Marie's Path

Chapter 22

Volto sat in front of his computer screen. With a few strokes on the keyboard, eleven different camera feeds from Marie's house popped up on his monitor. Super user privileges, he thought smiling as he leaned back in his chair thinking how easy this was. They were suppose to be Academy, yet he was able to backdoor the compiler itself, so every compiled software was a potential way for him to come back in. He couldn't believe it, after all this time, he was still a step ahead. They had no clue they were compromised to this extent. He always covered his tracks, and made sure the secret password was hard coded, worked every time.

Scanning the different feeds, he was surprised to see Sang sitting at the kitchen island with the woman that helps out her mother. They both were looking at their phones. Volto's chest tightened, she's crying. His finger lightly brushed the screen along her face. "Sang..." he sighed.

Keeping Sang's feed up on one monitor, he turned to another looking at the feeds from other rooms.

"Well, well, what have we here?" He turned his chair to a larger monitor and switched on camera seven. Mrs. Sorenson's bedroom. His eyebrows arched as he watched the Blackbourne and Toma teams standing around the room. Mrs. Sorenson looked afraid. But not Marie. His head tilted as he studied her, his eyes narrowed, she looked almost...pleased?

"Are you on an ego trip, you stuck up bitch? What did you do?"

"What the hell are they doing?" He pushed a few keys without success, trying to get the audio feed up. Movement from Victor caught his attention. He watched closely as Victor looked down at his opened laptop before nodding to one of the twins across the room. The twin smiled and opened his own laptop.

Volto jolted back in his desk chair as the monitor screens around him started flickering before turning black. An image of a silver skull and crossbones filled the screens with the words killer poke written in red. The image faded, replaced with an influx of rapidly changing data. All he could do is watch in stunned silence, as the zombies sent useless data before it all came to a standstill. And then what he dreaded the most, the DoS image in bold black letters.

"Denial of service attack? You have got to be kidding me!" He yelled standing up knocking his chair away. "Fucking bastards!" He turned, kicking a trash can across the room. His hands clutched at his head as he looked back at his worthless operating system.

Hearing the front door slam shut, Volto pried his eyes away from the screens. "Honey, I'm home!" He rolled his eyes hearing her voice.

"I'll be out in a minute!" he yelled through his locked bedroom door pulling his phone from his pocket, bringing it up to his face.

"Come on answer the fucking phone," he grumbled sitting at the end of his desk. "Finally! Listen, they launched a DoS attack... No shit... I know, I'd be impressed too if it wasn't me they got... I need you to hit Marie for me, wipe out her account, every penny... Yeah ya heard me right. That smug bitch is going to learn the hard way what can happen being around the Academy."

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Marie met Axel's eyes after waiting for the others to leave the room. He nodded at her unspoken request, leaving her alone with her mother.

She stayed near the door. But Mrs. Sorenson, sitting in her chair across the room, never looked her way, choosing instead to focus on a landscape hanging on the wall.

"You may be my mother," Marie began softly, "but you're not my mom. You know, growing up, I'd sometimes watch girls with their moms. And I'd wonder what it's like to have someone that cares, someone that loves you no matter what." Marie chuckled shaking her head. "I'd get so jealous. I'd think how lucky those girls were, and they probably didn't even know it. And I wished I had just a little bit of what they did. But now, it doesn't matter anymore. Because at least when the cancer kills you, my heart won't break. I won't have a mom to miss and cry for. So... that's one thing, anyway."