𝐄𝐱 𝐖𝐢𝐟𝐞'𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞

34. She was 001!

Baby, you light up my world
like nobody else
The way that you flip your hair
gets me overwhelmed
But when you smile at the ground,
it ain't hard to tell
You don't know, oh-oh

"Brother Murad, I'm going to get my sister. Please don't stop me!" Aaban stood up suddenly and rushed towards the entrance.

But right at that moment, the door was pushed open from the outside. Aaban stared disbelievingly at the person that soon walked through it. He was shell-shocked.

Was he dreaming? Why would his sister be there? Wasn't she detained at the precinct...

Aaban rubbed his eyes and confirmed the slender figure at the door was his sister, Tahera. After leaving the police station, she rushed to the venue as fast as possible.

She scanned the giant TV Screen and sighed in relief when she noticed X PC Manager still hadn't been broken through. Good, there was still time.

"Sis‽" Aaban hurled himself at her excitedly, adding, "Sis, is this really you? How can you be here? I saw you being taken away with my own two eyes."

"Miss Hussain..." Murad too sprung up from his seat. He himself didn't even realize his hands were shaking from excitement.

The rest of the room was astonished. When Selim saw Tahera, his face fell!Didn't he have his men bring Tahera to the police station? How did she get out and what was she doing there?

Taahir stared at her thoughtfully. He too was wondering the same thing. The question on practically everyone's mind was what was a woman doing there?

All the hackers present that day were male. It was not that there weren't female hackers but they were far and few in between..This year's Hacker Competition happened to have no female hackers who registered so when a woman appeared at the venue, no one expected her to be one.

Only ET looked at Tahera strangely, like he could smell the similarities between them. Could she be the programmer behind X PC Manager? ET's eyes shone enthusiastically thinking about this possibility...

"We can talk about that later, quick, tell me what's the current situation," Tahera brushed off Aaban's enquiries and strode confidently towards the competition area.

"Sis, over here, come take my seat," Aaban fell into her beat instantly and led her towards his spot. He then quickly brought Tahera up to speed.

"Sis, our software is still holding up but that hacker, ET has taken two of our defenses down. Brother Murad and I on the other hand only manage to wear out the first layer of King Internet Security's defenses."

Aaban pointed at the man wearing a black cap across the room. Tahera  looked down that direction and she found herself meeting ET's dark eyes. The contact was brief but a challenge had been sent and accepted. The competition had gotten personal.

"How long did he take?" Tahera asked easily.

Aaban sighed before he came out with the answer, "Less than 20 minutes in total."

"Not bad, he's quite a talent," Tahera commented objectively. If he only used 20 minutes to take down X PC Manager's first two walls of defense, he is indeed praiseworthy. However, this bit of prowess was still child's play in Tahera's eyes!

Aaban was confused. He asked worriedly, "Sis, you also think that he's good?"

"He is very good."

"Then, what should we do? He's starting on our third layer of defense!"

They would lose if ET hacked through this last wall of defense. Aaban was unconcerned. This third layer was not so easily breached. She still had time, plenty of time in fact.