Cytronica

Twenty-nine

"I'm freaking out," Zack complained.

"Chill, my friend. Chill," Hunter dismissed. He led the way through the hall.

Justin turned his head right, staring in the direction of the enormous library. Very select few students could be seen inside, squeezing in some weekend study.

They continued walking through the empty corridors, which became increasingly darker as they ventured away from the only open area.

"Are you sure there are no guards or anything?" Zack asked yet again.

"We're fine," Hunter said. "Stop worrying. Everything is going to work."

They walked for another few minutes, eventually arriving at their usual section of the hallway. Up ahead was the server room, shrouded in darkness.

Hunter peered inside. "It's go time." He inserted his copy of the key into the handle and opened it, pushing the door aside.

Zack took a cautious step inside the room, waiting for something bad to happen.

"See? No alarm," Hunter laughed. "It's all good."

"Keep the lights off," Justin suggested as he locked the door behind them. "We're not taking any chances."

Zack eventually started breathing again, although his heart rate was through the roof. "Alright, we're inside. Now how do you plan to get Cytro online?"

"Simple," Hunter winked. "Justin, would you do the honours?"

Justin smirked and took a seat at Miller's desk, turning the monitor on. "Moment of truth."

Zack narrowed his eyes at the pair. "Wait, what? Justin doesn't know how to code."

"Agreed," Hunter said, watching as Justin logged onto the system. A second later, he was at the main command screen for the realm. "But he doesn't need to. All he needs to do is log in."

"It's all yours," Justin said, rising from the chair.

"Thank you, sir." Hunter jumped into the seat and took over. "It worked. It actually worked."

Zack winced. "I'm so confused."

Hunter glanced over his shoulder at the boy. "I knew something bad was bound to happen, like if Diego or Jiaying told everything to the principal. So I made a fail-safe: I gave Justin the same administrator privileges as Miller."

Zack's face contorted. "How? How is that even possible?"

"Easy. Miller has full system access, including the ability to grant other users access. So the other day I gave Justin full access."

Justin smirked. "Pretty clever, right?"

"Wow," Zack breathed. "That actually is clever. But why not just give yourself full access?"

"Nah," Hunter said. "One, we were bound to get demoted anyway. And two, it's too obvious. If Miller ever checked one day and saw I had full access, I'd be expelled on the spot. No one would ever think to check Justin though."

Zack was still torn about the entire operation, but even he couldn't deny the plan had worked perfectly. Hunter had truly thought of everything. The shorter boy took a seat and started to relax a little.

"Okay, and ..." Hunter typed several commands into the keyboard. "Cytro is now officially back online."

"Awesome!" Justin said, trying to keep his voice down. "That's step one done."

"More like step three," Hunter joked. "Now for this algorithm." He removed a sheet of paper from his pocket. It was covered in handwritten notes, the biggest Cytro code block they'd executed so far. "This might take me a while."