Chapter 12
AVA
Ava’s heart hammered as a massive bang sounded in the room. Was that the guard she’d slipped past earlier?
Visions of him banging against the door in a desperate attempt to break inside and catch her flashed through her mind.
There was nowhere to go inside the room, nowhere to hide. She’d be caught red-handed.
“What’s going on, Ava?” Sebastian asked.
“A massive bang. I don’t know if the guards are trying to break down the door or what?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes wide as she crept away from the server she’d found, searching for the source of the sound.
She leaned from behind a bank of servers, peering around the corner.
Her eyes widened at what she found. She fluttered her eyelashes, the tension easing in her body as she hurried forward. “Doc?”
“Ava?” Kyle moaned as he wriggled on the floor. “Did I die?”
“Nope,” she said with a shake of her head. “Where does it hurt?”
“Doc?” Sebastian questioned as she set the phone on the floor and leaned over the writhing man.
“Can you kiss it better?” Kyle asked.
“Hey!” Alex’s voice called from above her.
She craned her neck, staring up into the vent–now devoid of its grate–above her. The corners of her lips turned up as she spotted him hovering high in the air. “Ace!”
“Hey babe,” he answered with a small wave.
She grinned at him. “Are you coming down? I could use your help.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I mean, I really don’t want to, but…I guess.”
The weight of the problems she’d faced trying to get the information off the server lifted. Within a few minutes, Kyle had scrambled out of the way, and Alex lay in a heap in his place.
Her heart pounded painfully in her chest as she stared at Alex’s unmoving form, panic clawing at her insides. Every second that passed felt like an eternity, the fear of being caught, of everything going wrong, crashing over her.
She rushed to his side, her hands trembling with fear. Her mind whirled with the terrifying possibility of losing him. As she pressed her palm against his cheek, the warmth of his skin grounded her, reminding her of what she was fighting for. “Ace?”
His eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, you okay?”
He offered her a soft smile. “I think so.”
The tension in her shoulders eased a little. “Good, because I need your help cracking that server.”
His smile broadened. “I can do that.”
“Perfect. And while you work on that server, I’ll be working on a plan to get out of here with Shadow. We’re running out of time, Alex.” Her voice turned low as the urgency hit her. “If we don’t find a way out of here soon, they’re going to lock this place down even tighter, and we’ll be trapped.”
Alex bobbed his head as sat up, groaning. “Yeah, I think we may be in trouble on that front.”
“Why?” she asked, her hand steadying him as he scrambled to his feet. “What happened? And why were you two in the vent?”
“Really long story,” Kyle said as Alex pulled his phone from his pocket, toggling it on.
Ava grabbed her phone, toggling on the speaker. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, you should be,” Sebastian answered. “And quickly. There’s an alert out because Doc and the tech guru disappeared from the bathroom.”
Ava snapped her gaze to Kyle. “Into the ventilation system?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Yeah. We climbed in and escaped from that she-devil Alex used to get us into the building.”
“I like you, Doc,” Ava said with a grin at him.
He offered her a broad smile.
“Ahh, maybe instead of flirting, you two may want to work on a plan to get out of there. The alarm I set off is now cleared, but if they don’t find Alex and Doc soon, they’re going to lock down again.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to do that, Shadow,” Ava said with a shake of her head. “We can’t get past these guards.”
Heat washed over her as she shifted her weight, her features pinching. “Wait. Maybe we can. I have an idea. As soon as Alex can get these files that we need, I think I can get us out of here.”
“How?” Kyle asked. “This isn’t going to be a walk in the park.”
“Maybe we can climb back into the vent,” Alex murmured, his thumbs pounding on his phone. “Hey, Shadow, are you seeing anything on my laptop?”
“Uhhh, yes. A little set of eyes just popped up.”
“Alex’s Watchful Eye?” Ava asked as she sidled closer to Alex, glancing up at him.
“Old school, Sparky. I’m working with limited resources here.”
She rubbed his back. “But still managing. That’s why you’re the best, babe.”
Color rose in his cheeks as she kissed him.
“So, how is this going to work?” Kyle asked.
“I’m using this as a wireless transmitter,” Alex answered, waving his phone in the air. “It’ll connect to my laptop via the Alex’s Watchful Eye program. As long as this server has wireless capabilities, this app will transmit everything back to my laptop.”
Ava peered over his arm at the transmission bar citing progress. It zipped quickly to the finish mark. She snapped her gaze to him, her brows furrowed. “That didn’t seem right.”
“Nope. Shadow, can you check to see if there are files from this server?”
“Where?” the man asked.
“There should be a new folder called Alex’s watchful eye available. Check it,” Alex answered, his features pinched.
After a few seconds, Sebastian answered, “Nothing.”
Alex cursed under his breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Maybe the server doesn’t have wireless capabilities. I mean if it did, you could probably access it remotely and switch that on, right?” Ava asked.
Alex heaved a sigh.
“So, what now?”
Alex shook his head.
“Come on, Ace. You’re in a room filled with servers, and you’re the best tech guru in the world. You can make this work. What do you need?”
Alex twisted, staring at the banks of other servers. “They have to use something to transfer files to this one, right? It can’t just sit there alone with no access.”
“It’s hard-wired into the system, no Wi-Fi. But it’s only hard-wired to computers within this system.”
“But they probably have wireless, right?” Ava said.
“So…” Alex’s eyes narrowed. “We send all the files to a local machine, hack the local, send them all to my laptop.”
“What do you need from me?” Ava asked.
“I need to get closer to a computer that this machine has access to,” Alex said, his eyes rising to the ceiling. “And they’re probably all upstairs.”
Ava hurried to the vent they’d dropped out of, peering up. “Yeah, there’s no way I can climb that. We need another solution.”
“Wait, wait, wait, I have a list of computers here,” Sebastian said. “It’s in their security system. I can see active machines and inactive stations. What do you need from me?”
Alex squeezed his eyes closed, deep in thought.
“Uh, I need an active machine, so it’s already logged in and ready to roll.
I’m going to send a program to my laptop.
I need you to run it. It will find one of the machines that’s active, see if it’s connected to this server, if it is, it will pull the files back and transfer them. ”
Alex’s fingers flew across his screen as he typed the code onto his phone, sweat beading on his brow.
Ava rubbed his shoulders as he worked. “Easy, Ace. You’ve got this.”
He licked his lips, shaking his head. “I don’t know, babe. This is very crude and does not have my usual flair and gusto.”
“Doesn’t matter, babe. You can do it. Just watch for typos.”
“Ugh, yeah. Don’t want a bug in the program.” He slowed his typing a little. “Tell me I’ve got this again.”
“You’ve got this, Alex. You are the only person who can do this.”
Kyle shook his head at them. “Man, one day, I really need to find a woman as supportive as you.”
“You will, Doc. Assuming we get out of this server room alive and all of that.”
Alex huffed out a breath, letting his head fall between his shoulders. “Okay, it’s on the desktop. Run it.”
“Running it now,” Sebastian answered.
“Tell me what it’s doing.” Alex hovered over Ava’s phone.
Ava threaded her fingers through Alex’s as they waited for a response. “Uhh, it says Finding a host.”
“That sound sufficiently horrible,” Kyle said.
Ava wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “I think that’s Alex-speak for searching for an active machine connected to the server.”
“Good translation, Sparky. I didn’t want to type all of that,” Alex said with a grin.
“Found host,” Sebastian reported.
Alex bit his lower lip. “Moment of truth. It should start transferring files, hopefully without the user’s knowledge.”
Ava’s heart hammered against her ribs as she held her breath, waiting for some confirmation that Alex’s program had worked.
After what seemed like an eternity, Sebastian finally spoke. “Transferring.”
Alex heaved a sigh of relief, glancing at the server. Lights flashed and blinked, indicating it was doing something.
“Files are coming in now.”
“What’s the transfer speed?” Alex asked.
“Uhhh, looks like it’ll be done in twenty-eight minutes.”
Alex wrinkled his nose. “I really should have written something in to pull strategic files first.”
“Alex, you did so good doing this much, babe. It’s fine. But…we may want to get out of here while we still can.”
“What if something glitches with the transfer?” Kyle asked.
Alex raised a finger in the air, tapping to the server and taking a few pictures of the name on it. “Now that we know which server this is and how to get into the computers here, we can remotely access one–basically hijack it–and use it to get to this server. We’re good.”
Ava grinned at him. “Now, we just need to escape.”
“Yep.” Alex said as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “Any idea how to do that?”
“I have one,” she answered. “Follow my lead. Shadow, I need you to set off another alarm. Draw the guard that usually stands outside the server room somewhere else.”
“Uhh, okay, let me see what I can do.”
Seconds later, alarm klaxons sounded overhead again.
Alex wrinkled his nose, pressing his hands over his ears. “Ugh, I’m getting tired of that sound.”
“Okay, he’s left his post to check the next hall, you’re clear, but it’s a tight window.”
“Let’s go,” Ava said, her heart hammering against her ribs. They pushed out of the server room.
She led them down the hall. A guard rounded the corner, his eyes going wide. “There you are. You lied to me earlier.”
“I know,” Ava answered. “And you went right along with it. Talk about substandard security. I can see we have quite a bit of work to do here, don’t we?”
“All right, you’re going to have to–”
“Come with you? I don’t think so. I have a few other guards I need to speak with about their poor performance. Apparently, there’s a visitor breech, and I caught the two visitors wandering around down here unattended. How did they get access?”
The guard narrowed his eyes, suspicion flickering across his face as he studied Kyle and Alex.
Ava’s pulse quickened, but she forced herself to keep her expression neutral, her mind racing to come up with the next move.
One wrong word, and they’d be caught, but she had no intention of letting that happen.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Maybe they did it with a stolen badge…” She jiggled the badge around her neck. “Just like I did. This isn’t even my real badge. Good thing VoltTech hired me to check their security. There are some serious gaps here.”
She pushed past the man, motioning for Alex and Kyle to follow her. “Now, if you’ll excuse me–”
“Actually, I won’t,” the guard answered. “Just a minute. You’re not going anywhere.”
Ava’s eyebrows rose, her stomach clenching. Would she be able to pull this off or were they about to be caught?