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She raised her eyebrows and I got out of her way.
“Sorry,” I said. “You can come in.”
“Teo and Grayson had work to do, and Victor is getting Oliver microchipped after he takes him to the vet. I can’t stay at HQ, Jace, I’m worried sick about Sam. I…”
“You drove here? By yourself?” I asked.
“I can drive,” she said, then smiled at me. “Took Teo’s keys. You think he’ll be mad?”
“Furious,” I replied, getting out of the way. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here. I found something, Sof.”
She closed the door behind her and approached, the scent of her perfume mingling with the stale air of my digital war room. Her gaze flicked to my laptop, then back to mine. “Is that—“
“Yeah, a Trojan horse I wasn’t worried about but should have been,” I confirmed, reopening the file to show her the encrypted message. “Brady’s left us a nasty surprise.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s a crawler,” I said. “It doesn’t just get into my files to corrupt them, it makes them impossible for me to access eventually. There’s something on the backend–sends all the sensitive information to a source I haven’t managed to track and then destroys the whole thing. But not before they get everything. All our files, all our transactions…”
“Is it already doing it?” she asked.
I nodded, pinching the bridge of my nose. We both walked toward my desk. “I managed to reroute it to one of my external hard drives, but it might have been too late,” I said. “This was designed to be activated as soon as it was plugged into the computer.”
Sofia leaned in closer, her eyes fixated on the glowing screen. “Can you stop it?” she asked, her voice laced with urgency.
“I’m working on it,” I replied as I took a seat at my desk, my fingers flying across the keyboard. Sweat dotted my forehead as I delved deeper into the code, desperately searching for a way to neutralize the threat.
Sofia paced back and forth behind me, her footsteps echoing the anxious rhythm of my heart. The weight of our mission bore down on us, suffocating the air in the room. We had grown so accustomed to fighting external threats, but now the enemy was lurking within our own walls.
“Jace,” Sofia’s voice trembled. “I need to find him. I need to find my father and make him pay for this.”
I turned away from the screen, meeting her gaze. “I will find him, Sofia,” I said. “Right now, I have to stop this virus from spreading. Everything is at play right now.”
We couldn’t afford to lose focus. The fate of our organization and the safety of those we cared about hung in the balance.
As I continued to analyze the intricate lines of code, a glimmer of a solution began to form in my mind. “I think I might have found a way to halt the virus,” I said, my voice filled with cautious optimism.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I create a virtual machine to act as a decoy,” I said. “We’ll lose some files but I think this will work. Actually, we set up multiple dummy systems—shadows of our own infrastructure. When the virus activates, it hits them instead of the real deal. I have a feeling I won’t be able to get rid of it all in the backend.”
“Like a cyber sleight of hand,” she said, the corner of her mouth quirking up.”
“Exactly.” A smirk tugged at my lips, too. “It’ll buy us time to track the remote signal and take down whoever’s holding the leash. Don’t quote me on this but I’m almost positive Brady wasn’t the one in charge.”
“Smart,” she said, her hand brushing against mine again for a second. Her touch sent a shiver through my body. “Let’s do it. What do you need from me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just…stay here. Hang out?”
She smiled, sitting on my bed. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”
The click-clack of keys filled the room as I set to work. I partitioned servers, rerouted traffic, and spun illusions with the ease of a seasoned magician. I had never thought about it like that, but I liked the way Sofia was framing it. With each stroke, I wove a protective web around The Blades, around my family.
“Once the decoys are live, we’ll need to monitor them closely,” I said, pausing to catch her eye. “Any unusual activity could be our cue to strike back.”
“Whatever you need, Jace. You can count on me.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, turning back to my screen. “I know.”
