Second Chances: Impulse

Chapter 12

Kira had to admit, now that she wasn't trying to resist her bionics anymore, she was finding them a lot more fun. Especially since after the last energy pulse she'd received from the box, they'd become sleeker, more solid. Hell, she even had a logo on her chest. A red C that looked like some kind of gear.

Kira had also learned that she could control her cybernetics to the point where she could reconfigure them into just about anything she wanted. She'd learned that her feet now had thrusters in them, which meant that she could fly now, something that made her very excited and she'd also learned that she apparently had weapons systems built into her body. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, but at least it meant that she'd be able to protect herself if she needed to, since she wasn't planning on going into the field with Wally unless she had no choice. However, if she did, she had plenty of options to choose from.

However, the ability that Kira found the most interesting was the fact that she could hack into literally any computerized system she wanted too. And since that was pretty much everything these days, that meant that she could literally run the whole world if she wanted to, but she didn't. But she could hack through almost any firewall almost like it wasn't even there. Except for one case.

"Kira, what exactly are you doing?" Jesse asked as she entered the garage's lab to find Kira just standing there, her hologram, which Jesse had reinstalled on the condition that Kira would not mess around with it again, off, and just standing there.

"Trying to hack into the McCulloch Technologies mainframe." Kira said casually, getting Jesse's attention.

"Wait, I knew you could access other systems, but you can hack into the company's network without being on site?" Jesse asked.

"Well, I'm trying to. I bypassed the initial encryption easily, but now it seems like the system has some kind of emergency failsafe." Kira said.

"Let me guess, everytime you take down one firewall, the system generates a new one?" Jesse asked.

"How did you know?" Kira asked her, shocked.

"Because my mom and I are the ones who wrote that program. A defense system to keep our company secure. And now my dad is using it against me. Do you think you can get past it?" Jesse asked.

"I'm trying to, but everytime I crack a firewall, the amount of time I have before another pops up gets smaller and smaller." Kira said.

"Wait, could my dad track the signal back to you?" Jesse asked, since that could put their operation at risk.

"Normally yes, but my technology is anything but normal. He doesn't even know I'm in the system, since I managed to bypass the initial system without raising any alarms and I'm able to cloak my activities to any tech he's got." Kira said.

"Great. But anyways, how long do you think it will take you to get past the defenses?" Jesse asked.

"I don't know. This is like the world's weirdest, hardest game of whack a mole ever. It's taking all my computing power just to keep up with the changes." Kira said.

"Wait, I have an idea." Jesse said.

"I'm all ears." Kira said.

"See if you can isolate the code for the program generating the firewalls. If you can get that, I think I can reverse engineer a program to allow you to bypass it." Jesse said as she went over to her computer.

"On it." Kira said as her red eye flared and Jesse saw the coding appear on her monitor.

"Okay dad, let's see if you were smart enough to change my work." Jesse said with a grin as she got to work.