Hacker (CENTURIES series: Book #5) (VERY SLOW UPDATES)

9

Two weeks later:

"So is it what we thought?"

I sighed heavily and shook my head even though he couldn't see it. "Yeah. They've rebooted the program like we suspected. The file doesn't contain much—just some of what we already know and some small new pieces of information."

"Like the change in their acronym." He spoke through the phone.

"Yeah." I kept typing away on my laptop and frowned heavily when the encryption kept locking me out. The supercomputer was not fucking child's play. "So what's next? Do we keep digging?"

"Yes. We find the person who put the information into the supercomputer and figure out just how deeply C.E.N.T.U.R.I.E.S runs within the CIA."

"That could take a while. Plus, we've got other problems to worry about," I reminded him, gritting my teeth.

I heard him sigh heavily on the other end. "I know. They've so very kindly contacted me and made me very aware of the situation. The Russians know we're up to something."

"And they want in on it."

"And that's why they tried hacking the CIA."

"Cheap fucking trick." I scoffed, shaking my head again.

A few days after Agent Santino had managed to break in and steal the information from the CIA, the word somehow traveled to the Russians, a leak we were still trying to find. According to him, they had been aware of the facility for years, but never gotten any direct intel. At least not anything worth something. Now, though, it seemed they had had enough and were going to extreme measures to get it; they had set up a perfect trap.

"They're still set on sending in agents to try and eliminate the threat?" He asked with a tired voice, sounding about as exhausted and sick of this as I was. Lives were at risk and it was all in our hands to save them because these idiots insisted on being... well, idiots.

"They shipped them off this morning," I replied, sadly.

The hacking had been a trap. I had caught their trace easily and blocked them off, but the second I had reported the attack back to my superiors at the CIA, they had practically gone to DEFCON 1 and pulled a team out of their asses to go to Russia to find and eliminate the threat.

– Doing exactly as the Russians wanted.

"They're walking straight into a trap," He sighed deeply. I heard papers rustling in the background, then the squeak of a chair. "I suspect it won't be long till the Bratva contacts me with demands. They know I won't let those agents die."

"So what do we do?" I asked, waiting a moment while listening to the sound of what had to be a printer printing in the background of his call.

"We stay one step ahead. When they contact me, I need you to trace the call so we know where to act. In the meanwhile, I'm going to talk to AISE and see if I can't convince them to stand ready with a rescue team in case we need it. We need to try and attempt to keep this as civil as possible and not land with an international crisis on our hands. If AISE breaks into a Russian base, we give AISE a target on their back. So far we've managed to keep their name out of it, but if there's no other way..."

"Alright," I blew out a breath and scratched my chin. I needed to shave. "You do that, and I'll keep working on decrypting these files and digging into the CIA's employees. It might take a while, though. If we're looking all the way back to when your dad started the company to the point where the government seized his assets—"