Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles Read Free

fire alarm.
    I stepped into a car. This was the point of no return. The control-panel buttons flashed on and off. I pressed L4 and was rewarded with an irritating buzzer sound. Having researched Walter Bell, BlakBox’s founder and CEO, it would not have surprised me if the button had also jolted me with a high-voltage shock. He was known as a ruthless dictator who accepted nothing less than perfection from his employees. Performance earned you staggering bonuses; failure brought ridicule and, often, a boot out the door.
    My phone trembled in my hand. Text: DOWN .
    I glanced up at the buttons. “C’mon, Pixel. C’mon . . .”
    After five seconds, the buttons dimmed off, the L4 button came on and the doors shut.
    L4: the company’s mission control center. The pulsing, beating heart of BlakBox’s corporate infrastructure.
    The building was one of three informational “meta-hubs” scattered around the globe—because naturally a monster the size of BlakBox needed three hearts, and they all needed to be in different places in case one stopped. From here, technicians constantly monitored forty-two data centers, housing a total of 80,411 servers, running nonstop diagnostics on the servers’ temperature, energy usage, streaming speeds, data storage—every possible measure to ensure peak performance and predict problems.
    They likely never predicted a teenage girl hacking them from right inside their own building.
    The elevator hummed as it descended, five hundred feet per minute according to the manufacturer’s specifications. It would take a mere nine seconds to reach sublevel four. An additional twenty seconds of fast walking would bring me to the data center, and sixty-two more to finish my task. Hopefully.
    The plan was risky, but simple: get into the mainframe room, transfer a couple data packets to Pixel’s computer in the parking lot, and then turn myself in. If this job played out like the others I’d done in the past, BlakBox would be sufficiently impressed with my capabilities and hire me on the spot as a security consultant.
    And I’d get the money I needed for Mom.
    I stared at my reflection in the polished steel doors. The girl gazing back looked terrified. This was insane . . . and insanely illegal, too. BlakBox better be majorly impressed.
    The doors opened and I stepped into a sterile hallway. Strobe lights flashed on the walls, making the corridor itself appear to vibrate. Half a dozen people brushed past me, rushing for the stairwell without a second glance at me. Pushing against the flow of traffic, I made my way toward the far end of the corridor and a black steel door that marked my destination.
    As I approached, my gaze flicked to a keypad beside the door. A light shined green: Unlocked. Pixel was ahead of schedule and had already tripped the lock for me.
    I reached for the door handle, but it swung open and a man stepped into my path, nearly knocking me over.
    “Who are you?” he asked, scrunching his eyebrows.
    “IT intern from L-6,” I yelled over the din. “Binkman told me to check the floor, make sure everyone’s out.”
    His face softened into an expression of bafflement. “It’s not a drill?”
    “No.”
    “No need to check.” He jerked his head, indicating the dark room behind him. “I’m the last one out. Everyone else is gone already.”
    “Gotta check anyway. Binkman’s orders. If he finds out I didn’t do what he said—”
    “There’s no need—”
    “What’s your name?” I said. “He’s gonna ask me why I didn’t check and when he does, I want to be sure I pronounce your name right.”
    He thought about it, eyes flicking around, unsure if he should let me into the unguarded room. But Joseph Binkman was the head of data management—this man’s boss.
    “Fine,” he said, “But hurry. And don’t touch anything.” Then he ran—I mean a full-on sprint—toward the stairs.
    I shoved through the door and stepped into the cool darkness of the room. The heavy door