42. Tatiana
Chapter forty-two
Tatiana
Armed with a shiny new laptop, I sit cross-legged on my bed, laptop in my lap. There’s one notepad icon in the center of the background with “Read Me” underneath it, so I click on that one first.
I heard there was a princess in need of rescuing.
Luckily, this is the kind of stuff I love.
In the Documents section, you’re going to find a .
exe software called Run Me. This will connect to every Wi-Fi within a three hundred-foot range and will run a brute-force password tester.
Once it successfully connects to the Wi-Fi, it will create a virtual twin of every computer and phone connected to the Wi-Fi.
This means you’ll be able to see it all and manipulate anything, without it changing anything on the devices themselves.
It may take a while, but I hope you find what you’re looking for
-Axel
Excitement skitters through my stomach. I have a real chance at this. I do as instructed and watch as a box appears and thousands of lines of passwords scroll by so quickly I can’t even read them.
I do my bodyweight exercises again. I’ve been doing them as often as I can throughout the day, and I love how I’ve been feeling stronger.
They’ve been helping me get tired enough to sleep, and my arms feel more toned.
It’s something small that I can do any time of day to feel more in control of my situation.
I can’t control where I live, where I sleep, or what I eat, but I can move my body.
Afterwards, I pace. This could take days or weeks, I realize, but the excitement needs a place to go. Now that I have access to the internet, I can look up anything.
I search: “Free online classes” but then wonder what I would learn. I’d like to learn more about this kind of stuff - like what Axel does. What would this be called? Hacking? Espionage?
“Free Online Cyber Security and Hacking Training” is the top result when I look.
I sign up, and it automatically lets me into an online course program. I click the first video and open a notes app on the laptop, since I don’t have pen and paper.
And for the next three weeks, I work out, FaceTime with the boys, sneak into the kitchen when Giovanni’s away, run the password tool, and learn as much as I can about cybersecurity.
I watch videos until I fall asleep and have to go back and rewatch them.
I feel incredibly stupid most days because my artistic, romantic brain struggles with concepts like routers, Linux, SQL injection, and malware.
I find myself having to pause the videos to look up what various terms mean, but I push on.
Once I’m connected, it’ll be me with access to the Vitale network, not Axel, so I need to learn how to do this on my own.