Title: Voice
Series: Crossing Nuwa, Book Three
Author: Sean Ian O’Meidhir, Connal Braginsky
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 12/21/2021
Length: 62500
Genre: Paranormal Romance, LGBTQIA+, pride, parade, bears, action/adventure, drag queens, vampires, shifters, magic, mind control, urban fiction, plus sized
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Description
After an unfortunate mishap, Robbie has to learn how to use his Command abilities. Just when he thinks that it’s safe to turn them off entirely, he is challenged in a way he never imagined and is faced with the decision to use his abilities or lose his beloved cousin for good. His growth puts a strain on his budding relationship with Theo who is already stretched thin with his own dilemmas. Will the couple grow from their individual struggles, or will this be a final dividing point?
This is the third book in the Crossing Nüwa series and a continuation of Robbie and Theo’s relationship growth and struggles.
Voice
Sean Ian O’Meidhir and Connal Braginsky © 2021
All Rights Reserved
Theo
There was something up with Robbie, and normally I’d pry it out of him, but the job that I was doing for some pretty dangerous people had been taking my attention. I spoke softly into the phone, knowing that my magically created translation and voice alteration software would disguise me. The fact that the signal pinged off a thousand random towers around the world made me confident that the Yakuza could never track who their expert was.
“Yes, honorable oyabun, I have identified your problem,” I explained to the man who had hired me. He had only given his title of “boss” instead of his actual name, Yamato Sato, though I’m certain he likely believed I didn’t know that. Of the Yamaguchi-gami syndicate, Mr. Sato was a lower-level computer geek. A hacker in his own right. He was also my gaming buddy on World of Warcraft.
“You have?” Incredulity coated his tone.
I chuckled. Of course I had. Yamato, AKA “RedTiger” on WoW, and I had been gaming together for years. Just a year prior, he’d admitted that he was a hacker, and so we had engaged in a few minor criminal endeavors. I’d already known that he worked for the Yakuza at that time. And perhaps “work” was too strong a word. His family’s import business was being made to cooperate, and his skills had been drafted to keep them safe. Of course, he never would have admitted any of this openly, but I investigate anyone I spend any amount of time with. About a month ago he’d mentioned something in passing about hiring a “consultant,” and I had directed him to a message board in the deep web where he posted a help wanted ad that I, of course, answered.
“Indeed, honorable oyabun.” I kept up the pretense. “The problem you are seeing in your company’s closed network is that it is not closed.”
He sputtered and I felt a little bad. Yamato was good, but not great. And I knew the implications of what I was telling him. I went on. “You hired me to identify what has been happening to the monthly exports, correct? Why each month the numbers are off a bit? Well, the reason why is because someone has been using a back door to not only monitor but change data.”
I heard the sharp intake of breath. “Who?” he asked. I had already dismissed the tech that was meant to disguise his voice. He sounded younger than his twenty years and the tremble in his voice tugged at my heart.
Who indeed? I muted and sighed heavily. How to tell a kid that the criminals who would just as soon annihilate him and his entire family if they fell out of line were the ones that were in there fucking with export reports? The question wasn’t actually who, but why? I weighed the pros and cons of telling him and opted for, “Honorable oyabun, please extend me the courtesy of one more week. The patterns you are seeing have not changed substantially in the last few months. The trajectory of change is likely to remain the same in that time. It is better that I come to you with a full picture than one that is incomplete. I ask for one week and ask that you take no action in that time. Is this agreeable?”
I hoped I had the cultural request honorifics down. That’s what too much online gaming does to a person—gives them a false sense of cultural competence. But it seemed to work. “Yes. Yes of course. Thank you, Honorable Serpent. You have greatly humbled me.”
With that I clicked off and went to work. If it had been just any schmo whose message board ad I’d answered, I’d have accepted bitcoin payment held in escrow for the answers they had sought and gone on my merry way. But RedTiger was a good kid, even if he was now mixed up with one of the older criminal empires. He didn’t deserve yubitsume. I mean, computer dudes kinda need all their digits to make magic. At least, most of us do.
I lounged back onto the couch, allowing my mind to expand into the Interface.
The Interface is my own conceptualization for a separate reality of technology that exists parallel to what most people experience. My mind shifts quickly past the simple devices which others are familiar with when they think of the internet; routers, firewalls, and central nodes quickly fade into the background as my mind creates an interactive map of servers, relationships, and the thick veins of electricity and connectivity which unite them. The veins glow blue as traffic flows in multiple directions, and the intensity of that glow helps to distinguish central nodes from more isolated points. From there, any machine—whether connected by power or the internet—is accessible to me, and my mind helps normalize the magnitude of the scope therein. Then I layer onto it the cellular and wireless bands, and all the devices which move through the world. The active devices appear green, the regular pulses of connectivity acting like sonar that makes them visible to my mind’s eye. Finally, I overlay those with the restricted and isolated wavelengths which are reserved for governments, and the rare technomage who understands how to find them. These red transmitters are like cones on the highway which has formed in my mind—warning signs of potential danger, a reminder to be cautious when interfering there.
The Interface was my term for both what I do and how I do it—technomagic. Mentally connecting to the internet via magic, which allows me to transverse an almost infinite number of worlds in the cyberverse. All of the ones that were simple for me were man made, though humans were becoming more adept, which was sometimes a fun challenge. The areas that were obviously fae run, I skirted completely.
I relished hunting after pieces of a puzzle, mentally breaking into various secreted vaults and leaving without a trace, and finally being able to solve mysteries that I was sometimes hired for. Why did these people want to mess with my friend? They weren’t taking money. And their changes had been seemingly random and messy…meant to be discovered? But why would someone from the Yakuza be messing with someone else from their own organization?
I followed trail after trail until Kat gently shook my foot and instructed me it was dinner time.
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Connal Braginsky is a software engineer who lives in San Diego, California. Diagnosed with high functioning autism, Connal sometimes struggles in social situations, but has an inner world that is always incredibly rich. With an insatiable thirst for knowledge about many esoteric things, Connal brings a lot of personal philosophies and interests to writing.
Sean Ian O’Meidhir is a psychologist who lives in San Francisco, California. Sean is a hedonist who believes in living for today, living every day to the fullest, and enjoying as much as possible. They have been gaming since adolescence and have written about and played hundreds of lives, revelling in the chance to take on new personalities, dramas, even disorders.
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