DR

worst-case scenario

uzzes. Tex

klers. Isla keeps asking where you are.

eans they still have phones. Which means the cell towers are workin

suffer through t

ne's hotspot. Laptop two connects to the portable router. I'm not some action hero with a mobile command center - I'm a desperate mother wi

ture I mapped six months ago when I was doing my paranoid security check. Someone has been in

because I know how to do this. For eight years I've been a cybersecurity con

ood a

tart working. Not elegant, not car

rst firew

building. Not Room 15. Goddamnit –

I mutter, checking the

BEEP

adrenaline. I fumble for glucose tablets with one hand while typing with the other. The chalky

, screaming her son's name. A man in a business suit pounds on locked doors with his

hing that might

every barrier I break, two more appear. Whoever wrote this anti

a

op t

utines that look like standard building protocol

e sig

rror correction patterns, the mathematical poetry that made his software legendary. I

ever use his work

s someone

. Code we wrote together during those late nights in his apartment, when we thought we were buildin

r greatest achievement an

s a whisper, but the rage building

U

the school: _Room 15 - water coming from

probably trying to keep the other kids calm while she waits for mommy to save her. Be

ime, the bad

-one m

ems or following proper protocols. I become digital dynamite, blowing through

Children pour out, crying and laughing and calling for

hrough layers of obfuscation and misdirection. There – hidden in

ut trapping al

trapping one s

i

ure and panic. Enough to terrorize, not enough to truly harm. But Room 15 is different.

nts Isla s

ings. Unkn

thout think

ly distorted, artificially calm. "Impre

body goes electr

eight years ago. Someone who k

in real-time, undoing my progress as fast as I can ma

t take a

hild. And now I

ne goe

Isla. Someone knows Frank is her father. Someone is using my dau

ge gives me some

the attacker has emotional investment. Emotional investment

tterns with the kind of focused intensity that made me legendary at the FBI.

om inside the

een m