Royals: Misfits

chapter ten

10: A Duel For Two

ALLISON

"Tapos mo na ba yung program, Alli?" Calixto, my eldest cousin (from my mother's side) asked, looking at the laptop screen behind me as a typed fast as I could to finish it. I wasn't really scared or anything, it's just that I had to finish writing a program for 3 days, and the deadline was today.

"Konting-konti na lang po." I say as I quickly test it, and smiled when I saw it working without any bugs.

"Oh, I think we have a winner." he finally announced as I rose from my seat and let him do the job of testing it.

At the age of 16, Calixto already deserves the title of an 'advanced programmer'. He already knows 3 programming languages and masters all of it. He is curently in his first year of college, taking up Computer Science but he's already that good.

"Your keylogger's pretty good. Atleast now you know how to do it... It's so weird though, mas gusto mong mag-drawing rather than this, even though your good." he continued.

I was aware that he was testing my skills. In our family, you must have atleast one. When Calixto knew that I had a liking of playing chess, he swayed me to like programming. I actually liked it, but not as much as drawing. Every after class, I would take out my pad and pencil and draw whatever I like. I wasn't good at it, but I enjoy. I already told them about it, and accepted but I should continue what I learn in programming.

"Pwede kana kayang mag-hack ng server?" one day, he asked out of the blue.

"Huh?" I was unfamiliar with that at the moment. I was 10 when I started learning programming anyway. I was only learning it for a year, so some concepts never came clear to me. "Hacking a server?"

"Yep. A server controls multiple PC's from a program and it keeps some important files, take school exams for example. Somehow, if you hack the program itself, then all the files inside it is yours! And kaso lang, there's a firewall. Either you break it or bypass. I think you can do it. With all the skills you have, kakayanin mo na."

That was already 6 years ago. I learned how to hack servers because of him, but that technology years ago were already depleted. Experts already figured out ways to strengthen the security of software. But as he always say, "Just like how humans are capable of errors, softwares are vunerable too. There is no perfect security."

He believed that humans were like softwares, oblivious to the fact that human created software. He believes everyone has a great flaw. He saw one in me: purpose.

He knows I wouldn't learn programming if not needed. If I only wasn't told that I should. But I did, because of that purpose, or else I would be drawing stuff 'till midnight.

Maybe the reason that I draw was for pure entertainment, but other than that, I really never knew why I draw. I just... do it. It was the only thing that I did without purpose.

What I said about Royals made me think. My only purpose was to get justice that I wanted for Evan. Especially if his suicide was a whole play just to cover up the dirty deeds of Gamechangers. After all that, if I do get the justice, then I'll be back to normal.

Looking at all of them, clusters of reason already clouded my mind. I couldn't hide the fact that I'm scared that they'll be troubled for all this. But none of them looked like that. We all have the same purpose of just, taking down gamechangers. And amazingly, all of us were victims of them. I purposely did it for us to be aligned of our objectives.