Page 96 of Even Angels fall
A cord? Why the fuck would there be a cord?
“Yeah,” Brice answers, and I can hear that he’s not happy with this new development. “There are two of them. One is linked to the screen and the other to the keyboard. What does this mean?”
“It’s a computer,” Luc says with awe in his voice. “From what you’re saying, it’s probably a few centuries old. Humans stopped producing them roughly four hundred years ago.”
“The history lesson is nice and all, but what do I do with it? How does it work?” Brice asks.
“There should be a button to turn it on. It looks like a circle with a line cutting the circle on its upper part.”
“What? The thing won’t recognize I’m in the room?”
Brice seems appalled by the fact, which only amuses Luc, who decides to sass him in response.
“Those things hate people. It’s not about you,” he says with a chuckle.
We hear someone chuckle, too, on the other side of the communication, and then Brice grumbles.
“Found it, pressed on it, and now the screen is lit up, but nothing is showing except a loading circle. How long is this going to take? We don’t have all day.”
“That’s where my knowledge stops,” Luc says, and I can see the tips of his ears turning bright red. If the mission wasn’t so important, I probably would tease him, but I refrain from doing so.
“Brice, can you see a door or something like it that would lead you to the power room?” I ask him instead.
“The team has scanned the whole room, but there is nothing like a door. Wait,” Brice answers, and then it’s followed by silence.
“The computer screen is finally loaded. It’s asking for a password. Angélique, any idea on Daddy Dearest’s password?”
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Angélique
Isnort at Brice’s question. Do I know my father well enough to guess his password? I highly doubt that, but I have no other choice than to try. I can’t live with the idea of giving up on Léandre.
It’s already bad that I didn’t have the heart to kill Elhyor for him, so I can’t screw this up.
If I were an egocentric, power-hungry bastard, what would be my password?
I make him try a few things that come to my mind, even his own birthday—October twenty-seventh—when Luc tells us that the interweb search comes back saying the old passwords used to have numbers and letters, with at least a capital one. All come as a failure.
Brice tries the ‘forgot password’ button, but it asks for the initial email this account was set with, and even if I knew Michaël’s email address, who still has one of those, wheneveryone uses instant messages, anyway? I wouldn’t know the password for that, either.
We try the date of his ascension to the role of Michaël with anything—really, anything—that comes to my mind, but it’s not it.
Then we try the date I shifted for the first time.
“That was weird,” Brice answers on our latest try. “It almost looked like we had it right this time, but instead, I have a message that no one is going to like.”
”What is it?” Elhyor asks in a gruff voice.
I can see that he doesn’t like being here. He would much rather be with Brice, even if, from what I’ve seen so far, he would be as useless there as we are here.
“We only have one attempt left,” Brice answers, and even through com devices, I can hear that he’s holding his breath.
What will happen if we don’t get the password right? Will it trigger an alarm? Traps?
Oh, fuck. What if it triggered alarms when we didn’t guess the password on the first try?
No, I don’t think that is the case.
