Jezzabel by By Misha Kroon (red scrolls of magic .txt) 📖

I laughed at it and logged off. I then restarted the computer and logged on to the computer properly, so I could find an IP address for a page with a network of our towns CCTV cameras. I noted down the code and restarted the computer again.
Rayner had slumped on my bed half way through my search and began to doze, he was bored. I nudged him in the ribs,

“The next video will be on in a sec.” He opened his eyes, and looked at me.

“Why are you so technology brilliant?” he asked in an envious sort of tone. I chuckled and blushed,

“I dunno. Maybe I get it from my dad; we’ll never know unless I find them...” I trailed off. And turned back to my laptop and started typing hacking into the local council’s camera network hub.
It wasn’t easy, they had dozens of fire walls, the Trojans I sent seemed to take a while to take effect, and their systems were set up to send my malware when I tried to get in, so I had to send more Trojans to effectively ‘eat’ them. It took well over 20 minutes before I got in. Then I had to search the entire database for the right cameras at the right times.

When I eventually found them Rayner had completely fallen asleep. I saw this as a chance to properly get back at him for pinning me to my bed, and stood up balancing on the dodgy springs of my mattress, I took a deep breathe and sat as heavily as I could, without damaging him, on his stomach.

His eyes snapped open quicker than you could say Mississippi and he shouted aloud. Then seeing me sat pixie-like on his stomach his eyes narrowed until they were mean little slits. I laughed until I was red; Rayner was too winded to do much more than squint-glare at me for a while.
When he regained his regular breathing pattern I was chocking on my oxygen overdose. He sat up quickly knocking me onto his legs; I rolled off them still shaking with now silent laughter. He reached across and dragged me toward him only hold an arm and a leg. I shrieked. He laid me on my stomach and sat on the top of my legs, where the thigh meets the bum.

“There,” he said wriggling where he sat, “Now hack things and ruin my digestive system.” He said in a fake menacing voice. I reached with the hand he hadn’t laid me on, to the laptop still lying open on my bed and dragged it toward me. I double clicked the first video, opened it and turned up the brightness because it was a dim black and white image. I skipped through the video until Felicity walked into the shot; I then paused the shot and turned too looked over my shoulder.

“It’s on a 3 second picture capture.” I told him. “That means they take a picture every 3 seconds and string it together to make a video-type-thing.” He nodded and spun round so he was sitting on the laptop side of my legs.

The video showed Felicity walking along the road in the direction of my school she got to the end of the road and turn to the corner of the road that I took to school. Here she paused and looked down the road, exactly at the camera I was using to watch her. She put a hand in her pocket and pulled out something thin like a pencil. A bright laser light hit the camera lens and the image scrambled like a bad receptive TV.

I clicked out of the video and went on to another from the last camera on the street. We got to the same point where she paused before, and after she pointed her pencil-y thing at the first camera she went through and lasered the whole streets cameras, the camera we were watching from was last to switch off.

At around about the 5th camera she was turning off, a sleek black car pulled up behind her and stayed until the last camera was turned off. After that we obviously couldn’t see what happened. I sighed and moved my arm from under my chin where it had been holding up my face, and faceplanted into my bed.

“Why did she do that?” I whinged, “Now I can’t find my parents.” I lifted my arm off the bed into the air then let them flop back on my bed to emphasise my point of hopelessness. Rayner leant forward off of my legs, I sighed at the relief of being able to feel and move my legs,
“Wait,” Rayner slid the laptop closer to his side of the bed. And rolled back the video a few slides squinting at the image of the car. “Get me some paper.” He said his hand out but his eyes still on the car. I lent off my bed and pulled a sheet of scarlet paper from my pile on the desk next to my bed and a jet black roller pen and gave them to him, “Thanks.” He said and began writing something, “Think you can get another laptop from Paula’s office?” he asked. I shrugged,
“Sure.” I said sliding off the bed and shuffling along the carpet to the door. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

He looked up,
“I’m gonna search the number plate of the car on a police car registration register.” He said.

“Why can’t we use that?” I asked pointing to my laptop.

“We need it to look at other videos.” He said, “We’re going to use the laptop you’re going to get to search up the car, and some how track it. Then use this laptop to search the camera data base and find where the car is going.” I nodded and disappeared behind the door.

Text: I Own Everything To Do With This Story Unless Otherwise Stated. Any Resemblence To Real People, Stories Or Products Is Purely Coincadental.
Publication Date: 11-20-2011

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