Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles Read Free Page A

slammed closed behind me. I punched a code into another keypad on the wall. Simultaneously, a green light turned red and the door’s locks thunked into place. I turned to face the control center.
    The room was large, with rows of tall computer banks arcing from one side of the room to the other. Like congregants at a church of robotic giants, they all faced a floor-to-ceiling wall of seamless plasma screens streaming real-time data from around the globe. A world map indicated the location of each data center. Multicolored lights and numbers flashed, seemingly at random, all over the glowing wall. Workstations filled a large space between the wall and the computer banks. It looked like something NASA had designed.
    I wove my way through the workstations until I came to the one that was still logged in, its screen glowing with the image of a star field. There, I plopped down in the chair and wiggled back into it. I lifted my phone, and sent another text: BREAKDOWN .
    “Who are you?” a gravelly voice boomed over the alarms and my thumping heart.
    I jumped and snapped my eyes up. A chill shot through me.
    A video feed of a balding man with a mustache filled the screen. He scowled. “What are you doing? Who are you?”
    Frantically, I palmed the mouse, moving the cursor to an icon of a video camera and closed the webcam application. Whoever had been sitting here before had left the chat window open. The man’s face disappeared.
    Pounding erupted from the metal door off to my right. Angry shouts penetrated from the other side. Pixel had disabled the keypad and lock system so they’d have to knock the door down if they wanted me. It sounded as though they did.
    Keep calm.
    I had to move fast on phase two, snagging a few packets of data then streaming them to Pixel outside. I navigated to a file manager and a window expanded on the screen.
    I grabbed my phone and texted Pixel. Sending now. Be ready.
    Getting into the building was one thing, but tapping into BlakBox’s servers—right into their encrypted data—was altogether more serious. A chill of excitement mixed with unchecked terror shot through me. When they realized I could snatch their data like coins from a fountain, I was a shoo-in for a job. I just needed a few files to prove I could do it.
    I established a connection between the workstation and Pixel’s Mac and navigated through a directory of folders labeled only with numbers. With the transfer protocol initiated, I typed furiously as the banging at the door grew louder. The data streamed through the link to Pixel’s laptop.
    Text from Pixel: i see it .
    A louder slam against the door startled me. The steel entry bulged inward. They were almost inside.
    I watched the screen as a bar graph showed file after file being exporting. It was the digital equivalent of walking out the front door with the folders under my arm.
    As the data streamed, preview images of each document rapidly flickered across the screen. I clicked on one as it crossed the screen and it expanded—bank statements with transactions in the tens of millions of dollars, all transfers from other international banks to this one account.
    “What is this?” I said and clicked through the document’s pages. My eyes skimmed the data on the screen: Tripoli, Damascus, Tehran, Shanghai . . .
    I clicked on the next file. I sucked in my breath and leaned closer, not believing my eyes. Close-up photographs of dead bodies and charred buildings and smoldering cars cycled on and off the screen, interspersed with multipage documents. Then: a photograph of a man stepping out of a car. I recognized him from the news: a congressman who had died in an embassy bombing.
    My stomach twisted in knots.
    I clicked on another file and it filled the screen. More images then a list of names and addresses, and beside the names were acronyms: MOS, MI6, CIA, ASIS, MAD. Some had black X ’s beside the name. Page after page of documents, all stamped TOP SECRET UMBRA and all