Enemy Invasion Read Free Page A

and divided up into little cubicles like an office building.
Some of these cubicles contained little more than a workbench and a few tools. Others were crammed with spare components, discs, and shelves groaning with manuals. Each cubicle had a technician,
and to get a space here you had to be a kind of magician at building, repairing or upgrading computers – a master of your craft.
    Hack’s friend, Jonesey, had a cubicle at the far corner of the floor and it was one of the untidy ones. This was Jonesey’s work and sometimes living space (mainly when he’d had
an argument with his mum and she threw him out of her flat). He was a pudgy kid (and getting pudgier by the day, due to a diet that consisted mainly of McDonald’s and chocolate bars) whose
long, greasy black hair wasn’t made any better by the fact he cut it himself with a pair of paper-scissors. Jonesey wasn’t a big one for personal appearance.
    “ Ni hao ,” Hack said as he pushed a stack of magazines off a swivel chair, flopped down and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The air con on the sixth floor just never seemed
to work well enough in the summer.
    “Speak English,” Jonesey replied. He spoke with a thick American accent although, as with Hack, Cantonese was his first language and he’d never set foot outside Hong Kong.
Jonesey was only a year older than Hack, but he’d dropped out of school at the age of fourteen – he was making too much money building and selling his own computer systems to waste time
away from the GC. That Friday afternoon, he had a laptop balanced on his knees and was working at its exposed innards with a tiny screwdriver.
    Hack noticed a brand-new LCD TV hanging from the back wall of the cubicle. It was playing a Blu-ray: some blockbuster that wouldn’t be released in the cinema for another month.
    “What’s wrong with the picture?” Hack asked, squinting at the distorted colours.
    Jonesey grabbed a pair of plastic glasses from the bench and tossed them over. “3D version.”
    Hack looked at the TV through the specs as a spaceship seemed to fly off the screen at him with perfect clarity. “Cool.”
    With a groan, Jonesey threw the laptop on the desk. “I can’t get this piece of junk to work.”
    Hack got up and walked over to the machine. “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Someone spilled a glass of Coke over the keyboard.”
    “That will cause issues.”
    Jonesey smiled persuasively. “Think you could…you know…use the magic on it?”
    Hack frowned and looked back at the cubicle entrance. “I don’t know. This place is too public. I’ve been seeing people following me. I think someone has found out
about…the thing...”
    Jonesey punched him on the arm. “Getting paranoid, man! Have you been playing too much Left 4 Dead again? Survival horror always freaks you out.”
    “I know what I saw, Jonesey.”
    “Come on! No one is watching! Look at this place No one cares!” He put his hands together like he was praying. “It’s for that girl who works at the Asus stall on 3. She
is going to be soooo grateful if I fix it.”
    Hack pointed to a sauce stain on his friend’s T-shirt. “Maybe you’d have more luck if you washed your clothes for once.”
    “Who has the time? Pleeeeease!”
    Hack groaned. “You owe me.”
    Taking a final look back at the walkway, Hack crouched and placed his right hand on the exposed innards of the laptop. Jonesey leaned in, fascinated.
    “This is my favourite bit.”
    “ Shut up! ”
    “Sorry.”
    Focusing all his attention, Hack pressed his hand against the motherboard. Blue electricity leaped around his fingertips and licked the components. Hack closed his eyes…
    ...and became one with the machine. He sensed the data stored in the hard drive, the dormant operating system, damaged chips. Mentally flying through the computer, Hack visualized its
processors healing, repairing and becoming healthy again – like a body mending itself.
    He opened his eyes,