the hospital. The man goes through two or three prostitutes a week.”
A short intake of air got his attention. “Are you guys in league with The Negative Man?”
“No, but with him being back, it’s only a matter of time he will seek us out and help.” He laughed to himself. “We know the long history between The Dark Lion and The Negative Man. Spades believes if we can get him so hyped on his old enemy, it’ll be easier for us to do as we please.”
So Diamonds proclamation that The Negative Man would rise again was all a ruse. Then just by coincidence… “Why are you telling me this?”
“We need a fourth member. Even though you’re not a super by any stretch, you got a lot of talent. Spades would like to meet you and offer you the Diamonds mask, but only after a test.”
Here it was, my time to shine. “What kind of test?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive. “Contained on here is a virus that when uploaded onto the Wonder-Tech network will start skimming off pennies from each account. Over the course of a few weeks, that would amount to thousands of dollars. Not a lot, but we want to start off with something small.”
I laughed at this. “Do you want me to steal a red stapler too?”
“Be serious for a second Jericho. Just because it’s an old trick, doesn’t mean it’s not a good one.”
Letting go another wisecrack about originality, “With your ability to merge with a computer, couldn’t you do it?”
“There was never a firewall I couldn’t break through until I came in contact with yours. You’ll have to rewrite the program on the drive, but I figured the architect could undue his own work.”
I looked down at the flash drive. It was clear, but it had blue wiring that seemed to glow in my hand. “And if I do this, Spades will meet with me? And he won’t try to kill me again?”
“No Jericho, do this and we will reward you in ways you can’t imagine. Your life will become something of your own choosing, not being a slave to a boss who hides his true self.”
“Give me a day or two to figure this out. When you see me come to the Wonder-Tech Tower, you’ll know I’ve figured it out.”
He clapped his hands together. “Perfect! I’ll let Spades know.” He shot off a quick text before getting up. “I knew we could count on you Jericho. Welcome to the team, unofficially of course.”
We shook hands and I watched Jenkins get into his car and leave before I did anything. Once in the clear, I went back to my desktop, the place I did my best hacking work.
The program was a worm, designed to hide in plain sight and basically eat a few pennies here or there as accounts were updated. With the amount of funds coming in to Wonder-Tech daily, no one would be none the wiser.
I broke the program down to its barest form. The code it had been written with almost felt organic. Part of me wondered as I began to re-write it if I was dealing with a part of Jenkins mind. The fact he could merge with computers and pull information so effortlessly wasn’t lost on me.
My computer was so firewalled that even if this was part of Jenkins and he tried anything, he’d never get anywhere. On a hunch, I did run a quick system scan and found a sleeper program that tried to break my initial firewall. It never even got close before my programs destroyed it into oblivion. “Nice try Jenkins.”
After that, the code stayed put, allowing me to work on it free and clear. After about an hour of reworking and adding my own protocols to the program, it was ready for use. I took the drive out and recapped it. With the first hurdle cleared, it was time to confront the second.
I went back to my tablet and opened a secured line to DL’s phone. His face popped up. “Jericho, has Jenkins left?”
“Yeah, he came over and pitched me to join The Aces. If I complete one task, Spades wants me to take over as