Page 58 of Fall Before Her Throne

No, that’s not working. They’re trying to penetrate…

What if I…? Maybe I could bolster these security protocols? Can I change the passwords to something more secure? Will it even make a difference?

What if I reboot the server?

No, that wouldn’t work, they’d just start hitting it again…

Maybe I could reroute the protocols. Change our server to a different storage location.

I’ve gotta figure out how to lock them out…

Thought after thought flew through my brain faster than I could catch them. My fingers typed as quickly as they could, and I fought through the pain of my stiff palm. The injury there had slowed me down, but it hadn’t made me less. I was still one of the best hackers in the world.

Another alarm blinked in the bottom right of my screen.

“Shit. Fuck,” I hissed.

“What is it?”

“They’re almost in,” I replied. They’d gotten through my first line of defense. Now they were probing my backdoor access points. “Wynn, tell everyone to turn off their fucking phones. Now.”

“Got it.”

Leona handed Wynn her phone, and he powered it off, setting it on the desk in front of her while she typed. Then he disappeared.

A bead of sweat gathered on my temple. I swiped it away and blinked, trying to clear the blurriness in my eyes.

“Okay, Ciel,” Leona said. I had no idea how much time had passed. “I’ve saved most of it. Should I keep going?”

My eyes flicked across the screens again.

I could shut it down. Kill the entire server. It would cut them out, but we’d lose everything I’d had stored. The programs I’d written. The data we’d collected about their patterns. The plans I’d made to secure our territory.

Leona had saved some of it, but it wasn’t near everything, and we were running out of time.

“What are they doing, Ciel?” she asked.

“They’re trying to get acc—get access to my information databases. Steal our data. Steal my programs.”

“What happens if they get inside?”

“They’ll have anything that was saved on my computers. Some of it is useless, but it contains our location data. Our software for planning the hits we do. The programs I’ve created for facial recognition. The locations of all our cameras across the city. Browser history. Research. It’s…the records of our lives.”

“So if they get it…they know where we’ve been, what we’ve been up to, what we’re watching, and what we plan to do next?”

I nodded. My throat felt tight, and I didn’t trust myself to speak. I didn’t have the time, anyway.

“What if you wipe it?”

“We lose it, too.”

“But they can’t take it?”

“Correct.”

I let out a breath as I patched one vulnerability, only to see two more pop up as they continued to pressure test my walls.

“Kill the server, Ciel.”