Free Overclocked by K. S. Augustin

be­fore com­mit­ting to her de­cision. As the icon blinked red, the sil­ver line van­ished from her belt.
    For bet­ter or worse, she had ter­min­ated her tether. She just hoped to hell she had done the right thing.

    As Carl watched Tania, a de­li­ri­ous form of joy filled him. He had missed her so much. Missed the feel of her body next to his, warm and soft from sleep. Missed her acerbic wit and the not un­pleas­ant way her per­son­al­ity rubbed up against his. Missed the sharp in­tel­li­gence that lurked in her tawny eyes.
    Back when he was young and stu­pid—oh, maybe a day ago real-time, he ad­mit­ted wryly—he thought life was a game and the ob­ject was to amass as much prestige and money as he could. There was noth­ing and no wo­man Carl Orin couldn’t coax around to his point of view. He was the first guy in his high-school class to get laid, one of the first hack­ers to crack into his bank’s sys­tems, and the first com­puter spe­cial­ist to enter the Blue. He was Base­ment Five’s poster-boy and he had lived up to that im­age even in cy­ber­space, view­ing the in­form­a­tion land­scape around him as noth­ing more than one more puzzle for him to con­quer.
    It had taken en­forced solitude, and a few vis­its from a friendly yet in­sist­ent gi­ant white rab­bit, to make him see the truth. What he needed was not to be the
richest
man he could be. Or the most
at­tract­ive
. He needed to be the best
man
he could be. Which was why he was still in cy­ber­space, rather than try­ing to find a way back to the lab. The Rhine-Temple bot­net was more than a semi-sen­tient ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­fec­ted pro­cessing cycles. It was his test. His trial of fire. The ul­ti­mate or­deal, and an op­por­tun­ity to prove to him­self that he had really grown up, that he was worthy of call­ing him­self an adult rather than an over-eager, over­sexed teen­ager.
    And, as if he was part of some mythic quest, Tania Flowers had dropped into his home at ex­actly the right point, just be­fore he was about to com­mit sui­cide.
    Carl watched Tania enter the shut­down com­mands in her tether and, no mat­ter his noble in­ten­tions, he couldn’t force him­self to stop her. He might be con­demning her to an ac­cel­er­ated life in the Blue, but he needed her with a yearn­ing that was al­most phys­ical.
    He would make it right for her, pay her back for this sac­ri­fice, he prom­ised him­self that much. He would find the time to trans­fer all his as­sets to her name, launch her back to real­ity, and wish her all the best in a world he would never be part of again.
    Be­cause by the time she made it back, he would be dead. That was the only way.
    A flash caught his at­ten­tion and he saw the tether wink out of ex­ist­ence a split-second after Tania jabbed a but­ton on the small thumb key­board in front of her. She looked up at him but, be­hind the de­fi­ance, he saw a tremor of fear. He didn’t blame her.
    “Now what?” she asked.
    “Now we re­lax, while I fill you in on what I’m plan­ning.”
    He got to his feet and she fol­lowed suit.
    She looked at him in dis­be­lief. “
Now
we can re­lax? We couldn’t have done that be­fore? You couldn’t have taken time out of your busy sched­ule to fill me in on the grand plan be­fore I ter­min­ated the tether?”
    He knew the heat in her voice had more to do with ap­pre­hen­sion than an­ger.
    “Not while the tether was alert­ing every ran­dom seeker bot out there to your pres­ence,” he said. “Now that it’s gone, we can take our time.”
    He launched him­self from the roof of the tall grey block and, with all the grace and pres­ence of a sharp-eyed rap­tor, she fol­lowed. He wasn’t used to the com­pany, to the feel of someone next to him as he soared through cy­ber­space. It felt..
good
.
    There was little hes­it­a­tion in Tania’s move­ments as they ar­rowed in on