I had to find a way to be okay with that.
But I wasn’t.
Not even a little bit.
I screamed into my hands, the sound muffled and distressed.
I took a deep breath, scrubbed the tears from my cheeks, and squared my shoulders.
Falling apart wasn’t an option.
Not when I had other things to deal with first.
Then I’d deal with Mason.
I’ll make him see….
See what?
Was I ready to tell him everything?
The thought chilled my blood. And warmed my heart.
I trudged back to the kitchen. I noticed that Toxicwrath had left the IRC chat.
I opened my email and saw eighteen messages from the last twenty minutes, each one more agitated than the next. I was withholding his property. He wanted the program. That was the deal. I was breaking our contract.
Then they became threatening.
The final email left me frozen.
From:[email protected]
Subject: Pants on fire
Date: April 12, 2016 21:25
The world will know. You’ve made a dangerous enemy.
Liars and deceivers will be punished.
I quickly copied the Virtuant file to an encrypted drive before destroying all traces of it on my computer.
I should have listened to my instincts about Toxicwrath. I had known something wasn’t right about the exploit, but I had allowed myself to be swept up in the righteousness of it all.
Now I’d pay.
I had to go into damage-control mode, and fast.
And that started with finding out who exactly Toxicwrath was. To protect myself I’d have to find him. I’d expose him before he could expose me.
I sat down at my computer and fired up a VPN tunnel. It was time to go deep and dirty.
I banished all thoughts of Mason from my mind. I couldn’t afford to lose focus. Not now.
Toxicwrath would soon learn he couldn’t mess with Freedom Overdrive and survive.
