Chapter 18
When 9 p.m. rolled around, I slipped through the quiet campus paths again, an all-too-familiar routine. Darkness blanketed the autumn trees, lamp posts casting pale circles of light on the ground. Every rustle of leaves made me tense, scanning for watchers in hoods.
After we left the party, we separated to go back to our respective rooms and shower off the sticky whisky. I reached the caretaker’s cottage without incident. Inside, Anubis waited, a laptop open on the desk. He glanced up. “Hey. I got the software ready.”
I took off my jacket, stepping toward him. “Which software?”
He turned the laptop to show me lines of code. “I found a simple script that’ll set up a decoy system. The Skulls can poke around and think they have full admin access, but it’s only a sandbox environment.”
Relief coursed through me. “This could work.”
He nodded, then stood and placed both hands on my shoulders. “We have to be careful tonight. If someone sees us, it’ll raise too many questions.”
I rested my palms against his chest. “We’ll do it quickly.”
We left the cottage at half-past ten, winding through the deserted campus toward the library. Most students were out partying or cramming in their dorms on a Saturday night, so we didn’t see many people. The library itself closed at nine on weekends, so it should be empty except for security cameras and maybe an overnight cleaning crew.
My stomach twisted. I’m about to commit sabotage at my own workplace.
At the library’s grand entrance, I swiped my staff keycard. Anubis planned to delete the record of it. The heavy glass doors hissed open, revealing the darkened interior lit only by emergency lights. I flicked them on to a minimal setting, just enough for us to see.
“I think the cleaning crew finished hours ago,” I whispered, leading Anubis past the front desk. My voice echoed in the marble-floored lobby.
He nodded. “Okay, security station is on the second floor, right?”
I shook my head. “Actually, it’s in the staff area behind the main circulation desk. The second floor has the server room, but we might start with the main console near Margrett’s office. That’s the direct feed for cameras.”
We moved quietly, every footstep magnified in the hush. Past rows of shelves, up a short flight of stairs, and through a staff-only door. If a single camera was still operational, it would catch us.
“Let’s hope we’re out of range,” I muttered, ducking behind the half-open blinds of Margrett’s office.
The security console perched on a metal desk, a monitor showing a rotating feed from various library cameras. They were still active. I nearly yelped when I saw the feed toggling between angles, displaying time stamps.
Anubis cursed under his breath. “They’re definitely on. We need to kill them or loop them.”
I eased onto the office chair, tapping the keyboard. My staff login had limited privileges, but hopefully enough for a partial override. “Come on…”
Seconds ticked by. The console demanded an admin passcode to disable cameras. Meanwhile, the rotating feeds popped in and out, and I worried one would capture Anubis’ face at any second.
He crouched behind me, pulling the flash drive from his jacket pocket. “Let’s see if Sophie’s toy can help.”
I inserted the flash drive, eyes flicking to the overhead camera in the corner of the room. Hurry.
A command prompt auto-launched on the screen. Lines of text scrolled by: Executing infiltration script… bypass attempt… Trojan loaded.
My blood chilled. This was definitely more advanced than I imagined. The console beeped, and the monitor’s security feeds froze. A final line of text appeared: Installation complete. Rebooting.
Anubis tensed. “Are we sure we want to reboot? That might set off an alert.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I said, biting my lip. “We need to do the partial block, remember?”
Nodding, he tapped keys to finalize the commands. The system blinked, going dark, then restarted. His hands shook as he typed lines from memory, Anubis’ decoy code that would create a secondary gateway.
Finally, the screen flickered to life, displaying a fake interface that mimicked the library’s security menu. If anyone from the Skulls accessed it, they’d see what looked like total access. In reality, we’d quarantined it.
I exhaled, adrenaline making my head spin.
“It’s done.” Anubis gently squeezed my shoulder. “We should check the second-floor server room too. That’s where the real data is stored.”
God. Another risk. But we had to sell the story. “Let’s go.”
We navigated the dim corridor, pausing whenever we heard a creak. Bookshelves loomed on either side, and the hush felt strangely alive, like the library was holding its breath.
At the server room door, the keypad glowed in the darkness. I swiped my staff keycard again, and to my relief, the door clicked open. We slipped inside.
Towering racks of servers hummed with fans, blinking lights reflecting off polished metal. The library’s digital brain, containing everything from old scans to rare manuscripts.
“This is the nerve center,” I whispered, stepping to the main terminal.
Anubis pressed the lock pick set into my hand, nodding at a small, locked cabinet to one side. “Might be the backup drives. If we sabotage them, it’ll look serious.”
I gulped. “I can’t do real damage,” I said, voice tight with conflict. “Too many important records are stored here, people’s academic futures.”
“Right,” he said, gently. “But we can look like we are. Wipe or corrupt some superficial records?”
My mind flashed to Toccara’s transcripts, perhaps her final semester records. The police might have scoured them after her death. Could they hold clues?
I cracked open the cabinet with relative ease, my trembling fingers aided by the adrenaline. Inside were smaller drive bays labeled by date.
I let out a quiet hum. “Let’s make a show of damaging them, delete minimal data but keep a hidden backup. We can’t blow up real files if we want to help the next potential Toccara.”
Anubis said he set up a partial data wipe on a few non-critical backups, old digital newspaper archives, defunct card catalog indexes. Enough to cause alarm but not enough to ruin lives.
Then I copied a few suspiciously labeled files referencing Toccara’s final weeks onto my phone. They were in a private admin folder, not easily accessible. Possibly old security logs.
Anubis’ brow furrowed as he watched me. “Those might be crucial.”
I stuffed my phone back into my jacket. “Let’s hope so.”
Finally, we restarted the system. The servers hummed as if nothing had happened, but we knew better. The sabotage was staged, the infiltration hidden.
We hurried out, triple-checking that no sign of our presence remained. By the time we locked the staff door behind us, sweat trickled down my spine.
“Think we’re good?” Anubis asked, voice low.
“I hope,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
We slipped away, leaving the library in darkness behind us.
When we got back to the caretaker’s cabin, the rush from the night flung us into each other's arms. Our clothes were gone in no time.
Soon, Anubis loomed over me, entering me slowly. “God, Nubia. You’re fucking amazing. You’re brave and smart, and so damn sexy. I can’t get the image of you climbing out of that hot tub in your wet, whisky soaked panties out of my mind.” He pierced me with his cock.
Overwhelmed by the night and his words, I fell speechless.
His soulful eyes bore into me as he moved on top of me. “I know I said it before, but I feel it now… I… I think I’m in love with you.”
My throat hurt as I forced the words out, “I think I love you too.” It was a lie. I knew I loved him.