Catatone

By Stephen Cote

Jideon de Rosa is a combat cyber-medic with the Spanish Legion. After his ex-wife takes their daughter, he tracks them to North America. He finds his wife missing and his daughter suffering from a drug. Any neuro chip may activate a computer virus infecting her body, transforming the pharmaceutical into something terrible. Jideon has less than a day to find the cure, and will ignore rules of engagement to save his daughter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Cote
• Release date: Nov 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465881090

Stephen Cote

I am a software and security architect and manager. I enjoy writing hard and whimsical science fiction, adult fantasy, and poetry. As an early advocate of Creative Commons licensing, many of my short stories and poems have been available online since 1996.If you would like to learn more about my writing, open source projects, please contact me at [e-mail].

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Catatone

Stephen W. Cote

Copyright Stephen W. Cote 2011

Published at Smashwords

Forthcoming Availability in 2012, Nemesis Publishing

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Catatone

Jideon de Rosa kicked open the screen door and carried his teenage daughter from the ramshackle house into morning rain. A cab hovered across the curb and mangy lawn. Its gull-winged door lurched open and Jideon slid Duña‘s drug-withdrawn body across the pleather seat.

Wait. He rapped the opaque driver-side window. The autopilot had abandoned him twice that evening: First at the airport and then at the Spanish embassy. He took one step back, waited to make sure the cab remained, and ran into the house.

Jideon retrieved his cyber medic kit from the doorway and slung the satchel over his shoulder. He pulled a blanket from the couch, shook it. Small fabric squares, neuro chips he knew were spent, fell to the carpet. He ran his hand through the trash littering the coffee table, took a crumb-flecked plastic bag, and scooped up the chips.

A credit terminal bolted below the thermostat would have crucial information: When did Duña first take the drug? Thinking of Varah absconding with Duña, he punched the plastic cover, bloodied his left knuckles, and pulled three feet