Though long gone, the zip ties still dug into her wrists. No matter how much Sandra rubbed at the pink bruises, she felt the hard plastic cutting off her circulation. No longer asleep, her hands still tingled from the onrush of blood.

And she was shivering.

The air conditioning in the interrogation room had to be hovering around sixty degrees, and they had stripped her of everything but her bra and panties. Or maybe it was her nerves that tingled and trembled.

Both of the above, she figured.

They’d brought her in here, cuffed her legs to a metal chair, sat her there, and told her not to move. Don’t you dare stand. They’d left her for… she didn’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty minutes?

Icing her. Isn’t that what they called it?

A hacker friend who’d gotten in trouble with the law said that’s what they did. They dropped you in a room—a black hole, he called it—and they let you think about it.

Oh, God. Is that what they thought? That she was a hacker? A terrorist, maybe? That she’d broken into some computer system?

She’d done nothing! Yeah, she knew some clever folks, the kind that stayed off-grid and dabbled in God knew what. But she took no part in their escapades. She had too much to lose, too much riding on the big debut of her game.

The door unlatched. Expecting men to come in, she covered up.

A woman stepped in. Her short brown hair flashed under the room’s lighting and bounced about an inch above her shoulders. Her shoulders glistened, too, covered with a shimmering sage green jacket, the sort mountaineers wear in snowy weather. She’d draped that over a white business blouse that tucked into blacker than black slacks.

The jacket got Sandra’s attention most of all. Well, that and the tall glass of water the woman held in one hand, swaying it a little here and there. Sandra licked her dry lips, fixating so much on the implied promise of moisture she almost missed the paper sack the woman held in her other hand.

“I’m cold,” Sandra said.

“Yes, I can see why.” The woman dropped the sack on her side of the table.

Sandra blinked at it. Clothes, maybe? She stared at it, wondering whether she should reach for it to look inside.

The woman sat. “I hate it how they do this.” She patted the bag. “And I’ve made provisions to remedy the dreadful situation. But first things first.”

Keeping the water glass aloft with her left hand, she reached into the bag and pulled out a tablet. She set it on the table. Sandra leaned forward to get a closer look. Gaudy red and yellow stickers caught her attention first. They lined the top of the display with acronyms she didn’t recognize.

“It’s quite safe,” the woman said. “Fully vetted electronics. The sort that won’t leak, spill, or record.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, exactly what I said.” She shrugged and smiled with condescension. “But you might stand a better chance at grasping the nuances. Technical wiz that you are.”

“I’m sorry.” Sandra swallowed and slumped back in her chair. “What’s this all about?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell us.” She raised the glass as if ready to make a toast.

“Aren’t you at least going to tell me your name? I mean, aren’t you supposed to, by law or something?”

“Actually no. But it is the polite thing to do, isn’t it? How rude of me.” She reached into her jacket. The inner lining let off a sharp hiss that made Sandra wish she had it against her skin, the warmth of it.

She shivered as she looked down at the open wallet in the woman’s hand.

“Cynthia Spencer,” Sandra muttered through chattering teeth.

“Sound familiar?”

Sandra looked up. “Not really.”

“Ah, excellent. I don’t have to worry about all the unpleasantness that results from a blown cover.” She set the glass of water dead in the middle of the table, swirled it for effect, Sandra supposed. The water sloshed and rippled. The white fluorescent light turned it cool blue.

“What’s this about?”

“How about you call me Cynth?”

Sandra felt her features creasing into a frown. “Cynth?”

“Yeah, like synthesizer or synthetic.” She let out a short giggle. She clinked on the glass with her fingernail, then picked it up. “But with a C. A handle whose cleverness you should appreciate. Or am I thinking of a screen name?”

“Huh?”

Cynth held Sandra’s gaze, flashing her a mocking smile. Then she tapped the tablet’s screen and stuck her thumb and index fingers on it for a couple of seconds. The screen lit up. Cynth turned it so Sandra could see.

A picture of what looked like the inside of a warehouse scrolled into view.

“We were hoping you could help us sort this out.”

Sandra looked up. “What is it?”

“Hmm. That doesn’t sound overly cooperative.”

Sandra almost objected. But it would serve zero purpose. Instead she returned her attention to the screen and leaned in closer. They thought she had something to do with the cartons and equipment there. Maybe she should try to figure it out for herself. Maybe it would get her out of there sooner.

“Swipe and zoom away,” Cynth said.

Sandra slid her right hand toward the screen, wishing it wouldn’t shake so much. She expanded the view around the area of the cartons.

“Computer equipment,” she said.

“That’s promising. What else can you tell me?”

Sliced from top to bottom, one of the cartons revealed its contents. “Looks like a rack of servers, or something.”

“Terrific. Anything else?”

Sandra looked up. “I could take a closer look, if you’d like.”

“Sure, zoom in all you want.”

“No, I mean… On site.”

“On site? Whatever for?”

Sandra shrugged. “You brought me here because you think I can help you. Because I know about computer equipment, I guess.” She didn’t believe a word of that, but wanted desperately to do so, even if it didn’t match one bit with a frigid interrogation room, or her ankles cuffed to a metal chair bolted into the cold concrete floor, while she sat there, dressed in nothing but her underwear.

Cynth brought the glass in front of her face, as if readying to take a sip. “Well, you are an expert. That much is true. But you don’t really need to go take a closer look at that equipment, do you?”

Sandra lowered her gaze again. Was she missing something? Did these cartons somehow connect to her and her startup? They didn’t have that much room in the studio she and her partner, Ricardo, had turned into their office space. They didn’t own or rent a warehouse, either. They didn’t need to. All the computing power they needed to develop their game resided in five built-to-spec desktop machines Ricardo had put together himself.

“I’m sorry, but I’m way lost here.”

Cynth cleared her throat. “Go ahead. Swipe.”

Sandra did. An invoice appeared on the screen. She struggled to make sense of it. Ricardo handled the business side of things. She didn’t personally handle any of the purchase orders. But scrolling around, she recognized the letterhead—her company’s logo.

She shivered and struggled to keep her teeth from chattering. Scrolling down further, she saw the dollar amounts, well over mid six figures. She struggled to do the math. A lot of money, way more than her company had to spend. She squinted. In another couple of seconds, she sorted it out. Not spent. Earned. The bill represented a sale from her company, Virtuoux, to a vanilla-named outfit.

“What can you tell me now?”

Sandra shook her head. “I have no idea—”

“Now, now. That doesn’t sound cooperative.”

“I’ve never seen this.” She looked up and hugged herself tight. “Maybe my partner—”

“Ricardo Montes?”

“Yes.”

“That’s on screen number three.”

Sandra looked down at the tablet, but kept her arms tightly wrapped around her chest and midsection.

“I’m very cold.”

“Yes, of course you are. You’re also in a lot of trouble, dear, so you need to be crisp with me.” Cynth leaned forward and gave the screen a swipe.

Sandra saw the balcony first, the one hanging off the studio she and Ricardo had leased as office space. They’d picked that particular unit for the view it offered, and the little hang-over-the-railing flower planter. They could party and entertain out there. All that looked familiar… except for one thing: Ricardo hanging from a rope that crimped and twisted his neck.

“Oh, God.”

“The Almighty had nothing to do with it. We checked for divine fingerprints, and nope, not an act of God.”

“Is he—” She felt stupid for even starting to ask.

“In the morgue, yes. A little colder than you, but resting comfortably, they assure me.”

“What happened?”

Cynth tilted her head to the side. “Here we go again. You playing dumb and me starting to despair over you not leveling with me.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Don’t be silly. No one’s arrested you.”

“What do you call commandos breaking into my apartment and me sitting here naked?”

“We call it nothing, mostly. Nothing at all.” Cynth wrinkled her nose. “But you may have heard what those that don’t know much about anything call it. They’d tell you you’ve been renditioned.”

“Renditioned?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What for?”

Cynth sighed. “For pictures number one and two, possibly for number three.”

“This is crazy!” Sandra pushed back into her seat, as far as it would let her, and shivered. “This is all jacked up.”

Cynth sighed again. She nodded. “Tell you what.” She stood up and set the glass on the table, within Sandra’s reach. Then she closed the tablet and slid it back into the bag. “I’m going to go out for, say, five to ten. You’re going to sit here and think things over. By the time I return, you will have something for me. How does that sound?”

Sandra half-shivered, half nodded. What else could she do?

Cynthia went out. The door closed behind her with a loud metallic click-bang.

Sandra took the glass of water and drank most of it. She tried to make herself believe that it calmed her, but it actually made her colder. She’d read somewhere that cold temperatures made your body shut down. That seemed to match up, because as she waited, she felt herself drift in and out of sleep.

I hope you enjoyed reading the beginning of Virtual Identity. As we speak, I am readying to release this story next month, February 18. To stay up to date about this and future news, join my Reader’s Club. Oh, and let me know what you think of this story!