Segal Captain Marvel: Shadow Code

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-181-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

Marvel's most powerful super hero, Captain Marvel, must battle an old enemy in this brand-new original novel with help from her friends Tony Stark, Spectrum, Hazmat and Spider-Woman! CAPTAIN MARVEL IS ASKED FOR A SIMPLE FAVOR, BUT SHE SOON MEETS AN ADVERSARY WITH UNPARALLELED POWER. Tony Stark wants Carol to keep an eye on brilliant grad student Mara Melamed, who is struggling to find her feet at Empire State University. Although reluctant at first, Carol meets Mara and is soon impressed by the young woman. But trouble quickly finds Captain Marvel in the form of a controversial operating system from DigiTech-whose mysterious CEO only appears as a hologram. To make matters worse, one of Carol's closest friends has been framed for murder. And Mara Melamed is at the tangled center of it all. Carol is driven to her darkest edge as she questions her identity and sense of belonging in the world. With her allies at her side, Carol must face her self-doubt and protect the world from impending doom.

Gilly Segal grew up in Tampa, Florida. She graduated from the Hebrew University and Emory School of Law. Gilly is the author of two young adult novels Kimberly Jones: I'm Not Dying With You Tonight and Why We Fly and the short story World of Wonder in the Game On anthology, all co-authored with Kimberly Jones. Her novels have been on the New York Times Bestseller list, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, book club selections for major retailers and received starred reviews. She has been nominated at a Georgia Author of the Year and her books have been nominated as Books All Young Georgians should read. In addition to writing, Gilly serves as the Chief Legal Officer of an advertising agency. She lives in Decatur, Georgia with her three kids and her poorly-behaved Bernedoodle, and when she's not lawyering or reading or writing, she can probably be found watching a hockey game.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Segal, Gilly

Leseproben

2

“JASON, MY phone’s been off for all of two hours. How bad could it possibly be?”

Laurence Faber strode through his penthouse, phone pressed to his ear. The place was empty. His wife had combined a business trip to London with a visit to their daughter at LSE and wouldn’t be back for several days. The extensive staff that kept the Faber family and business organized, clean, clothed, fed and transported had all gone home for the night. Faber balked at the idea of live-in staff; he valued his privacy too much. Thus, he returned home more often than not to a quiet, empty house. He passed the great room, where the Tiffany side lamps were dimly lit, welcoming him home, loosening his bow tie on the way to his study.

Jason, his executive assistant, was high strung. Made him fantastic at managing the details of Faber’s work, but prone to dramatic reactions. One of these days, the annoyance of the fuss would outweigh the efficiency Jason offered. Not tonight, though. His zealous assistant had hunted down someone on the waitstaff at the charity gala Faber had been attending and paid them to yank Faber aside to check his messages. Fourteen texts from Jason insisted, more and more vehemently as they accumulated, that Faber leave the event at once and get home.

“Mr. Faber, it’s bad. DigiTech is the lead story. Not just on Bloomberg—the general news channels are covering it, too.”

The study was Faber’s refuge, the only room in the house over which he’d had complete design control—if by complete, one meant the power to make suggestions that his wife and her designer would then approve. The dark paneling, high ceilings, double-decker bookshelves and mile-wide polished oak desk resembled the university library fantasies of his youth, back when he thought he’d be an economics professor. Instead, junior year of college, he’d lent a few thousand dollars from his savings to a friend who wanted to start up a delivery service that brought students homecooked meals to their dorms during exams. That friend became his wife, and her business mushroomed into one of the largest food delivery services in the world and made Faber his first fortune. His wife still ran that company, while he went on to a long and illustrious career as an angel investor.

Tossing his jacket on the leather couch, Faber helped himself to a glass of whiskey from the decanter at the wet bar. The remote that brought out a TV, cleverly concealed behind a mirror over the fireplace, sat beside the tray of cut glass tumblers. Faber twirled it in his fingers, debating whether he had the energy for the latest DigiTech roller coaster.

He’d bought shares in the company a year or so ago at the urging of his sometime investing partner, Marian Sutherland. DigiTech Systems, Inc. had been a sleepy old computer hardware company, nothing like the wave-of-the-future AI people were so excited about. Most investors Faber knew were prone to join the cult of every new Silicon Valley hotshot who emerged wearing a turtleneck and a perpetual scowl, promising to revolutionize tech. Faber snorted. Everybody said their thing was the thing. He sat out those flash-in-the-pan opportunities and never regretted it.

He had that in common with Marian. They met early in their careers and discovered a complementary style characterized by thoughtfulness and intuition over glitz. She was as careful an investor as he’d ever met, doing twice the diligence he did. She brought DigiTech to his attention when the company’s newly hired president announced she was looking for an involved board. That piqued Faber’s interest. The sunset of his investing career was approaching and he knew it. His daughter was training to be the next head of Faber Investments, and she’d want to do things her own way when she took over. He respected that. Out with the old. He’d do the same, in her shoes. The current crop of young whizz kid founders didn’t want anything more than his money. All his years of buying and selling companies, building empires, disrupting industries, reorganizing the way business is done—that knowledge and experience went to waste when all he did was cut a check. He wanted to have a hand in a company’s success before he hung up the checkbook for good. He wanted a legacy.

Investing in DigiTech had, frankly, been more lucrative than betting on a Vegas long shot that paid out. He’d been minting money since they diversified into software, a vote that had been one of the first Faber supported when he joined the board. The success made it difficult to understand the recent rash of stock sell-offs. Laurence wasn’t losing sleep over it, though. People made foolish investment choices all the time. No doubt the news was covering those with their usual doom-and-gloom predictions about collapses. The media never got the investing mindset right.

Still. Might as well take a peek at what they were saying, if for no other reason than to let some of the helium out of Jason’s voice. He flicked a button on the remote and found a twenty-four-hour news network. Instead of the usual image of a talking head above a crawl, there was footage of Marian Sutherland being led from the very same charity fundraiser he’d left not thirty minutes ago. In handcuffs.

Laurence Faber choked on his whiskey, spitting half the mouthful across the marble countertop. The tinny sound of Jason’s voice piped up from the phone that sat abandoned on the tray beside the decanter. “As I said, sir.”

Faber stabbed at the phone screen, disconnecting the call and silencing his assistant’s told-you-so superiority. So the kid had been right. That mattered little in the face of the arrest of his fellow DigiTech board member. He pumped up the volume in time to catch the newscaster intoning breaking news in a fake-grave timbre.

“—Sutherland, a prominent investor known for her land development portfolio, recently forayed into the digital space when she purchased substantial shares in DigiTech Systems. She’s in federal custody tonight and sources tell us she’ll be charged with securities fraud, in connection—”

Fraud? Marian? She was as T’s-crossed-and-i’s-dotted as they come.

Faber paced toward the French doors that led from his study to a private balcony overlooking the city. Normally he loved the feeling of towering over the world, lights spreading below in all directions. He imagined it felt a little bit like flying through space. Tonight, the view gave him vertigo. Maybe a blast of the January wind would ease this dizzy spell. He opened the door but the barely concealed glee in the newscaster’s tone caught his attention again.

“—a felony which carries a penalty of twenty years in prison and a hefty fine—”

Felony. Geez. He definitely needed air.

Faber turned back to the balcony and gasped. Not two feet from him stood a figure shrouded in darkness. What the—? The glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the hardwood, splashing liquid across his loafers. No one had been standing there a moment ago, he was sure. Was he hallucinating?

Faber backed up a step. The figure glided forward with a swish that brought Faber’s eyes to the ground. The light was dim, but he could see fabric swirling around—a cloak? And was there a kind of glow emanating from the figure?

“Knock, knock, Mr. Faber.”

If this was a hallucination, it was an especially vivid one. The voice was low and pleasant but unfamiliar. “Who—who are you? How did you get here?”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

He sure as hell was not. Faber fumbled in his pockets for the phone that wasn’t there. The device sat on the wet bar behind him, where he’d left it after hanging up on Jason. Dammit, if only he’d left the line open, he could shout for his assistant to call 911. He glanced over and saw the screen light up with an incoming call, no doubt from the young man himself. He had to get to that device and tell Jason that… an ethereal cloaked figure had turned up on his balcony?

He’d sound like he had been overcome by a flight of fancy. He had a hard time believing it himself, despite the evidence his eyes supplied.

Besides, he wouldn’t really call this thing ethereal. That shine wasn’t a pleasant firefly kind of glow. It was sinister. He couldn’t make out anything important about this creature—it held itself like a person. But it glimmered. And his penthouse occupied the thirtieth floor of this building. There was no way a human could just appear on his terrace in the span of a few seconds. He felt suddenly short of breath and clutched his chest, thinking bizarrely that he’d rather the intruder get him than a heart attack.

Wait, no. No way was he going down to a caped balcony prowler. Faber scrambled back, his shoes sliding in the liquid he’d spilled.

The figure flashed out of sight, leaving behind a faint blur. Faber grabbed for his phone—which was already in the hands of his visitor, who now stood beside the bar. How? Faber could not formulate a coherent question for himself, let alone speak it aloud. He’d scarcely seen the person—or whatever it was—move. It disappeared and reappeared in a way that should not be possible.

“I don’t think we’ll be needing this, will we?” The figure dropped the phone on the ground, pulverizing it beneath a boot heel.

Faber had not turned on any lights when he entered the room, and he cursed himself for it now. The...