Steps

Step 5: Discovering Her Personality

"Please tell me you found something."

"No, nothing."

"Adam! You were supposed to find it! Find something. Find anything! Any trace! I'm not making this up Adam. I saw it. I don't know what it was, or how it got there, but it was there."

"Are you sure Leah? I mean, what time were you working on the server?"

"4 am...." She mumbled.

"What was that?"

"4 am. Adam, I'm not lying, and I wasn't sleep deprived. Well, maybe I was, but still! I know what I saw."

"Alright, Leah, alright. Look, I'll run another remote sweep, but I seriously doubt I'll find anything. If anyone was hiding something on the server, I think they would have probably moved it by now, seeing that you almost gained access to it."

"Dude, that was some next-gen level encryption. I had no idea what to do. But I'm serious; the only thing on my servers is invoices for toilet paper and soap. There is nothing of importance. At all. So, why would someone try and hide something there?"

"I have no idea, but listen, I gotta go. I'll finish up this scan and call you if I find anything, ok?"

"Alright."

"And Leah, stop pulling your insane night shift crap. I'm the night shift worker, not you. I don't care if Ray Palmer is taking your office. Work some normal hours and get some sleep."

"Fine."

"I'm serious, ok? Bye Leah."

"Bye Adam." Leah hung up and laid her phone down.

She sighed. Adam was right. She was sleep deprived. But what could she do? Ray Palmer had been in her office every single day this week. She couldn't do her normal work with him in her office, and if she let it pile up the whole office would grind to a halt. She felt helpless.

Sometime around 4 am, she had found some odd files buried deep within one of the servers. She knew that they hadn't been there the previous week, so they were ...fresh? She didn't know what to call it. That didn't matter. What did matter is that somehow someone had gotten the files onto her server. There was no possibility for a remote link, at least not on this particular server, so the person had to have come into the server room and uploaded them via a direct link. The whole situation baffled her.

She really hoped that Adam's check of the server would find whatever files she had found. They were extremely well hidden. Whoever had put them there was incredibly smart. They were buried under layers and layers of fake files and folders, and they had an insanely strong encryption on them. She couldn't get in if she tried.

Which brought her to the point, why were they there in the first place? Who had placed them there? There were only 2 or 3 other people in the office that had access to the server room besides herself. Not even the janitors could get in there. And when had they done it? Since she was there at night, it had to have been done during the day while she wasn't there. Someone had uploaded them exactly when they knew she wouldn't be there.

She exhaled sharply. This whole situation was annoying. She didn't want to think about what would happen if someone in information security, other than Adam, found out about it. She needed to distract herself.

She was back at Jitters today, keeping close to the office in case anything decided to break. She really didn't have any work she could take out of the office, so she had basically just been sitting around for the past few hours, not doing anything. She sighed. Might as well watch a movie. She decided that today was an Avatar kind of day and opened the file on her tablet. She put in her ear buds and started the movie.