PROLOGUE
During the beginning months of 2017, a raid took place in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
The raid was orchestrated by URide Corporation, the largest ride-share company in the world.
The raiders came from the West Coast with a mission: to hire away high level scientists employed by the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University.
The raid was successful.
High level scientists left the employ of the NREC. A new robotics research and development entity was formed.
CHAPTER 1
Tina Parker
Atlanta, Georgia
Everything blurred as she started to open her eyes. Her head hurt badly. Coming to, she could smell the dankness of the place, feeling a cold, hard, concrete floor beneath her clothing. A film covered her pupils, as if she were emerging from a swimming pool, water in her eyes preventing her from seeing clearly, things distorted, barely recognizable.
Slowly she began to gain focus, the room becoming more easily seen as she groped with the idea of where she had ended up.
Jesus, she thought, remembering dancing, but where was she now, completely unaware of what was happening.
Turning her head to look, she saw the underside of an old, wooden worktable– dirty and unpainted.
“Ugh… my head,” she said.
“About damn time,” from out of nowhere came a voice.
Making a determined effort to raise herself from the floor, Tina propped herself onto her elbows, pressing down hard against the jagged flecks of unfinished concrete poking into her soft skin. Although wrenchingly pushing, her lower body remained limp as she tried to gain leverage against the unforgiving surface. Her head, hurting before, hurt much worse now as blood in her brain rushed away in search of desperately needed refuge.
“Where am I?” she asked, consciousness coming through the drugged fog in which she had been.
At the angle of vantage from where she looked, she could see a man’s head above her partially visible on the far side of the table from where she lay. Straining, exerting with all the force she had within her, she managed to lift herself slightly higher.
She could see a handbag— her handbag, near the edge of the table, its contents strewn haphazardly onto the dirty tabletop. She could see a man– from the top of his head to the top of his mouth. His torso was blocked by the table. She could see his pants and shoes. He was wearing boots.
To be Continued…