The Cardinal Bird (1 of Cardinal Series)

Chapter 28

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My hands flew back from the keyboard like the keys had suddenly turned into spiders. I was in the middle of growing my concern for what would surely be our short-term imprisonment--short-term because if Nikolai was able to find us anonymously at a hostel, he would be able to find us legally registered at whatever correctional facility we ended up at--when Corey went back to his monitor. He began typing furiously.

"What?" I said in fear, my hands still held up in the air. "Were we traced?" I didn't think we had been. I would've noticed long before then and been able to delete our tracks and back out...but, then again, this was Corey's computer. It pretty much had its own personality, like it was a sentient being. A.I. levels even. It was like a...a Jarvis Junior.

"No," he said in concentration, his fingers flying. "Different alarm."

I deflated just the slightest bit before the world was shifting around me as Brandon veered us through another turn. Sets of hands gripped the back of my chair again, otherwise I would have gone flying. When we finished turning, I looked to Corey. "Do you need any help."

"No," he said. "Well, yes, but what you're doing needs to be finished, too."

"He's right," Karl said from next to me. "Focus on this."

"He can handle...whatever it is that's making his baby go mad," Marc piped in.

I took their word at face value on the matter and turned back to the screen. I went to work. I typed in the algorithm that I thought would let us do what we wanted. It was probably three times as long as the first one I had entered, and I was glad that Marc and Karl were being silent throughout the process. It was slightly harder to hack into than I had thought before--which, really, was a relief because it would be unfortunate if people were doing things like this to Tallinn every day.

Twostep_authcommand.bui

Username: tl56452est

Password:**********************

ACCESS TO SYSTEM

Version 4.5.8

Initializing...

I hit enter. The code disappeared, and I held my breath waiting to see if it took.

Return;0

The alarm that Corey had only briefly silenced started going off again. It drew my attention away from my screen to glance in his direction. I ignored the alarm at first, until I heard his noise of confusion.

He met my eyes, worried. "It's not me."

My eyes flew back to the screen.

SECURITY BREACH

Level 3 Authorization Required

Timeout Protocol Protection {Engaged}

Commencing...

My heart started pounding, and my fingers started of their own volition, nearly running entirely from muscle memory.

"What is it, Sang?" Marc asked, but I couldn't answer. I was too busy scouring through the coding to be able to give him an explanation.

I found what I hoped would bypass the security feature screaming at me. Unfortunately, it was a timed response, so if I didn't get it in the computer right now, some horrible tracing bots would sweep down on us from cyberspace and start gridlocking us in.

We ran another intersection, horns blasting away all around us and momentarily drowning out the sound of the alarm before it was back with a blaring vengeance.