Broken Memories [I Did it for You - Book 2]

11

Seven felt bile splash against the walls of his throat as he stormed up the stairs towards his room. He dashed inside before slamming the door hard behind him, his thoughts spilling into his mind at a hundred miles per second. He pressed his clammy fingers against his hot cheeks as he tried to get the image of Scarlett's terrified face out of his head along with the sheer anger on Emjay's that had been directed solely at him.

Why was this happening? Why had Scarlett reacted like that towards him and why was Emjay so quick to target him like that? So many questions tumbled around his brain frantically. But no matter how long he pondered on each, they were all left unanswered which only made the young hacker feel worse.

Gritting his teeth, Seven suddenly remembered the bag that he kept his hacking equipment in was still slung over his shoulder, digging into his skin that also pressed against the side of his neck. He set it down on his bed, absentmindedly rubbing his shoulder before he unzipped it and took out Scarlett's broken laptop and phone and placed them next to the bag away from each other. He stared at them before grabbing the small crucifix around his neck. He closed his eyes, feeling hot tears sting against his eyeballs as he squeezed them shut and prayed for him to find something, anything that would be worthwhile to help find out why Mint Eye had taken Scarlett and where their new base and Saeran were.

"Please, help me find something. Please. If not for me then for Scarlett. She didn't deserve any of this" he whispered desperately into the crucifix before snapping his eyes open again.

Without wasting another second, Seven took apart Scarlett's broken phone and laptop. He placed the hard drive and memory cards that had been smashed into pieces into a neat pile and tried to think of what he could do to retrieve all the information.

Staring at the sharp broken-off edges of the parts that had been cracked and smashed so violently and with a strong purpose, Seven suddenly felt his eyes losing focus, causing everything around him to turn blurry. He slapped his face hard before spinning on his heels to face his computer where he logged on and got to work.

First, he copied the details of both Scarlett's personal and work email address that Jaehee had sent to him from her work contract and effortlessly hacked into them both. There'd been nothing suspicious on her personal email apart from the odd spam email about hot guys in the area or winning a brand-new kettle from Amazon, and it saddened Seven to the core. This girl hardly ever got any emails that weren't spam. There were no emails from friends or family trying to reach out, nor were there messages from past classmates or colleagues asking for a catch-up. Scarlett's personal email - her life - seemed and looked completely empty, and Seven could almost feel the loneliness radiating from it.

Poor Scarlett.

You almost remind me of myself...

Seven snapped himself out of it. Hopefully, Scarlett's phone would have shown a different story. Perhaps she solely used messaging apps to talk to family and friends, if only he could access the files on her phone, but he knew from looking at it that it was impossible. However, he quickly checked the data in search of any messaging apps that she used that were also available to download on the desktop that he could hack into and check, but he couldn't find any relating to her. He then hacked into her Twitter account, remembering that she followed his own account on Twitter. He checked her DMs, but they were also empty.

Apart from one.

He clicked on it and was stunned to see that there were private messages sent to his own Twitter account from hers.

"Hi, Defender of Justice 707! Haha! Oh, I hope that wasn't totally cringeworthy. I'm a mess, heh. Anyway, it's Scarlett, the tiny, shy, hacker girl you helped at C&R and I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the help! You really got me out of a sticky situation with Miss Kang. That woman honestly scares me sometimes with her stern, robotic attitude. Not that it's a bad attitude to have it's just, it'd be nice to see her smile now and again. Anyway, I knew that she could tell that I was one of the, let's say, "lower-ranking hackers" and I could also tell that she was starting to lose her patience with me. I honestly think I was close to having a panic attack before you came and helped me, so yeah, thank you so much, Seven! And it was lovely speaking to you. You're so kind and funny! You made me laugh so much that I was still laughing even when I got back home later that night! Anyway, I'm rambling and I need to stop now before I send you a novel, ha. So yeah, uh, I hope I get to see you again soon and I hope to see another one of your new creations at some point too!"