Hidden Enemies | The Prime Archives #2 ✓

twenty-three

Once Emily turned on the lights, dispelling the darkness inside the room, she took a look around the luxurious penthouse.

It looked like it hadn't even been lived in. She saw no suitcases, no leftover takeout boxes. Not even a piece of trash left on the kitchen's sparkling granite counters. Nothing. She knit her brows as she went deeper into the suite.

"You sure this is the room?" Danai arched an eyebrow at her. "Doesn't look like anyone is even staying here."

"This has to be it," Emily insisted. It has to be.

Before they had entered the room, she heard a few noises from inside. There was definitely some sort of electronic device whirring somewhere in the penthouse. If she could just find it...

Her eyes lit up as she approached the hall to her left. The door to the small office room had been left wide open. Inside, the television's muted colors danced against the wall. A news channel was being played, the volume so low that only Emily would be able to hear it. A matte black laptop sat on the desk tucked in the corner of the room.

As she took a seat at the table, Danai kept watch at the door. Emily pressed one of the laptop's buttons, rousing it from its slumber. The screensaver met her eyes—a picture of Senator Crane and a beautiful woman with tanned skin and following brown hair. She knit her brows at the image.

"Who is that?" Danai asked from behind her.

"No clue."

They didn't break into Crane's hotel room to solve the mystery of his lock screen. They came to find the secrets he was keeping from the public.

"How're you gonna log into the thing?"

"I got it," Emily replied shortly. "Just watch the door." She pulled out the USB she nabbed from Archie's lab. Before his accident, the boy had developed a flash drive capable of breaking down most electronic security measures. If she really wanted to, she could've hacked into the entire hotel with the thing.

But that wasn't what she was there for.

After plugging the thumb drive into Crane's computer, she waited for the passcode screen to disappear. She grinned once Archie's code completed its job. The screen shifted to Crane's desktop, which was littered with locked folders and files.

What is all of this stuff?

She clicked a folder and a login interface popped up. It prompted her to type in a password and username—two pieces of information she didn't have. She attempted to break through the folder's security with Archie's flash drive, but it couldn't bypass the lock.

If the device couldn't unlock it, that meant something important was inside.

Her eyes widened.

She turned to Danai, who had walked back over to the bedroom door. "D, come look at this." The girl trotted over to the desk and leaned over it. Emily caught herself looking down her shirt and her face went red.

"What is it?"

"No clue. But whatever it is, Crane doesn't want us seeing it."

Emily took a look at the names of a few of the files. One was labeled "PRA-plan". Another titled "rogues". A particular folder that caught her eye was one named "Primes". She arched an eyebrow at it.

Why did he have a folder on Primes? More importantly, what was in it?

The cogs in her brain started spinning. Pieces of the puzzle were slowly putting themselves together, but she still didn't have the full picture. She needed to get inside those folders. Only then would she know.