"I'll take a left turn here, and the office should be at the very end of this corridor," John whispered, his voice barely a breath in the oppressive silence of the administrative wing.
He slowed his pace as he approached the designated door. The hallway was long and narrow, with polished tile that seemed to amplify his nervousness.
In this part of the building, the air felt heavier, stagnant with the scent of old paper and floor wax. This was a dead-end corridor, with Tara's office lying at the end of it!
'I can't afford to be sloppy now,' he thought. 'Frame Recognition.'
He hadn't bothered using the ability earlier while he was out in the main halls. He was officially on duty, after all, and his presence was covered by his status as a night guard. But here, at his target, the stakes had changed.
To his immense relief, the Frame Recognition ability revealed nothing out of the ordinary. The area was clean.
As he reached Tara's office door, he paused to inspect it. It wasn't particularly large, perhaps five to seven meters in depth. Through his ability, he could see the silhouette of a central desk, a few tall lockers for filing, and a couple of guest chairs arranged neatly in front of the desk.
John didn't care about the furniture. He used the Shell ability, the command line hovering in his field of vision. He started to write the code using his thoughts, and the white cursor typed out the complex strings of code for the search engine he had developed.
Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, table knife he had grabbed from his dorm before coming here.
'Let's do it.'
He pricked the tip of his index finger. He didn't flinch as a single, crimson drop of blood welled up, before he touched the wall with it
The effect was instantaneous. In his vision, the sea of green code surrounding the part of the wall he touched flickered and surged, turning a brilliant, stark white. The white-out effect covered a localised area of roughly two feet.
-
[Ding! You will consume 5 Mental Points per 10 minutes of synchronisation!]
-
'Five points?' John's heart sank. He had anticipated a higher cost than his own room, perhaps double or even triple, considering the difference in security measures between his dorm and this office. 'At least I came prepared. I knew this wouldn't be a simple walk in the park.'
He turned his full attention back to the Shell Interface, the lines of code reflecting in his pupils.
'Run it!'
He gave the command with a mental snap. Now, the clock was truly ticking. He had exactly eight minutes left for the search engine to scour the office's data, find the relevant file, and extract the information he desperately needed. He waited to see the fee for running the search engine in this office.
'So it's the same as the handshake cost,' John noted as the cost for running the program was also five Mental Points. 'Ten points every ten minutes just to hack and search for one time. I have only enough for one more attempt if this one failed to bring me the results I need.'
Piles of raw code began to cascade down the interface. The latest version of his search engine was performing beautifully; it was already filtering out the white noise of coding junk, narrowing down thousands of lines of useless data into a manageable number of less than a hundred. To John, this was a massive leap.
The search engine was relentless, adding new lines every second. John knew he couldn't afford to wait for the program to finish. He began reading the code in real-time, his eyes darting across the flickering strings, searching for anything of value about Ricky.
Just as he was starting to gain momentum, a red warning box flashed across his vision, accompanied by a chime.
-
[Ding! Warning! Certain segments of the file you are attempting to view are protected by a sophisticated, high-level security measure.
[Ding! It is highly advisable to cease all attempts to view these protected codes. Do you wish to proceed at significant risk, or abort searching these encrypted parts?]
-
John froze. This was new. 'This is the first time you've actually asked for my opinion about a security risk,' he muttered.
The system's shift in tone was palpable. Usually, it gave directives or warnings; now, it was offering a choice, which meant the risk wasn't just high, the reward was as well. But John didn't have the luxury of making a bet.
'Just stop showing the protected codes,' he commanded. 'I'm not strong enough to crack a high-level encryption yet. I'll come back later when I've levelled the system up and dig out every single secret hiding in this file.'
Strangely, he wasn't surprised that advanced security measures were protecting Ricky's file. If anything, the presence of such a sophisticated firewall only confirmed his darkest suspicions. Ricky had a secret that might even overshadow Cissel's mysteries.
Cissel was an anomaly, yes, a girl with two distinct abilities, but she still operated within the recognisable bounds of her character type. Ricky, however, was acting out of his character.
The waterfall of data slowed to a trickle. John scanned the Shell window. There were roughly sixty to seventy lines of code left. It wasn't as much as he had hoped for, but it was far more than he had expected after the security warning.
He continued to read from where he stopped, his brow furrowing. He spent five minutes dissecting the lines, but the more he read, the more frustrated he became.
'Ricky Cartel. Eighteen years old. Origin: A small town called Torterina. Family: None. Siblings: None. Relatives: None... Dammit! He really covered up his tracks quite well!'
He slammed a hand against the wall, though he caught himself before making too much noise. 'The entire profile is a total fabrication.'
The hack was complete, but the victory felt hollow. He had spent his precious Mental Points to uncover a lie. The information was detailed and useless. It felt like a professional cover-up story.
'If he has no family, no connections, and isn't even wealthy, then how the hell is he rubbing shoulders with guys like Alfred and Bernard? Why is his file highly encrypted and protected? Nah, something isn't right here!'
John thought back to his conversation with Luke. Even Luke, who knew everyone in the upper echelons of the first-year, had found Ricky's presence unsettling.
'The only thing in here that isn't fluff is this...' John narrowed his eyes at the final line of code. 'He is a member of PAREI. What the hell is PAREI?'
A wave of bitter disappointment washed over him. He had burned through a dozen Mental Points for an acronym he didn't recognise, and a fake cover-up story. He felt he was robbed!
He felt a sudden, violent urge to kick the office door down and tear through the files with his bare hands, just to see if the paper held what the digital world was hiding.
But before his anger could boil over, a frantic series of notifications began to explode across his vision, bringing his rage to a reasonable level.