Be Brave on Broadway

Chapter 4

"Donnie! The WiFi is down again!"

I sighed. Hearing that for the 12th time today made my head want to explode.

"One more night. One more night", I thought repeatedly, reminding myself that I was one night away from actually meeting Ghost28.

From Wednesday nights "conversation" that we had I felt certain that Ghost28 was Avery Conwell. She had to be, who else could it have been.

"Sorry guys, seems like the internet keeps disconnecting because of the malware the system picked up the other day. Even if I try to reset it they've changed the software itself to change its password to a 50 character password every 15 minutes. It takes me at least 10 minutes to run through all possible codes that it could be. Even then you only have 3 minutes of screen time because the system takes 2 minutes to switch back on again", I explained.

And as always no one was listening while I did so.

Leo stood about 10 feet away from me, close enough so that he could see me but just far enough so that he was out of earshot. He stepped closer when I had looked up from my keyboard.

"Can you fix it?"

I sighed. "I'll have to run out and get a few things tomorrow. It's a simple trip I can do it solo but since the system is down you won't be able to track me".

Leo shrugged. "No problem. Where are you going though?"

"Central Park. There's this store where a radio shack used to be. The basement is still filled with abandoned tech that I could use to make a new router", I said, hoping he would say "yes".

Leo nodded. "Alright. What time you going to head out?"

"Probably about 10:30pm. The park should be empty by then but I'll still wait until it's cleared out completely before I go in".

He nodded. "Sure. What time will you be back?"

"Just before 2am. Just in case they don't have what I need and I'll have to go to another store just off Amsterdam Avenue", I said, typing away on my computer again.

Everyone in my family was fully convinced that we were hacked again. I made sure of it. Mikey's "accidents" were all my doing as I had left my lab unattended to "deal" with an "emergency", knowing full well that Mikey would mess with my things. Because of that both Leo and Ralph are exhausted, I was way too "busy" to keep an eye on Mikey and Sensei wasn't feeling well and we couldn't expect him to keep an eye on Mikey either.

Everyone was just tired. Well, except Mikey.

"That's alright. Just let me know when you head out", he said, walking away to check up on what Mikey was up to now.

"Alright".

I spent the rest of the day dealing with the WiFi issue, keeping myself busy and irritating everyone in the process. At some point Leo and Ralph found something that kept Mikey out of trouble and occupied long enough so he could burn off his energy. 26 and he still had the energy of a 4 year old toddler on a sugar high.

After dinner I went back to my computer, opening up the chat between myself and Ghost28/Avery.

TurtleGenius: Good evening.

Ghost28: Hey. Looks like we were both online today.

TurtleGenius: Seems so. Was your workload less today?

Ghost28: OMG, YES. I don't think I would've been able to take another day of overtime. Luckily today was the opening and all we had to do was sort out a few minor details and we could leave for the day.