Cyber Dawn (A Ben Raine Novel) (16 page)

With a nod, Sarah explained. “While you were getting coffee, I was looking through those unencrypted text files I mentioned earlier. I opened one to see what was in it, but instead . . . I must have activated the program.”

“It’s okay, Sarah.”

“I’m sorry. Rookie mistake.”

Katherine walked up with two cups of coffee in her hands. “Here you go,” she said.

Sarah muttered her thanks.

“Thanks,” I said.

“So, we lost the game tonight,” Katherine said with a frown. “Pretty sure we missed our star wide receiver.”

I choked on my coffee. After a day and half with Sarah, I’d forgotten all about football. But it explained why Katherine and her friends were in their cheerleader outfits. Friday night was game night.

“Um, thanks,” I said. “Sorry we lost.”

She shrugged. “We’re still in first place.”

I looked over her shoulder at her three friends. They stood near the door and looked annoyed. Sarah noticed, too.

“I think your friends are ready to leave,” she said.

Katherine glanced over her shoulder and then back at me. She ignored Sarah.

“So, Ben, I was hoping I could make it up to you about last week. Maybe we could get together tomorrow night? My parents are out of town . . . I could make you dinner at my house?”

I swallowed slowly. “Um, yeah, maybe.”

“Okay great,” she replied quickly. “It’s a date. Call me tomorrow!”

Without waiting for a reply, she spun around and walked back to her friends and out the front door. I exhaled and looked over at Sarah, who stared intently at her laptop screen. I thought I detected the faintest of smiles.

After a few moments of silence, she said, “Maybe?”

I shrugged and lightly pushed her on the shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Probably the first time she’s ever heard that.”

“Just playing hard to get,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

Sarah laughed. “Yeah, right.”

I was about to counter, when a new message appeared on my HUD.

New System Alerts Available

I stared at it, not sure what to do. My HUD was still hidden.
Turn on display
, I thought.

My vision again filled with various icons and readouts. The alert message disappeared, replaced by lines of text that looked similar to the log Sarah showed me earlier. I read the alerts in order.

Infiltrator Mk-5 launch script initiated. 19:15:13

Infiltrator Mk-5 system check complete. 19:15:18

System compatibility confirmed. 19:15:30

Infiltrator Mk-5 start initiated. 19:15:31

Infiltrator Mk-5 startup complete. 19:14:35

Retinal calibration started. 19:15:42

Retinal calibration complete. 19:16:20

“There’s something in the log about retinal calibration,” I said to Sarah.

“You can see a log?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s like the one you showed me earlier.”

Without taking her eyes off the screen, she said, “That’s probably why you had vertigo and then recovered so quickly. It must have taken your system a minute to calibrate the overlay with your vision.”

“So what is it then?” I asked.

Sarah slowly shook her head. “It’s some sort of upgrade I guess. Like you said, a HUD or visual overlay. Megan must have installed it, but never turned it on.”

I swallowed hard. Another flash of text caught my attention.

Contacting update server CL001-457 @ 10.1.1.42. 19:26:32

“Sarah?” I asked.

“One second,” she said, holding a finger up. “I think I found something.”

“What’s 10.1.1.42?” I asked.

She paused and faced me. “That’s an IP address. Every phone, computer or other device that connects to a network needs one.”

I stared blankly.

“Think of it as a digital address,” she added.

I reread the list of system alerts.

“Why?” Sarah asked.

“It’s in the log.”

Another message appeared:

System update sent to CL001-457 @ 10.1.1.42 19.26.51

“Okay, here it is,” Sarah said. “According to my IP checker, CyberLife owns that address. But I guess that’s not a big surprise.”

“Then we may have a problem,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“I think I just called CyberLife.”

24

And for
at least
the tenth time, I regretted letting her drive my Jeep. It was not helping my vertigo. “Great,” I replied. “Can you slow down a little? I’m going to throw up.”

“Can’t,” she said. “We have to clear that CyberLife server log before somebody notices the entry. If we don’t, you’re screwed.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. But she did accelerate.

Two minutes later, we pulled into the Starbucks parking lot near our school.

“Sarah, why are we . . .”

Without answering, she climbed out and ran around to my side of the Jeep. She pulled the passenger door open and half-yanked me out. Before I could ask what was going on, she grabbed my hand and ran across the street to the sidewalk in front of our school. I wouldn’t normally mind holding her hand, but she was walking so fast, I felt more like a dog on a leash than a couple taking a stroll together.

We jogged down the sidewalk until we reached the start of a bike path that wound its way around the school and headed back toward the downtown area. Off to our left was the river that flowed around the back of our school. To the right was the actual school, its lights seeping through the trees.

I thought maybe Sarah lived nearby and was using the path to cut through to her neighborhood. Instead, she suddenly slowed and ducked off the path and into the woods behind our school. She stopped behind a large cottonwood tree and pulled me down to her side.

“Sarah?”

“Shhh,” she said.

“Um, what are we doing? Don’t we need to figure out this CyberLife thing?”

“That’s what I am doing,” she whispered. “Now stop talking before Oscar hears you.”

Oscar? Who in the heck is Oscar?

Sarah put her finger to her lips and glanced at the school. “Shhh,” she repeated.

I followed her gaze and spotted a man in a security guard uniform rounding the back corner of the building. In his hand was a giant metal flashlight and I could hear the occasional squawk from a radio.

“Stay down,” Sarah whispered.

I crouched behind her and my eyes alternated between the back of her head and the approaching guard. For an instant, I debated calling him for help. Sarah had, at the moment, seemingly lost her mind.

A minute later, when the guard’s footsteps faded around the far corner, she turned to me, and asked, “Ready?”

I grabbed her arm. “Ready for what?”

“I told you, we’re going to my office.”

I opened my mouth to verbalize my earlier question—
have you gone crazy?
But before I could get the words out, Sarah ran in a low crouch to the back of the school. Against my better judgment, I followed.

We stopped at a locked metal door. Sarah pulled a white plastic key card from her bag. She waved it across a sensor pad and the door clicked open.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

I glanced down the side of the building where the guard had been a minute before.
Don’t worry about it?
I thought, again debating if I should call for help. Instead, I took a deep breath and stepped through the door behind her.

We crouched just inside the dark entryway and remained motionless for several moments. In the distance I could make out a dimly lit security light on the wall near the ceiling.

“Sarah, are you sure this is a good idea?” I whispered.

“It’s fine. I do this all the time.”

Before I could ask the next obvious question—
um, what?
—she took off down the hall. I watched her disappear into the darkness.

Well, I’ve already committed several felonies tonight,
I reassured myself.
Why not another?

I ran and caught up to her. In sharp contrast to the typical weekday, the school was empty and dead silent. Completely devoid of the energy I had soaked up the day after Megan died.

After running through the school, we turned down the hallway that led to the library’s main entrance. At the double doors, I peered through the window. The only visible light came from a row of computer displays with their swirling lines and bouncing bubble screensavers.

“I take it your
office
is that desk on the second floor?” I asked.

“You got it,” she replied.

We worked our way past the empty checkout counter, tables and chairs, and climbed the staircase. Dark clouds filled the sky above and the moonlight barely made its way through the glass ceiling and into the atrium. Sarah, clearly adept at navigating the second floor maze in the dark, led the way.

Two minutes later we were in her
office
.

“Okay, what now?” I asked as we each took a chair at the small desk.

“Pray that Megan’s creds still work,” she said.

Sarah opened her laptop and started typing rapidly.

“If they don’t?”

She didn’t answer.

Other than the sound of clicking keys, the alcove was silent. After a minute passed, Sarah leaned back and sighed loudly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Megan’s credentials aren’t working. They must have shut them down after . . . she died.”

“So, you have no idea how to get in?”

She glared at me. “It’s not like hacking into your parents’ email account. CyberLife has a team—the best in the business I might add—of full-time network security techs who do nothing but try to thwart hackers. The only reason I got in so easily last time was because of Megan’s username and password. Without those . . .”

Her voice trailed off.

I started to think of a story to tell Dr. Merrick. I would leave Sarah out of it, of course. Just tell him that Megan gave me the password before she died.
Honestly Dr. Merrick, I was just bored one day, so I logged in and started messing around. You know me, I love computers!

“It’s okay, Sarah,” I said. “I can handle CyberLife.”

She rested her elbows on the desk and sighed. “I’m sorry, Ben.”

Her laptop screen displayed the CyberLife logo and fields for a username and password. For what was possibly the first time ever, I wished I knew more about computers. I felt useless.

I flipped my HUD back on to check for new messages. Maybe something from CyberLife. The log was empty, but suddenly a box-shaped outline slid down from the corner of my peripheral vision and focused on Sarah’s laptop. It flashed briefly and then displayed a detailed list of information, including what I assumed to be the brand and various technical specs. Under the box, a message read:

Wi-Fi connection detected. Infiltration complete. Full access granted.

A second box appeared on my HUD. It slid down to the center of the screen and surrounded the empty username and password fields on Sarah’s laptop. It too flashed, then another new message appeared:

CL-001-457 Infiltration complete. Full access granted.

I stared at the strange combination of letters and numbers.

CL-001-457?

Then it hit me.

The CyberLife server my system contacted earlier.

“Sarah?” I said.

She didn’t respond. She was now leaning in and staring intently at her screen. I reached out and gently touched her arm.

“Sarah?”

Without turning, she said, “Hold on. Something strange is going on here.”

“I know,” I said. “I think . . . we’re in.”

Worry lines creased her forehead. “No, we’re not, Ben. I don’t have the creds, remember?”

“I think I just hacked in.”

Sarah snorted, and said, “Not funny. I’ve seen you with computers. You can barely log in to your email account.”

I laughed. “Haha. Seriously though. My system . . .”

A new window popped open on Sarah’s laptop. She leaned forward so close her nose almost touched the screen. “H–how did you do that?”

“Not sure. It’s just sort of . . . happened.”

A few moments later, she whistled softly. Her face was a mix of shock and awe. “Ben, you hacked my laptop, the CyberLife VPN, and the update server.” She paused, then added, “In less than thirty seconds.”

I swallowed. “That’s good?”

She slowly shook her head.

“That’s impossible.”

25

I put my hands behind my head and grinned. “Oh yeah?”

She punched me in the thigh. This time, my
good
thigh.

“Ouch,” I exclaimed as I fell forward in the chair.

“Don’t get cocky,” she said.

“I was kidding,” I replied, rubbing the spot on my leg. “Did your brother beat you up when you were little or something?”

“Nope, only child.”

“It’s not fair,” I said. “I can’t hit you back.”

“Sure you can,” she replied. “But if you do, I will kick your ass.”

We both laughed. I made a mental note that Sarah often responded physically to sarcasm and cockiness. As proof, I already sported three or four bruises on my body. In just two days.

She pointed at the screen, and said, “I don’t know how your system did this. But call me impressed.”

“I don’t know either,” I replied. “Whatever it was, it happened automatically. I definitely didn’t tell it what to do.”

“That much I do know,” Sarah said with a smirk. “We can figure out how it works later. Since we’re already inside CyberLife, let’s look around a little.”

I watched over Sarah’s shoulder as she typed and flipped between various windows. She still moved too fast for me to make any sense of it, but I was curious what my system might do next.

“Ahem,” Sarah said, clearing her throat.

I shifted my eyes and met hers. She stared directly at me, her lips curved into a sarcastic smile.