A Hacker with a Secret

A Secret Found

I was flustered by Blaze wanting to know who I was. "I- um I-" I stuttered, how much could I truthfully tell him? If he figured out who I was and what I'd done what would I do? What would he do?

I was saved from Blaze's question by a yell from the side room, "Novalee get your ass in here!" Oh god, what if Castor figured it out? It's all on that chip. I've been so concerned with Blaze I forgot about Castor.

A large hand waved in front of my face followed by a voice. "You good? You just got really pale." I turned to face him, concern covered his face. "Go to Cast, I'll watch Bix here." Blaze pulled out a second roll of crackers and Bix's eyes lit up. 

"O-okay." I stuttered as I trudged towards the side room the call had come from. I didn't know what I was walking into, but I was praying he didn't know. 

Like the main area, the room was made of a grey sheet metal and horizontal purple stripes painted up high on the walls and a holotable in the center. However this room had fewer windows than the other and there were metal counters pushed onto the perimeter of the room. Cabinets lined the walls both over and under the counters, all were marked with various chemicals, materials, and equipment. 

I leaned against the door frame as Castor held up a small blue key with ivy painted on it. I couldn't let him put it in the computer. "What is this?" He demanded.

"It's n-nothing." I tried to be convincing but even I could hear the fear in my voice. I moved forward to take it from him, but I wasn't quick enough. 

He made a small laugh and put it into the computer to my horror. "Let's see what you're hiding." Castor started scrolling through the articles and documents, not knowing that these were the only copies in existence. He glanced over at me after seeing the pattern. "Why do you have so many pages about Carina Celeste? Was she part of the royal Celeste family?" 

"She was part of it, yeah, not anymore though."

"What do you mean not anymore? Do you know her?" His curiosity was growing as much as my fear was. 

"I used to know her," I responded not a completely lying. "She isn't necessarily not part of it anymore. Carina is missing."

Castor just stared at me. "Why do you have this then? Are you trying to find her or something? Does the Celeste family have all this info?"

I needed to end his questioning before he put the pieces together. "I'm not telling you anything else till you tell me why you kidnapped me."

He sighed and looked at me with an aggravated look. "Fine. We took you for two reasons. The first is because we need a new hacker-tech person."

"What happened to the last?" I asked.

"Does the Celeste family have this info?"

"No, now answer my question." I growled at him.

He didn't seem to think it was scary since he just smirked and simply said "He betrayed us so we ditched him a few planets back. "Is this the only copy of these documents?"

"Yes, what's the second reason you needed me?"

"We needed to thank you because you were the one who showed us that he was a spy."

"How?" I didn't know what he was talking about in the slightest. 

"He intercepted transmissions of the TA for us and we listened live. The conversation was about various battle tactics but you eventually came up, they wanted to enlist you since you helped Anga so frequently. The last thing he had you do at the time was decoding a list of Imperium spies' names." I remembered doing that but I didn't remember the names. "Eddy, our last technician couldn't shut the equipment off fast enough and his name was read as a spy on the run. We didn't know this until then and of course we can't just have an Imperium spy aboard so we kicked him out. So thank you for decrypting that list and revealing his secret."

I was stunned. "Does this mean you want me to be part of the crew or something then?"