Page 95 of The Dis-Graced

“This is very confusing. At your age, you should be doing everything you can to attract a mate to secure your line.”

“Just-just stop, right now. We’ll discuss this later.”

“My apologies.”

The bathroom door opens, and Drake comes back into the room, smiling at me ear to ear. “Hello, gorgeous.”

“Maybe next time, you can tell me that we have someone listening in on us?” I say pointedly.

His brow furrows, and he cocks his head to the side, then his eyes light in understanding. “ALAN?”

“Hello, Drake,” ALAN says from his phone.

“Your asshole eFriend had the audacity to critique my bedroom skills.”

“I was merely trying to bring to light—”

“Can it!” I snap.

Drake’s face is buried in his hands, trying to contain his laughter.

“How, Drake? How did all your years of research and coding come to this conclusion?” I gesture to his phone.

“I don’t know. Honestly, ALAN surprises me every single day. Happy surprises, mind you, but surprises all the same.”

A knock sounds on the door.

“I’ll get that,” Drake says.

I lay back in bed, stretching, smiling. It’s odd being happy while arriving at the doorstep of humanity’s possible destruction, but the circumstances around this apocalypse are so crazy, it doesn’t feel real.

The door opens, and a worried-looking Devon is standing on the other side.

“What’s up?” Drake asks.

“We need to talk.”

Chapter 31

Drake

Five-billion-dollars. That’s the price of keeping the world safe from Evil ALAN. Very few people know the true depth of the situation, because one wrong move and Elliot could decide to just upload him to his laptop, and that would be the end of that. Life as we know it would be forever changed.

The initial chaos would be a blackout in almost all forms of communication, downed flights, utility company disruption. I don’t even want to think about the nukes. It would be difficult to purge him, and hard to say how he’d evolve. It’s entirely possible we could end up with a Terminator or Matrix situation.

Luckily, Gabriel’s closest friends have decided to help us, each pitching in enormous sums of money as well as security details and newsworthy distractions. Cassius is going to announce a baby with his girlfriend Sadie—SPOILER ALERT: There is no baby, but it will keep the tabloids and newspapers busy, seeking them out, giving us greater ability to move undetected. Their friend Might Be Meghan will announce her new partnership with a streaming network and the development of her own channel, and Zevran is going to announce the finding of several additional buildings his father had owned, which he will vow to update and make affordable to the residents.

A quarter of the financial transactions have already taken place, with Gabriel receiving strings of code with each deposit. The rest is due upon receipt.

“Are you ready?” Alistair asks, a cool smile on his lips.

“I think not,” I reply. “This really is a life or death situation for me. Evil ALAN hated my guts, which kind of hurts, to tell you the truth. I wonder what terrible fate will befall me if he rises. Maybe I’ll be trapped in an elevator. Or perhaps I’ll be hit with a missile. He might go the old fashion route and simply transfer money to a hitman. The possibilities are endless.”

“I’ll just chill in one of Zev’s old ass apartment complexes. They’re so low-tech, I could probably make it several months, if not years.”

“If I didn’t hate him so much, I might actually feel sorry for him,” I say. “He just got done with the other buildings and now there’s fifteen more?”

“He’s a good guy. His sister’s a real bitch though.”