The Silver Ninja®: A Bitter Winter (Extended Preview of published book)

Chapter 10: Once Human

CHAPTER 10

Once Human

In the northeast, sometimes the snow would never come. The winters would be cold but mild, a mere inconvenience. And sometimes the winter would be brutal. Entire cities would be enveloped by a swirling fog of snow. Businesses would close, trains and flights would be cancelled, and the world would slowly grind to a halt.

For Cindy, this was the beginning of a bitter winter. Everything she held dear was slowly being taken away. Jonas would be next, then her parents, and finally herself. I'm being paranoid, she thought, but with the way her luck has been lately who wouldn't? She would never forget the dizzying sensation of being trapped in a car rolling to its grave. Or how utterly helpless she was to protect her sister.

Had this been another regular winter, she knew exactly where she'd be right now. She'd be in bed, half-naked, with her pre-accident athletic body. Jonas would be next to her, reading a boring chapter on the application of nanomachines. And then, after removing her bra, she would reach below his stomach and entice him with a little bit of late night fun. How lovely it was to remember a time when her life had not decomposed into a complete pile of shit.

She pulled up to the gate blocking the entrance of the Latini building parking garage and waved Jonas's access card. As the gate opened and she pulled into a spot, she realized there would be no turning back. Raymond said the movers would come tomorrow to haul the suit away. If she decided not go on, there would be no second chances.

Armed with her crutches, she made her way through the Lucent Labs corridor and arrived at the vault door leading to SIRCA's housing. If Michael was right, the access card would be all she needed to gain access, no retina scan. She swiped it and quietly celebrated when the door unlocked.

The motion sensor detected her presence. One by one the fluorescent lights flickered on. Sterile light cast down onto the metal desks and a lone remaining computer. Through the glass window separating the Main Lab from the Workshop, the containment unit stood alone, with its lights and systems on standby. She woke the SIRCA control terminal from sleep and was immediately dismayed.

"Password? Shit."

She typed in James (Jonas Ames) for the user login and input the password he uses for his laptop—Gr4yf0x93. The login attempt failed. She didn't know how many tries the computer would allow and decided to hold off. Maybe there was a password written down somewhere.

Asides from a computer and chair the lab was stripped clean. She could find nothing related to the SIRCA control terminal or its password. The facility had been stripped clean and only had the bare essentials to keep it running. She found a random network card adapter, dusty Ethernet cables, and a tiny screw.

"Tell me I didn't come all this way just to be stopped by a stupid password."

She checked out an area of the lab called the Server Room. The enclosed space whined with the sound of hundreds of fans blowing at once. Towers of flashing lights stood in a row blinking with hidden purpose. Again, no notes, no password, nothing.

As she turned to head back to the main lab, she spotted a laptop hidden in a corner of the room. Wires dangled above it like vines and an external hard drive flashed its status light. A picture of Cindy and Jonas was taped over the laptop web camera.

Cindy tapped the spacebar which woke the laptop from sleep. She hen-pecked Gray Fox 93 and cheered loudly when the computer unlocked. A status bar sat in the middle of the screen, transferring files from a folder called SIRCA BACKUP to the external drive. Cindy left his back up alone and opened his password manager app.