Unnaturals #2 by Devon Hughes

Author:Devon Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

31

LEESA HAD SAID THEY NEEDED PROOF THAT OTHER PEOPLE were involved if they were going to help Pete, but being grounded, Marcus didn’t exactly have much access to other people. He did have access to Bruce, though, and for the first time, Marcus was actually looking forward to spending some time with his stepdad.

That it was for the sole purpose of discovering incriminating information that would ensure Bruce was locked up forever was beside the point.

Marcus’s parents were arguing a lot lately, and Bruce was spending a lot of late nights at work. Marcus took the opportunity of the building family tension to do some snooping. He snuck into Bruce’s office and took a look around.

The walls were covered in boring sciencey stuff—biology illustrations and food-chain diagrams and charts of elements. Everything was pretty organized on the desk. There wasn’t much in the drawers except an old tablet and a stack of notepads—Bruce was so ancient he actually still took notes. Like, with an actual pen.

Marcus heard the squeak of Bruce’s tennis shoes and realized he had lost track of time. Just before Bruce opened the door, Marcus dove behind one of the white curtains covering the windows. A ton of dust bunnies crawled up his nose, and as Marcus held his breath to keep from sneezing, he heard Bruce giving a voice command on his handheld.

“Eris.”

Bruce waited a beat while it connected. Then Marcus heard a volley of words on the other side, and listened to Bruce’s frustrated inhales as he kept trying to cut in.

“I know,” he kept repeating. “I know. I’m not backing out.”

More sighing, and Marcus heard his fingers tapping—must be accessing the slipstream.

“I have the data right here, and I’m telling you we’re not ready to move to H-trials yet. That timeline is impossible without more experiments.” He sighed. “Fine. I said, fine! But it isn’t right.”

Bruce huffed and stormed out of the room, and Marcus scrambled out from behind the curtain.

Of course his notes would be on the slipstream—easily accessible from home or the office! Marcus had to get out of here, though. That was close, and if Bruce found him in his office, Marcus wouldn’t just be grounded, he’d be strapped to his bed in a straitjacket.

When he got back to his room, Marcus took out the mess of cords and stream accessories from the box he’d shoved in the corner. He’d been locked out of the simulink before, but now that Marcus had a real purpose, he had a little more initiative and creativity. Using gaming codes from a defunct role-play set that connected players from all over the world, Marcus was finally able to get on to the slipstream. And after that, it didn’t take him long to hack into Bruce’s storage and access his files.

Pro tip: do not make SexySciFi your password. And definitely don’t tape it under your tablet so you won’t forget.

Also: don’t be an idiot jerkwad.

Meaning: don’t be Bruce.

That’s how, under the guise of gaming in his room, Marcus managed to hack into Bruce’s slipstream.

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