"Hey, Stupid!" A hand clapped hard on his shoulder.
Griffin squeaked as he spun around. It was Mack. "How the hell did you manage to sneak up on me?!"
"Because you know how to look through everyone's viewpoint, except your own." Mack said simply. "It's a mistake, coming here."
"That's why I stayed far back enough that nobody would see me." Griffin retorted.
"You could look around that café from anywhere. Have you forgotten what the Interface can do? You could hear and see everyone in that place better than they can, and you could do it from the top of the Eiffel Tower if you wanted to."
Griffin said nothing, forced to admit the point.
"You go over and talk to her?"
"No."
"Good."
"Not because I didn't want to." Griffin confessed. "I just don't have the nerve."
"Nobody's brave. Not really." Mack told him. "All you can do is summon courage for a few minutes. If they're the right few minutes, they can save your life. If you can do it over and over again, you're considered heroic." Mack gestured around. "Bad positioning. The sun is still in the morning part of the sky, so the opposite windows are reflecting the light. That's half the buildings in the street that you have to hack if you want to see inside. The El Train is only half a block away, but it would cover you from above. You could stay mobile and watch from a car, but you're standing on the curb, staring into space for over three minutes?" He was disgusted. "Good Grief, at least buy a magazine, sit on a park bench or something." Mack waved down the road. "And then you did the stupidest thing you could have done: You went somewhere you've been before, many, many times."
Griffin flushed. "Who exactly do you think is watching?"
Mack rolled his eyes sarcastically. "I know. It's not like you've been face to face with powerful and ruthless criminals. It's not like they had you prisoner for a while, and found out how dangerous you could be. It's not like you've crossed them so completely that they'd be out for vengeance."
Griffin flushed, because that was exactly what had happened, almost as soon as he'd received the Interface. Suddenly, he hated being out in the open. "I thought the Syndicates had been taken down."
"They have, but they've still got enough muscle to handle one ordinary man." Mack told him firmly. "You wanna survive? You want that girl Rebecca to survive? You have to be something extraordinary."
Griffin nodded, suitably chastened. "I understand."
~oo00oo~
One week after being Deleted from the world, Griffin is struggling to find his place on Team Echelon. A small group of powerful people he barely knows. He's been given power, and put in danger, and where once he wanted nothing more than to go back to his normal life; he now has to face the fact that he may never go home... and may not want to anymore.
Echelon: Jekyll and Hyde is a daring Technothriller that takes a look at the world of today... and how it can easily grow into tomorrow.
Coming Soon to the Amazon Kindle Store; the second book in the exciting Echelon series.
If you haven't read it yet, what better time to find out how it all began? Book One in the Echelon Series is on sale now: Echelon: Invisible Man