard business day. We need that terminal online for the evening shift.”
    He walked away, leaving two very surprised guards watching over her.
    She sat on the floor and went to work organizing the splicing and twisting that someone had done. “I am very glad that I didn’t wear a skirt today.”
    In defiance of her situation, she had dressed in casual, sturdy trousers and a button-down shirt that was warm and had sleeves she could roll up.
    She hummed, and when the kit arrived, she checked through it. “I need a pair of wire cutters, some forceps, a sandwich and a cup of tea. Stat.”
    “Wire cutters? You are supposed to repair the unit, not destroy it.”
    She gave the witty guard a dark look. “Whoever ripped this terminal apart fused a number of wires to places they should not be. I have to cut them loose to do my work.”
    He blinked and called in her order on a small com unit attached to his shoulder.
    She smiled brightly and crept under the terminal again, humming as she fixed what she could and waited for the cutters. They were placed in her hand with the forceps. Now, she could get the terminal running.
    Humming tunelessly, she continued on for a few minutes, getting basic power back into the unit before she scooted out and ate her meal. Around her sandwich, she asked, “How much time do I have?”
    “Three hours, miss.”
    It was twice what she needed. With the tools she had needed to hold her connections in place and cut away the botched wire, she moved right along.
    When she got to the keyboard, it had been doused and needed cleaning. The solvents in her kit took care of it, and it functioned perfectly when she did a test.
    The monitor had been wedged to warp the screen, so she straightened it and finally headed for the data router.
    With a small motion of the tiniest screwdriver, she inserted the chip that she had been carrying behind her ear. It clicked in place and would simply record all data that ran through it. It was her pride and joy, an organic data drive in a few flecks of skin and a bio-plastic housing.
    She hummed along as she prodded the unit back into its rack and locked it down. It wasn’t a place anyone would look for interference. It was the link between processor and monitor. Eventually, she hoped to be able to see what it had seen.
    Sure that she had done her job, she activated the power couplings and the terminal hummed to life. Ainora squirmed out from under the terminal and closed the