Page 40 of Knight

“What? Who? A student?”

“Victor.” I dig deeper, examining the coding structure. This definitely isn’t just his work. Someone else had a hand in this.

Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can see it everywhere. It’s a collaboration. A not-quite-perfect fusion of his teaching methods and someone else’s implementation. Someone who understands enough about the architecture ofhacking to be dangerous, but lacks the finesse that comes with experience.

“Can’t you just disconnect everything?” Glitch wipes sweat from her forehead. “Turn it all off.”

“Brilliant strategy.” My fingers don’t stop moving across the keyboards. “I’m sure no one has ever thought of that before.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“You’ve helped enough.” The first timer hits thirty minutes, the second reaches five. “Or did you forget how we got here?”

She falls silent, but I can feel her watching me work. The virus tears through another protocol. My screen fills with cascading failure notices. At this rate, there won’t be anything left to save.

I could cut power to everything. It would stop the virus cold, temporarily anyway. But that could mean losing years of work, every project, every piece of code I’ve developed.

And I’d be trapped in here … with her.

“The timers. What happens when they hit zero?”

“Nothing good.” I track another breach, noting the pattern. Someone is definitely learning Victor’s methods, but they’re impatient. Crude. Showing hints of more experience in some areas than others. “Probably something appropriately dramatic knowing Victor.”

“That’s not an answer.”

"It's the only one you're getting."

The alarm is reaching a point where the sound is unbearable. The heat is building. We need air before breathing becomes difficult.

She’s right about one thing. At this rate, the equipment will cook itself before the virus finishes its job.

“Knight?” Her voice carries an edge of panic. “If you’ve got any plan, right?—”

“Shut up.” I study the latest attack sequence. “I need to think.”

Temperature warnings flash across my remaining screens. The heat from the equipment is going to make this room uninhabitable soon.

I’m out of options.

“I know you said you’re not going to do it, but will cutting power stop it?”

“Yes. But it also traps us here. No elevator. No security. No communications.”

“You have a balcony. Surely there’s a way to get someone’s attention. A neighbor?—”

“When I said it’ll trap us in here, I meanin here. This room.”

“In the dark?”

“Having second thoughts about breaking into my apartment?”

“I didn’t break in. I had codes!”

“Which worked out so well for everything.” I scrub a hand down my face, take in a deep breath, and initiate the shutdown sequence before I can change my mind. “Hold onto something.”

“What? Why would I need to?—”

The lights go out, followed by a flicker as the emergency backups kick in briefly before I kill those too. One by one, my remaining screens go dark. The familiar hum of equipment dies, the alarms cut out, leaving nothing but silence and residual heat from my overloaded computers.

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