Images of my goal weren’t entirely fleshed-out, but I could say with unyielding certainty that my workspace would never collect dust. Mom knew this and shrugged at my requests, “You realise Anna is a living, breathing human and not a hunk of metal, right?” she asked a question she assumed would bring my thoughts back down to ground level. But I stood fast, adamant. “For one thing, Anna is a genius on the team. What she lacks in experience, she makes up for in creativity.”

“That just makes me want her more.”

“That’s not the point, Jared,” she sighed, “the point is convincing the board to let her work with you, a child. They don’t know you’re Ban, remember? The only way they’d even consider losing such an asset is for me to tell them who you are, and expose your hacking.”

“None of that matters anymore,” her pessimism was casted away, “tell them everything. If it doesn’t work in my favour, then I’ll just work alone. Just tell me when the meeting will happen.”

She nodded, unable to find any more to say. Despite being silent, her eyes held a piteous tone to them, making me wonder just why I’d need sympathy.

The coming months would be fraught with work. There were three major projects–all of which were somewhat interlaced–that had my attention. The first was an upgraded, and better-rounded version of the TS controller chip that could be stuck to your head. I dropped the battle for size and instead made a headband out of it, though it was thin. This strip of flexible circuitry, chips and sensors acted as the crown to the other two projects.

The headgear had two main purposes, the first being medical. Like the TS chip, this one scanned the body much better, and could pinpoint irregularities in the body that the brain picked up on. In hospitals, this would be indispensable. The other purpose, was its ability to control the TS. This function was mostly already developed, all that I needed to design were prosthetics that tied in with it. The headgear and limbs were to appease the bigwigs at UGO.

The third project, however, was for myself. The construction boots on my list was only the start of it. I sliced along the thick sole and inserted an anti-gravitational plate that was connected to a proximity sensor. Turning the switch on pelted the boot into the air and smashed a light bulb–just another day. I had to adjust the initial power that caused the lift-off, and tweak the sensor to read about one foot off ground. After concluding the exact areas that made a difference, all that was left was a simple but tedious process of trial and error. Getting the plate to levitate on its own was easy. Levitating whilst in the boots was thrown off because the boots’ weight wasn’t centred. Getting it to maintain levitation with my weight was a whole other story. All in all, those ten boots were destroyed in about a week. Only on my twenty-first pair of boots did I achieve levitating perfection. Twenty-one must’ve been my lucky number, considering the Z-21 and all.

Despite how busy mom was with the renovation I wanted, and with her own work, she still found time to visit me every day. No doubt, I was warming up to her, though my mind still kept its distance in case she chose to betray the predictions of the heart.

With my behavioural improvements of late, servitude of the school system returned and those prolonged hours in study started again. Admittedly, it was a cosy feeling. Like my life was piecing itself together again, like my comfort zone expanded a little. Maybe the main bullies who died in the first android attack made me unconsciously relaxed. Not having them around didn’t force my mind to stay on edge and look over my shoulder or my feet to tread lightly around corners. For some days I went to school, returned home and continued work on Grav. That was what I’d decided to name the anti-gravitational boots, its name being pretty simple to figure out. Before the hour reached ten, I’d review both schoolwork and features on Grav. After that I’d exercise for a bit. My time with dad made me realise how horribly unfit I was. Painting wasn’t easy. After that sweat, I’d wash up and head to bed.

That horribly linear cycle continued for a couple months, until mom notified me about the meeting. Of course, no one had told Anna about my wishes yet, so there was no guarantee she’d agree to break her routine and work with me even after the board deemed it fine. Still, it was what I wanted. I’d have rather not bother her, or anyone in UGO for that matter, especially after Cennet and I had that theatrical show in the lab.

On the day of the meeting, I snuck out of school at lunch and went to UGO headquarters. The minute mom told me of the meeting, I stashed a bag with the headgear and prosthetics inside the building.

I got to the floor and looked at mom through the huge glass panels. The twelve other executives made a semi-circle, encasing her as she spoke to them near the whiteboard. She spotted me outside and she ceased talking, earning the weird stares from her audience. I could see a very faint simper adorn her mouth. She excused herself and met me outside.

“Jared. The fact you’re here means you have something planned, I take it?”

“I guess, but it’s not failproof. How much have you told them?”

“You came at the right part,” she said, holding my hand and bringing me inside. Middle-aged to senior was within the only age group I could see. Though, I was surprised, since I’d done my research on all of them prior.

“Pardon the interruption. As I was saying before, UGO has experienced a huge boon in sales over the past five or so years. Most of these profits originated from achievements in my team, the engineering department. Regrettably,” she paused, and sighed a little, “that is false information. I’ve kept the truth from you over the course of those years.”

Murmurs cropped up, of course. One of them, a man with his hands in a lot of businesses, took a look at me, “And your son is here because?”

Mom placed her palm on my shoulder, “Since we’re short on time I’ll just summarise my part. There’s been rumours for those five years, about a hacker that primarily targeted UGO, one we couldn’t track down. That hacker has been known as Ban. And, that hacker is my son, Jared Ugo. The majority of devices and technology we’ve developed those five years weren’t our own, they were his. He caused those sales.”

“Impossible! What drivel are you speaking? How can a chil–”

“Calm down, Richard,” I stepped forth a bit, “whether or not you believe I’m Ban is irrelevant. The reason this meeting is taking place is because I asked for it, to ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to allow the transfer of Anna Stone to my personal lab, a subsidiary of sorts.” I was calm, unbelievably so. Perhaps my study on them made me feel like they weren’t strangers, but close friends.

“I’m sorry, I feel like we’re missing something here,” a woman folded her arms, “why were you involved in those incidents earlier this year? We’d like to hear everything, from the top. And don’t worry, we have nothing more to do but play miniature golf in our offices. We have more than enough time.”

At that point, although fully expecting the conversation to swing in this direction, I felt exhaustion piling up already. “Well,” I dropped the bag down, pulled a chair for mom to sit, “it all started with this kid at kindergarten,” then took a seat myself, “I killed him…”

A thousand questions later and we finally reached to the present, “…and here we are.” Those who were a little edgy, became so engrossed in the topic that they’d forgotten all about their schedule. “Well?” I leaned back, slouching a little, “Can we get back to Anna?”

“Oh, right, forgot about that,” one of them chuckled. They seemed like such important people, but they sure were a carefree bunch.

“Well, seeing that you’re actually Ban,” another started, “I think getting you a lab is a good investment, so long as the work you do benefits UGO in some way. But with Anna… Well, we’ve already lost David Cennet, losing Anna Stone too is a heavy blow.”

“Won’t it be better to get a new team?”

“We could also get some internships for young people.”

There they went, deciding things for themselves. “I’m sorry,” I broke their brainstorming, “the conditions and personnel in my workspace wasn’t up for negotiation. It’s Anna or nothing. I brought these inventions,” I grabbed the bag of prosthetics up, “to sweeten the deal,” and placed them onto the table. I stood up and walked behind them, “This is the headgear. It can control every single motion of the prosthetics with thought alone,” and placed it on Carol’s head, a woman I knew had family missing a limb or two. She imagined it, and the fingers of the prosthetics began wiggling about. After a minute with it, she got the hang of it.

“This, is amazing! How did you eve – never mind. I won’t understand all that technical stuff. Anyway, I’m sold!” she exclaimed, making the prosthetic do a thumb-up. The rest of them tried it out whilst mom and I sat back.

“You’ve outdone yourself this time,” she commented.

“I haven’t even explained its main function yet,” I laughed a bit, but one of them heard that statement and I could almost see the dollar sign in their eyes when they told me to explain it.

“Its main function is scanning the body, so to speak. It reads signals from the brain. Whatever abnormality of the body that your brain picks up, it will also pick up. For example, Richard, you have sore muscles, especially your legs. Solange, looks like you sprained your wrist a while back. Abigail, you had a really heavy lunch. And Todd, well, you can go pee. Anyway, this should become a staple in the medical industry once all tests are done.”

That ended the meeting, and I was assured I’d have what I sought, albeit, they wanted my continued support on the headgear and limbs even though they would have all the rights to it.

“By the way, did you sneak out of school?” mom asked. A little late to ask, I thought.

“N-no. Perhaps…”

She sighed, gently clunking me on the head with her clipboard, “You could’ve just asked. Anyway, go talk to Anna, see what she thinks.”

“Right.” I opened the door to leave, then stopped, “Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you,” I said, then promptly left. There was but one obstacle now, sitting alone at a table in the lunch room. I pulled a seat and it jumped her, but after realising who I was, she breathed in relief. “Jared, it’s just you,” she calmed, “wait, what are you doing here? And are you alright? You haven’t texted in forever! What were you doing?”

“Sheesh, one question at a time. Anyway, what I was doing isn’t important, what’s important is this,” I showed her a photo on my phone. “That’s the file UGO has on you. It says ‘discover a new energy’ as one of your goals. Anna,” I put the phone down, “is it still one of your goals?”

“Uh,” she swallowed her food, “yeah, of course. Why do you ask? And what’ve you been doing? How did you get that? Did you hack into the systems again?”

“Didn’t I say one question at a time?” I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “I just came from a meeting with the board about you. How would you feel abo–”

“Board? What board? Like, board of–”

“Directors, yes.” I finished her sentence, as I was saying, I want you to joi–”

“How the hell did you pull that off?! Why was it about me?”

I bent over and grabbed her cheeks, pulling them about, “Well that’s what I’m trying to get to but someone keeps interrupting me!”

“Ouch! Shorry!” she apologised, her speech unclear due to her cheek movements. I stopped, when I realised a pleasant smile forming on her face. She purposely aggravated me as a test of sorts to see how I was doing, mentally. That I knew perfectly well, but felt a little stupid because I fell for it. “Anyway,” I cleared my throat a little and sat down, “I want you to join me. I’ll be getting an actual lab soon and I want us to work together. I got permission from mom and the board and I just had to ask you, so, that’s that.”

“Hmm, for the board to even consider something like that,” she put her hand to her chin in a thinking, yet playful manner, “you’d have to convince them you actually know your stuff. Even then, that’s not enough. If I were you, the most effective way would be to admit I’m Ban. So, did you?”

She scared me a little at how much she could read me, and how much her mind could sneak around and manipulate me, so to speak. I really looked up to her for some reason. “Yeah, I did. I told them everything. I gave them two new projects too, so they’d let me do what I want.”

“Aww, Jared! You did all that for me?”

“C-can you not put it like that? I did it for my lab!”

We spent some time chatting, which mostly consisted of answering her humdrum of questions. Suddenly, mom swung open the lunch room’s door, staring at me and in turn, earning the ogle of the other people there. Her face contorted, then she looked down at her feet, then up to me again and finally decided to walk over.

“We’re under a cyber-attack,” she said, balling her fist in quiet fury.