Zadie pulled her legs up and crossed them in the chair. "Once you've read the cipher timing, then we have to find the hardware key?" This was more than a question. It was dedication. It was a commitment. And she had no right asking him to make it. He didn't have to stay in this bunker. He hadn't been pronounced dead like the rest of them. Nor was he hiding from the law like Darwin.
If he stayed, he'd be making a commitment, one he wouldn't take lightly.
"The new credentials, once it hooks into the software cipher at the node and we pull data, and we see enough of it, I’ll be able to see which hubs have physical keys," he said.
"And once both keys activate?"
"We're inside ORACLE. Not the whole thing, but we'd be inside the core. And from the core, we’d be past the initial AI."
"Are you telling me there’s more?"
He nodded. "Each department has its own AI protection system. But as long as the new credentials hold, we’d have a jumping off point."
Zadie stared at the monitor. The six waypoints blinked back at her, still mute, still meaningless. But behind them, behind everything on this screen, ORACLE sat like a locked vault in the center of a system built to protect secrets that were now being used to destroy lives. She'd been throwing herself against it for weeks.
What she’d needed was the other half of the equation. And he was sitting right next to her, smelling like soap and talking with his hands. If he kept explaining architecture to her with that sultry voice of his, she was going to have a problem that had nothing to do with firewalls.
"This is brilliant. You’re brilliant."
"It only has a chance of working because of you," he said. "I can draw the map. I can show you how to get inside, but I’m not smart enough to outrun my system. In order to make this work, we need someone who can write code under pressure, adapt on the fly, and not panic when the AI fights back. That's not something I can do at your level."
"You really know how to sweet-talk a girl."
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are." She shifted her gaze and found herself staring into his deep blue eyes. "That's why it's working."
The room quieted except for the soft tick of the monitor on standby. The blue light from the screen caught the angles of his face and the scratch on his cheekbone that had started to fade.
Her hand was on the armrest. His was on the edge of her desk, three inches from hers.
"You don't have to stay and help us do this."
"Outside of the fact you need my help, I need to do this. I want to do this."
"Then we should probably start mapping the credential structure," she said.
"Probably." He leaned closer and licked his lips.
Her palms went damp like she was a schoolgirl under the bleachers about to be kissed for the first time.
"We keep getting interrupted," he said. "It's becoming a pattern."
"Patterns can be broken."
His hand came off the desk and found the side of her face. His palm was warm. His fingers curved around her jaw, and he kissed her. It wasn’t tentative. Or slow. Or even teasing. It was hot. And hard. And wild.
She gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. Her chair rolled. His knee pushed between hers and his fingers slid into the hair at the base of her neck.
Someone cleared their throat and then coughed. "Excuse me," a faint whisper from a familiar female voice, said.
He rested his chin on the top of her head.
"We should’ve closed the door," she whispered.
"Hindsight."
"Dinner's ready," Wynn said. "But if you want to continue ki?—"
