Page 89 of Road to Redemption

Once the elevator doors swung open, I slipped out and toward the server room. From my phone, I used the remote access Teresa had set me up with to disable cameras in the hallway.

The server room was behind glass doors, locked by a keypad and left unattended after business hours. If I swiped in with my card, security would have known it was me that entered after hours.

And Isaac would know what I was searching for.

Swiping Derek’s card kept me safe. A green light and a click was all it took to shove the door open.

Inside, the room was warm. Tower after tower of blinking lights and the low hum of churning computer fans filled the server space.

Each bank was full of thousands of vital financial documents, pieces of data that could change world markets, secured in the basement of our building where we could protect them from cyber attacks.

From the end of each row, I grabbed the file guide. Each tower was labeled with its purpose, some of them were more vague than others.

I knew these would be a waste of time. Anything that was wifi enabled would be a bust. I’d already spent years hunting for incriminating files buried in the bowels of these servers. But only the ones I could access from the safety of my office.

I marched to the back of the server room, the warmth of the computers growing heavier as I reached older tech. The farther I walked, the clunkier the servers became.

Until I reached one that was beige in color, with just a few LED lights. It had to be at least twenty years old — the worn plastic casing a clear enough indicator.

What really caught my eye was the lack of ethernet cable in the back. Unlike every other serve in the room, this one was only plugged into power.

It was exactly what Teresa had suspected it looked like. Those Laniidae girls may have been young but they were smart and prepared for any outcome.

Looking over my shoulder and down the line of servers, I tried to keep an ear out for an intruder. It was unlikely but security liked to do their rounds. With Isaac’s increased suspicions, it was possible that he’d have added the server room to their route.

I needed to move fast.

Kneeling down, I grabbed a USB from my pocket and plugged it into the first slot I could see. Once it was in, a green light on its case blinked before going steady. I pulled open my phone, connecting to the built in network I’d put on the flashdrive.

I clicked on the cache of files.

I’m in.

Millions of files appeared inside the remote access.

I couldn’t pull anything off the server, knowing that it would raise red flags. And I wasn’t going to put any of us in danger. Like I’d told Leo, I wasn’t willing to risk the mission for this goose chase.

But if I could access the files from afar, I could hunt through them for anything useful. And if we needed to make duplicates we could do that.

I’d been hoping that Leo was barking up the wrong tree — not wanting to believe that anyone else’s parents were as monstrous as my father. And maybe that just one of us had nothing to do with this sick and twisted web.

But The Oracle had been plotting for more than a decade which meant that those odds had shrunk to near zero.

All of us had been brought together for one reason, one greater purpose.

Leo wasn’t an exception.

Scrolling through them on my phone, I clicked into a random folder, labeled The Island. My brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of the files names. Almost all of them were unlabeled, just generically named after whatever screenshot number it was.

I found one that looked short from the thumbnail and opened it.

Quick scan was all it took.

The Major is onto something.

The email read simply:

ID,