Ellie Sandberg would love to reinvent herself. When she earns a spot at an elite boarding school for young inventors, it seems like the perfect opportunity: A summer away from home, away from her overprotective parents, and away from the hopeless cr...
I hustle through the halls toward my dorm room, swearing beneath my breath. It's way later than I intended. Nearly dawn. I need to get the video feeds back to their undoctored state before campus security notices anything amiss.
A tendril of unease curls its way into the pit of my stomach. I've been messing around with the security footage way too much lately. I'd been meaning to lay off for the rest of the summer session. Keep myself out of trouble. Stick to the rules... But there was no way I could follow curfew last night. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and last night called for full damage control mode.
I hustle to my desk and log into my laptop. A few familiar keystrokes, and my trusty script begins to run.
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A grim smile curves my lips. Time for some old-school "augmented reality"... Little known fact, but Emerson Kemp's whole interest in AR began as nothing more than a schoolboy's efforts to circumvent curfew. I've been using his old hack for three summers now—ever since he took us under his wing and shared this little nugget of code before he graduated. Hard to believe no one on campus security has caught wind. They seriously need to update their cybersecurity protocols. This one little .exe file is all it takes to override the password and gain full access to Winthrop security's internal server.
I drum my fingers against my knee as I wait for it to work. I've gone through these motions more times than I can count, but something tonight has me feeling unsettled. I have the weirdest feeling that I'm about to be found out. What would Dr. Carlyle do if he realized that Reese, Eleanor, and I have been playing games with the camera feeds all this time?
Something tells me that Reese and Eleanor would be just fine. I'm the one who would end up out on my ass, with a one-way ticket back to my grandmother's apartment in New York.
"Stop it," I mutter to myself. A shudder creeps down my spine, and I give my head a shake to rid myself of the sensation. There's no reason to think that campus security will figure it out on their own. The only hitch could be if Eleanor decides to clue them in, just to screw me over. Yet another reason I have to play along with her manipulative games.
How did I get myself into this mess? Everything was under control until yesterday afternoon. I was sitting right here at my desk, preparing to get started on the format libraries. Ellie and I were supposed to work together after dinner, and I wanted to have something to show for myself before I met up with her. But then I got that frantic text from Reese.
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