Thank you for working withus.
“W-what’s this nonsense?” Yuusuke tried to laugh off the message, but the wavering in his voice was reminiscent of the trembling in Jo’sfingers.
She clicked on the image, dragged it to the desktop, and quickly cracked into its meta-data.
“It’s from the Rangers.” Was that froggy croak her voice? “The image originates from a Rangerserver.”
“Are you saying this isreal?”
Jo swiveled in her seat, looking around the room. Server stacks were piled as high as the roof, consuming half the barn. It was supposed to be enough power to run whatever scripts they needed to break into the Black Bank on dedicated computers. It was supposed to be enough space to store several thousand terabytes of encrypted data. It was supposed to be their bigpayout.
Now, it was all just incriminating evidence that two citizens of the Lonestar Republic were co-operating with a foreignpower.
She was on her feet, starting for the door—theonlydoor. The only egress from their dark cave of code, back into the realworld.
Her heart had wriggled up her throat with every beat and now seemed to throb so close to her uvula it was going to make her sick. Jo wiped her palms, slick with sweat, on herjeans.
“What do we do?” Yuusuke voiced her only thought. “You can’t think you’re just gonna walk out, doyou?”
“I—”
“This is the Rangers. We have you surrounded. Come out with your handsup.”
Yuusuke rattled off every expletive he knew like a magic spell, one that would get them out of being the meat in the shit sandwich they now found themselves in. “What do wedo?”
“Let’s turn ourselves in?” Jo clung to the final echo of the megaphone-filtered voice that was barely audible through the heavily insulated doors of the serverbarn.
“Turn ourselves in?” Yuusuke balked. “Have you lost your mind? You know what they do to people like us. They’ll kill us, wipe us off the earth, and they’ll take everything from our families—if they even let them live atall!”
There had been a growing trend of using the families of “digital terrorists” as examples to dissuade others from taking up the craft. She’d seen it happen to multiple acquaintances over the years, brilliant hackers whose loved ones had been slaughtered to make apoint.
“What if we hide?” Yuusuke continued, wrenching her back to thepresent.
“Hide? Where?” Jo motioned around them. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a box with nothing more than computerguts!”
“Better than your idea of feeding ourselves to them on a silverplatter!”
There had to be a way out—therehadto be. Jo’s mind rattled as she swept her eyes across the room. Wayout.
Wayout.
Where was the wayout?
The walls were double-layer insulated. They couldn’t be burst through, and even if they could, they weresurrounded.
“How did this happen?” Yuusuke groaned. He froze as if remembering something and suddenly advanced on her. “You.Youwanted thisjob.”
“Yuu,stop—”
“You wanted to do this. You dragged me into this. Aren’t you supposed to be the sensibleone?”
“What happened to glory, huh?” Jo was yelling. Solved nothing, but screaming felt better than playing nice. “You had something you were all-too-eager to prove to theworld.”
“Oh yeah? What happened to playing it safe, Jo? Low and steady? Who’s gonna support the familynow?”
Mom. The thought stilled Jo, ice to her burning anger. “We have to getout.”
“We will open fire in THREE. . .” the Rangerannounced.
