Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

card, and remembered all the times Mom had shown him how to jimmy a lock, so there was no trace of you having been there…and all doors opened on command. When he questioned her about her lock-picking expertise, she would shrug. “It’s fun, Drew dear. That’s all.”

It was more than just fun. It was a lesson, something she had passed down, something—

He needed to stop thinking. Needed to concentrate.

He rounded a corner, his hand on a large trash can and froze. Footsteps clomped down the hall. He ducked down, making himself a ball, hiding beside the trash.

The footsteps dissipated and he peeked around the can. A guard turned down another hall, disappearing from view.

He stayed quiet for several minutes, waiting for an overly-aggressive Chinese lieutenant to run up on him and point the barrel of his rifle against the bottom of Drew’s chin.

The click-clack of boots penetrated the hall he had just came from. They stopped. Drew stood, leaned forward, and took a look around the corner. It was General Yu. Drew leaned back against the wall, mouthing, “Holy mother of Mary.” It was like the world’s slowest high-speed chase. He was going to melt from panic and exhaustion.

His heartbeat started racing, threatening to explode out of his chest. He couldn’t divert. His plan—idiotic plan—was still underway. He needed info, data, the skinny on why Mya’s dad was so important to these assholes. Moving forward was his best and only option.

“Mya’s dad isn’t the only reason Anderle’s keeping you in the dark, Drew. You should know this. Get your head into the game.” Again, Mom. Always sixteen steps ahead of his conscious mind.

He looked around, making sure the coast was clear, and headed down the hall and around another corner until he was at the oval office doors. He looked left and right. No one was watching...waiting for him. He hoped.

He slipped the card between the strike plate and the latch bolt, easily opening the doors. He pulled the candy wrapper out of the hole in the strike plate and put the wrapper in his pants pocket. He walked into the oval office, closed the door, and eyed the computer.

He pulled out the desk chair and sat, turned on the computer and typed in the username and password. Anderle’s Achilles’ heel was his unending hubris. He simply thought he was smarter than anyone else. He’d told Drew his password, because he thought it was a riot and it would never circle back to bite him in the butt. “Joke’s on you, ass-hat,” said Drew, fingers flying over the keyboards.

User Name: Melchizedek

Password: 1212yordlebuttmunch1212

The screen loaded and a standard open source operating system appeared, the perfect, hack-proof Linux system—a system designed to make hackers realize they’d just entered a mind hell. The damage that could be done on other operating systems was much harder to accomplish on this system.

He double clicked on the home folder and clicked the file system. He opened the root folder and PASSWORD blinked on the screen. And as he suspected, another password was needed. He knew Anderle wouldn’t be a total idiot. He would have created an entirely new password for these executable files.

WRONG PASSWORD.

He flipped over the keyboard. No sticky note stuck to the bottom of it with a password written on it.

He opened a drawer.

Folders upon folders.

He searched through them.

Nothing.

He shut the drawer and went to the next. Again, nothing, and no more drawers to check. Where would Anderle keep his passwords? In a safe? He wouldn’t just consign them to memory, would he? If he did, there would be no way he could find them.

The screen saver came on—a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, gripping a gun—the infamous hacker group’s, Anonymous, icon—stared at him from the screen.

Was that Anderle? If it was, he didn’t deserve to wear the Anonymous mask, nor associate himself with that group. Anonymous were helpers of society and Anderle had turned out to be a scoundrel, a self-serving piece of garbage whose agenda he still had to figure out.

He moved the mouse back and forth, changing the screen to the desktop. He wasn’t going to get into the root file without a password. What a waste of adrenaline. He’d crept through the corridors, evaded generals, left Mya on her own. Shit. He’d left the kid alone. He wasn’t a fit guardian. He had to get back to her.

“Anonymous,” said his mother. “A-n-o-n-y-m-o-u-s.”

Butterflies rioted in his stomach. He went back into the root file and typed anonymous into the password.

He lifted his shoulders in anticipation. He drooped as WRONG PASSWORD blinked on the screen.

He rested back in the chair, feet up on the desk, pinching his bottom lip. He dropped his feet almost instantly. Anonymous never spelled their name with a lower-case A. It was always upper-case.

He typed in the password.

A mess of folders popped up. That meant they were high priority or at least something Anderle had recently worked on. If they meant something to Anderle, then they meant something to Drew.

He read over folder after folder until he saw it. The guy was trying to hide it, but Drew could see right through Anderle’s attempt. A folder named Seraph was sitting right there for the clicking.

Maybe this was it. Maybe this was his goldmine.

He double clicked and the file opened.

Target 1-1.

Target 1-2.

Target 1-3.

Portal.

Mission Reports.

And, Status Reports.

He clicked on Target 1-1.

A man in a United States military uniform, definitely Latino, was pictured next to a Jeep, talking to some troops. An insignia with three stripes up, three stripes down, and cross rifles in the center was on his sleeve.

He was important; the one in charge. Drew could tell.

He clicked on Target 1-2.

The same man, though this one closer up, too close, as if they—whoever they were—had been on a stakeout just outside this guy’s bunker or base.

He pulled up Target 1-3. This one was in black and white, the name Angel Segarra underneath it.

“Bingo.”

He was in the right file.

He double clicked Mission Reports.

A file full of dated documents opened