Jane's a teenage weirdo. She's awkward, plain, anxious, and above it all, a hacking prodigy.
Ryder's the quintessential high school hero, or so it seems. Dark secrets that threaten their lives are uncovered when Jane decides to snoop into Ryder's...
Alexander State High, thanks to the paranoia of its principal, was under constant surveillance. A camera covered every hallway, every classroom, and every parking lot. There were few places you were not being tracked by the school's automated security system. And as Orwellian as it may seem, Jane liked it. Because their eyes were hers too.
Finding the remote server that the cameras transmitted to was relatively easy for her. A modified raspberry pi, and a few automatically executing python scripts were all it took for her to spy on essentially any student on campus. And spy she did.
As the texts between Beatrice and Ryder had provided little information about the location of their rendezvous, she had been forced to track Ryder's movements throughout the school with her laptop.
Seated in a relatively secluded corner, she flipped between different camera feeds, searching for him.
A gray-scale view of the teachers lounge displayed a teacher grading papers. Pressing the arrow key, the screen changed to a low resolution feed of the parking lot. Another press and she was looking at herself from high above.
Playfully, she waved at the camera situated at the end of the hall.
Focus, Jane. More key presses.
"Gotcha," she whispered under her breath, catching sight of his crimson letterman jacket striding down yet another hallway.
A student waved at him. Ryder returned the gesture, flashing a smile. Ever the people's man.
Jane shut her laptop. She knew where he was headed, and there were no cameras there. She'd have to do this in meat-space.
Taking off at a light jog, she rounded the corner. Her bag, heavy with her laptop and notebooks, bounced against her hips painfully. The hallways were empty, as most of the students were either eating lunch in the cafeteria or loitering outside of the building.
As she rushed, her mind weighed questions as it always did. Why were they meeting behind the school, one of the only places without camera surveillance?
Her cheeks colored, both from the effort of jogging and from the thoughts of what the pair may be planning to do in private.
Her shame reared its head. This is borderline predatory. This is perverse. She should turn around and forget all about this. She should, but she couldn't.
Her feet carried her ever closer to the overgrown alley behind the school and the secretive meeting taking place there.
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The covered alley was originally meant to house dumpsters, where they could easily be wheeled to the street. To reach it, one would need to travel down a long hall situated at the rear of the campus, then exit through a one-way emergency door whose alarm had stopped working years ago. As clandestine a meeting place as you could get.
