Dhruv combed his fingers through his hair. The password only allowed three tries and Deepshika had already tried once with Aakriti's name. He stretched his legs underneath the coffee table, jogging his mind for a clue. He knew Aakriti preferred dates and coded names for passwords. He tried her date of birth only to be greeted with error message. Only one try left.
Deepshika returned after taking the call. “Any luck?”
"Aunty has set some obsure password for sure. One more try. If it fails, the laptop will be locked out."
“Try 94995.” Deepshika suggested.
“Why?” He didn't like taking orders. He had more reason to not take orders from Deepshika. Yet when she spoke of urgency, he could only agree to get down to work.
“Her phone password was 9495. The hint shows it's 5-digit numeric password.”
Dhruv did not understand. So Deepshika, wrote the number on a piece of paper. The '9' looked like ‘a’; ‘4’ for ‘y’; and ‘5’ could be rotated to read as ‘n’.
He entered 94995 and the welcome screen appeared. “Yes!” He pumped his fist but retracted under Deepshika's stare.
They spent the next hour checking the files for any clues. Ayaan moved to Siddhant's room. After a while, Ayaan came to join Dhruv and Deepshika. “I think the chloroform was a bit strong. He is still unconscious.”
Deepshika suggested. “May be he could help as well. You shouldn't have bound him like that.”
“I have always seen him very close to my parents, especially my Dad. Do you think he would be quiet knowing we are spying on my Aunt?”
“You never know. He knew your family for years. He might know the past we can't find in these files.”
Much to his chagrin, Dhruv agreed. “There's nothing personal and sensitive in these files. If he talks, it would be faster.”
“I know.” Ayaan nodded sitting down next to Dhruv. “I have already opened the knots. Let's wait for him to wake up. In the meantime,” Ayaan forwarded a pendrive with a worn out strap, “check this.”
Deepshika asked, “What's that?”
“Raghav gave me last night. He has high hopes from this. Apparently, Aunty gave him this to only give me and no one else. Let's see what's inside.”
Dhruv cried, “Not again! Another password. Good news is we don't have limited tries. Bad news is we don't have a hint.”
“Aakriti was too careful. Try the same password.”
It worked! Before he could celebrate, hundreds of files appeared all named using numbers that made no sense. He prayed for an easy way as he opened a random file. A dialogue box appeared with ‘Please enter the password’.
Dhruv hit his head against the table. “Ayaan, look at this.”
Ayaan responded calmly asking him to open different files. But all files had the same dialogue box before anything appeared. There were about 1000 pdf files, each one password protected.
An idea struck his mind. Dhruv entered the file name as password. The result was ‘Wrong password! Please try again.’
He opened his own laptop and checked for the software that could help him hack all files together. But Ayaan stopped him. “Dhruv, Aunty wanted me to see this drive. That means I should be able to open them without any additional software. We must think of a way to find those passwords. It must be very simple hidden in the plain sight.”
They came up with possibilities of name combinations. But nothing worked. After nearly two hours, Ayaan asked Dhruv, “Till now, we were thinking on one file at a time. Let's think of the whole collection. Dhruv, sort them by name.”
The pattern didn't make any sense. Dhruv tried to sort by size. Most of the files were of 300KB to 500KB, except for one at 16MB. He made a note of it filename. He then sorted them by date created.
“Got it. Now the file names make sense. It's not so random after all. The first three digits are the file size. The next two digits correspond to the hour, the next two for the month, the next two for minutes, and the final two for the date reversed.”
“Good job, Dhruv!” Ayaan patted his back. “Try the date in different formats for password. If we crack one, we should have others as well.”
The dates didn't work. They were losing time on the drive without knowing if at all it would be useful. Dhruv was fed up. He left to catch some sleep hoping the nap would put some hint in his fogged brain.
YOU ARE READING
Pursuit (Completed)
Mystery / ThrillerA boy is left behind by his mother and is rescued by a stranger. Soon after, two people are killed. Twenty five years later, emotions are resurfacing. Ayaan Agnihotri learns that his rescuer is no more but the truth runs deeper than that. So, he emb...
