The Last Beekeeper by Pablo Cartaya

Author:Pablo Cartaya
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

In the Time Before

Cami and I are quiet inside the house and around la finca. We decide to go to Abuelita’s shed to talk about everything.

“Cami, we have to figure out how to help Cornelius. And find Arelis.”

“There’s nothing we can do for them right now, Yoly,” she says. “Let’s stick to the plan. Get that scholarship erased and then figure out how we can help.”

“You want to abandon our friends?”

“No!” she snaps back. “Cornelius is—” She pauses. I can tell how worried she is. “He means a lot to me, okay? And yes, I want to find a way to help, but until we get you out of debt, they have leverage over us. We need to take care of the scholarship first, okay?”

“I need to message Arelis on the FN. I have to know she’s okay.”

“Yoly, they just apprehended Cornelius. They might already be searching for us.”

“It’ll be fine,” I tell her. “Arelis sent the FN to my V-probe on an encrypted file. It would take the System weeks to figure out where it was sent.”

“How do you know?”

“Hermana, I’m good at this stuff, but Arelis is better. Trust me. She wouldn’t send something that was easily detected. The problem is trying to find her before the System tracks down the power source she’s operating from.”

My sister looks at me like she wants to argue with me, but then her face changes.

“Okay, hermana,” she says. “What do you want to do?”

I tell her tomorrow we need to head out at first light, and we agree to finish discussing in the morning.

“Better to keep our V-probes active so they don’t suspect anything,” I tell her, heading back into the house.

Cami says goodnight, and I go to my room. I lie in my bed, listening to the silence surrounding my walls. Walls that are surely waiting to record whatever sound I might make. But they won’t hear a word from me. Not anymore.

I click on the FN icon on my V-probe. The screen goes blank and the keyboard flashes. I scroll through our messages and land back on one of the first messages she sent. The letters I couldn’t understand before scroll onto the screen.

SY<>FN. Panda. Bro. SI.ToC. Plsassist

I think SY stands for System. FN is also capitalized, so it must be Free Network. I look up from my screen. That’s how she must be operating the Free Network. She’s piggybacking on the System’s programming! I look back at the message. The next letters are familiar. We used to abbreviate Silo back in the early days before the System upgrades allowed for more characters in messages.

I look up.

Cornelius is being kept in Silo. She must want me to find out where he’s being detained.

I look at the V-probe. There’s no way I can hack into the System. The fire walls are too secure. I could if I found the System servers and was able to access them. Every bit of data is stored in there. But I need a map.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.