29. ~Julian~
29
~Julian~
Days had passed with Cat and Levi going hard at it
We’d gotten to see the both of them in absolute obsessive mode.
They reacted much the same way, only uttering hacker jargon to one another, the occasional high-five when they made some sort of headway, and then forgetting to eat and losing track of time and everything around them completely.
The only way they would eat while they were deep in it was for us to bring them snacks that didn’t interfere with their efforts too much, as in things they could quickly pick up with one hand, rather than actual meals.
It had even gotten to the point where Milo had hauled Levi away physically from the command center and dropped him off in his room to sleep for a few hours. The same had gone for Cat, Nico throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her upstairs to bed.
We were in the end stage now and they were obviously feeling the pressure, because we couldn’t move forward until we had those locations. Extremely well-hidden and protected locations.
As I walked into the room with some cookies for snacks, just to mix things up from Milo’s insistence on only healthy snacks, Cat slammed her fist down on the desktop.
“Fuck. Their AI just locked me out of the reflection loop. We need to reconfigure the intrusion spoofer before we trip their alerts.”
“I’m on it. Give me forty seconds,” Levi said, rapidly typing away, so fast that his fingers were basically a blur of motion.
“I’m guessing this isn’t the best time to bring you these snacks?” I spoke as I came up behind them.
Not even hearing me, Cat told Levi with a whole lot of urgency, “Hurry, or they’ll be able to trace the signal back to us.”
“I’ve got it.” He shoved his hands through his curly hair. “Motherfucker, that was close.” He looked over at her, grinning. “This is our Mount Everest, Rina.”
“Seems to be. But there’s nothing I haven’t been able to crack. These assholes aren’t fucking with my record.”
He chuckled. “Damn straight.”
“The two of you are something else.”
They both turned their heads to look at me.
“I’ll take that as a compliment mixed with a slice of fear,” Levi jested.
“You’d be right on.”
“Hey, baby,” Cat greeted me, reaching out and stroking my arm.
“Long time, darlin’.”
“We’re making headway,” Levi told me.
Cat turned her attention back to the task at hand, her touch leaving me.
A gasp escaped her. “Screw that, we’re in! We’re in, Levi!”
He swung his head to her monitor, his eyes lighting up. “Fuck, yes!”
“Which one is that?” I asked.
“Their communications network.”
“Start siphoning the data now,” she told Levi.
“On it,” he said, getting right down to it.
As she started examining what they’d just accessed, she reported, “Excellent news. For once, when it comes to these guys. We can destroy it from here. We don’t need to send any teams.”
“It’s also definitely possible to siphon all their data,” Levi assured her.
“As soon as you’re done, I’ll fry their system and—fuck!”
“What? What’s happened?” I asked.
Levi turned to look over at her. “They know what we’re doing and they’re trying to apply countermeasures.” He asked her worriedly, “Can you hold them off while I finish this?”
“Not for long. How close are you?”
“There’s a shit-ton of data, Rina.”
“You’re talking minutes, rather than seconds, then. Shit.”
“Yeah. Okay, focus on trying to ascertain their chief operational hub, just in case they interrupt my process here. We can’t fucking start all over again.”
“Agreed.”
With that, she shifted her weight, then went hacker intense again. That was what I’d been calling it since this whole thing had started.
“You won’t believe this,” Levi uttered after several moments of me putting the cookies down near them, then getting caught up in the hypnotic quality of their rapid-fire movements.
“What’s that?” Cat asked distractedly.
“I’m running a search through their files and data as it’s coming in, and there’s some intel about Nathan Donahue. A list of residences, security protocols put in place for his travels, falsified documentation with a whole slew of aliases listed, way beyond the very few that Joe knew that turned out to be burned aliases.”
“Put it into your program,” Cat told him. “Right now.”
“One step ahead of you, sweetheart.”
She grinned. “I’d say we’re pretty even steps-wise, Levi.”
“Ah, you and your competitive spirit. Fucking love it.”
“Friendship goals, huh?”
“For us, definitely.” A few moments passed, and then he was telling us, “Okay, I’m running a script that’ll feed all incoming data into my program as it comes.”
“Make sure it’s protected, in case they try to access it, or they employ counter measures.”
“Got it covered.” He grimaced at me, letting me know he hadn’t actually thought to employ that extra measure until she’d mentioned it. I wasn’t surprised. There was so much going on all at once.
I winked at him and saw him getting to it right away in the next second. Phew.
“I’ve got it!” Cat cried all of a sudden.
“Seriously?” Levi asked.
“Yeah. I’ve found their operational hub! This is it. It has to be it. Hold on—”
In the next few moments, I saw her pulling up security footage for a particular venue. She was asking him to cross-reference it with the data he was pulling in.
“It tracks,” Levi confirmed. “That’s the place. You’ve fucking done it, Rina!”
They high-fived, then started screaming and crying out excitedly.
And, fuck, I was right there with them.
It didn’t take long for the noise to spread through the house, and then Nico and Milo were rushing on in. Probably would have been Stover, too, if he hadn’t been outside throwing knives, or whatever the hell it was today.
“What’s all the screaming about?” Milo asked, coming in and looking every which way, on high alert. It was amusing for the circumstances and I started laughing, which earned me less-than-impressed looks from him.
“You’ve done it,” Nico realized, taking in Cat.
“Damn fucking straight she has,” Levi confirmed.
“ We have,” she told Levi. “There’s no way we could have done any of this separately, not with the way their system is set up.” She gestured at what he was doing. “As soon as you retrieve all the data, I’ll send the command to fry their system and put it out of commission for good. They’ll lose all their data and their communications network will be shot to hell. This will absolutely cripple them.”
In the next second, she was scribbling down on a notebook beside her that was filled with formulas and insane calculations.
She ripped out the page she’d just scrawled on, then rose from her chair and handed it to Nico. “The coordinates for the physical location of their chief operational hub.”
He took the paper and pulled her to him, kissing her deeply.
I could basically feel the strain as he forced himself to break the kiss before he lost control.
She grinned at him. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
“Go,” she told him. “Get that to your teams. Prep. All of that.”
“Or I’m not gonna be able to control myself. One more kiss or touch and it’s all systems go over here,” I warned them both.
That was what all the intensity of the last few days had done to all of us. Especially with Cat basically being out of commission while she’d been in the zone, where it had been nothing but hacking and brief naps, no time for anything else.
But it had paid off in a major way.
This was it.
We had their location after all of this time.
We had a path through to putting down these fuckers.
It was fucking on!