Chapter 11
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They'd been talking for so long they hadn't noticed the time pass.

The sounds of the late-afternoon training sessions reached all the way to their spot beneath the bleachers. A trio of girls cheered the boys on from nearby.

Jane got on her knees, looking through the vertical space between the seats. Teenage boys ran in circles around the field, huffing. An overweight coach blew his whistle in time with their cadence. It reminded her of dog training.

Victoria, at some point, had fallen asleep. Her blonde hair hung over her face as she lay on the ground, head cushioned by Jane's jacket.

Jane had only her undershirt on. Her pale shoulders, dusted with freckles, were nearly the same color as the benches themselves. They hadn't been touched by sunlight in months.

She spotted a lanky boy outrunning the rest of the athletes, sans his shirt. It was Ryder. His fellow players seemed clumsy in comparison to the athletic prowess he was displaying, easily out-pacing any other kid on the team. The coach nodded encouragingly at him as he passed.

Jane couldn't believe it. Was this boy really asking her out? But she was a nobody. She'd never even really spoken to him before today. The idea that he had suddenly become romantically interested in her seemed absurd. Perhaps he just wanted to hang out. As friends.

Beside her, Victoria stirred.

"Hey," she said, looking up at Jane between blonde bangs.

"Hey," Jane replied. "You fell asleep."

"Oh, wow, really?" Victoria asked, sarcastically. She rose from the ground, picking up Jane's jacket as she did.

"You're always wearing this," she commented, dusting the jacket off.

Jane didn't say anything, returning her gaze to the athletes. They were performing some sort of stretching routine now. Victoria came up next to her, squatting down to see at the same level as Jane.

"You are such a perv," she teased.

Jane noticed that she didn't look away from the football team either. Hypocrite.

"Vic, I need you to help me with something," Jane said.

"Sure, anything."

"It's kinda a big ask," Jane warned.

Victoria grinned, smugness in her lips. "Spit it out already."

Evidently exhausted, Ryder had flopped on the grass alongside one of his teammates. The other boys were still completing their stretching.

"When I hacked the school documents, I couldn't find anything on Beatrice. Because someone erased it all," Jane explained. "I need to get access to the original file, somehow. Or even the computer it's stored on."

Victoria looked away from the boys this time, raising one eyebrow at Jane.

"Are you asking me for super-duper illegal advice?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess... I don't really know how I'm going to get to that file. I can't access it remotely."

Victoria bit her lip, thinking. "Well, I know exactly what to do. But you're gonna have to trust me."

"I'm not gonna like this, am I?"

A slow smile crept over Victoria's face, devilish in nature. "We're gonna break into the school!"

Jane chewed on her thumbnail, idly wondering if she'd made a massive mistake by roping Victoria in. If they got caught, she would be punished too. Jane might be able to get away with it, being the new girl, but Victoria was already notorious for being a rule breaker. Breaking and entering would stick.

On the other hand, Jane had spent plenty of time going through the camera feeds in the school, watching everyone's daily routines. She knew when the principal left his office, down to the minute. She knew the regular guard patrol routes.

Perhaps, with Victoria guiding her, she could pull this off.

The playful smile on Victoria's face vanished. "Don't worry! We'll be fine. I've done this before, just follow my lead."

Jane removed her hand from her mouth and smiled, somewhat reassured by the fact that her friend was an experienced cat burglar. The tightness in her chest lessened somewhat. Consequences or not, it was so nice not being alone anymore.

The halls, normally bustling with teenage voices and bright lights, now held only shadow

The halls, normally bustling with teenage voices and bright lights, now held only shadow. The sound of a stray air-conditioner echoed through the silent rooms.

Jane could hear the sounds of the school security guard checking classrooms. A pattern of heavy footsteps accompanied by the jingling of keys. A click as he opened a classroom door, shined his over-sized flashlight inside, then another click as he closed the door. Rinse and repeat until every room had been checked.

Sometimes, Jane thinks she wouldn't mind being a security guard. The general lack of people, the quiet, all the time in the world to think. It sounded like a good job.

If only she wasn't the least intimidating person on earth.

Victoria bumped into her from behind, nearly knocking her over the windowsill. Jane poked her as best as she could in the darkness.

In order to avoid the patrolling guard, they had remained outside the school premises until the majority of the students had left. This way, nobody would be able to place them at the scene, if their intrusion were ever discovered.

Much to Jane's surprise, this had been Victoria's idea, citing a time when she had spray-painted the cafeteria wall. The latter part did not surprise Jane as much. The careful planning put into it did, however.

She huffed as she dragged her waist over the windowsill, setting her boots on the tiles as quietly as she could. She stumbled as she landed, losing her balance. More gracefully, Victoria slid through the opening with ease.

Show off, Jane thought.

"Hang on," Jane whispered, approaching a nearby desk.

She had brought her laptop with her, not because she would need it to access the secretary's terminal, but because she would need it to get there in the first place.

Connecting directly to the school's camera network, Jane brought up a collage of various camera feeds, most of which had switched to their night vision mode. She could see the many rooms of Alexander High in gray tones, one of which held Victoria and herself in it. Their shapes were pale against the backdrop of darkness, illuminated by the moonlight from the window.

"Woah, is that us?" Victoria said, peering over her shoulder. She turned in the direction of the camera, but couldn't quite make it out.

"Not for long," Jane replied.

Though it wasn't built for it, the software could be used to loop the camera feed. The two figures that had been visible on the screen vanished, replaced by a half-second loop of an empty room.

Tracks sufficiently covered, Jane returned her laptop to her shoulder bag.

Victoria crept quietly to the door and peered down the hall. "I think were good."

Jane nodded. Together, the pair moved past row after row of lockers. The tiles, polished to a mirror sheen, squeaked underfoot.

A beam of light arced from the end of the hallway, making Jane wince. Her eyes hadn't been prepared for that.

Victoria shoved her to the side, perhaps a little too roughly. Jane stumbled backwards, tripping over her own feet. She exhaled forcefully as she landed on her back. Thankfully, her laptop bag had been cushioned by her arm.

Victoria stood over her, head weaving frantically from side to side. The beam of light was drawing closer.

She glanced at Jane for a single moment, their eyes locking. She nodded at her, lips pressed together.

"Hey! Over here!" Victoria shouted, sprinting in the opposite direction. The beam immediately responded, tracking the source of the voice.

"Who's that? Wait- Wait up, kid!" A deep voice shouted from behind the light.

Jane rose to a crouch, poking her head out from behind the locker Victoria had pushed her behind. She could hear a set of heavy footsteps squeaking rapidly against the tiles, as well as Victoria routinely banging against the lockers further and further away.

She'd been telling the truth. Distraction really was her talent.

Jane's heart hadn't stopped pounding. It had all happened so quickly, she hadn't had time to register anything, let alone think of a better strategy. She cursed herself.

Even if she hadn't reacted in the moment, she could still do something.

Quickly, she pulled her laptop from the bag. The few seconds it took to come out of sleep mode felt like a century. The camera feeds were, thankfully, still loaded, and she only had to click one of them to track Victoria's misleading chase.

She was surprised at how far she had managed to make it from her original position.

Jane pulled her phone from within her jacket and swiped through the contacts, eyes scanning for Victoria's number.

"Gotcha..." she whispered to herself, as she pressed the call button.

On her laptop screen, she could see Victoria duck behind a doorway as she produced her cell-phone from her pocket.

Victoria's heavy breathing crackled from Jane's phone. She reduced the volume.

"He's two rooms down, checking the science lab," Jane whispered.

Her butt was getting cold from sitting on the bare tiles. The laptop rested on her lap, its faint glow barely visible from behind the locker. At least, she hoped it was barely visible.

Through the cameras, Jane could make out Victoria taking a peek in the guard's direction. Her friend lowered the cell phone, and moved as quietly as she could in the opposite direction. The guard was none the wiser.

Jane racked her brain, trying to think of a solution. They couldn't leave now, security would just be tightened. They had to keep going. And they had to deal with the guard. Somehow.

And she had to erase every single feed that had captured Victoria's face. Looping them all would take days. They didn't have that kind of time.

She opened a powershell window and began frantically typing a string of commands, each one utilizing the server's internal clock to wipe its drives. It was hasty, and imperfect, but she didn't have time to do much else. They would wipe at midnight. She just hoped there were no I.T. experts working for Alexander high.

This escapade had quickly fallen out of her control. Her heart, still pounding, beat a feverish rhythm in her chest. Her fingers shook as she typed.

"Hey... you there?" Victoria's voice was barely a rasp as she panted into her phone.

"Yeah. You okay?"

Victoria took a moment to catch her breath. Or tried to. "I lost him. I think."

Sure enough, Jane could, through the cameras, see a very confused man pacing through the halls. A slightly darker patch on his back showed how much he had been sweating during the chase.

"He might warn someone. What do we do?" Victoria, for once, sounded worried.

Jane shut her eyes, forcing the ball of anxiety that was her brain to work.

There was only one security guard on duty. If he were to warn anyone, it would be one of the administrators. There was only one administrator on campus at this hour.

She opened her eyes and tapped the track pad, shifting through the various video feeds. The cafeteria, emptied of students. The parking lot. A hallway, identical to every other one in the school. And, at last, the principal's waiting room.

His secretary, hair tied in a tight bun, was peering at a document through thick glasses. Unlike the other cameras, this one was in full color, as it did not need to activate its night vision mode yet.

The room itself was small, with two walls filled from floor to ceiling with filing cabinets. A window at the opposite end of the door provided a clear view of the parking lot. The woman herself sat in a blue office chair behind a cluttered, unruly desk. At one end of the desk was a black walkie-talkie, its receiving light glowing a faint red.

"Jane?" Victoria sounded even more worried.

Jane realized she hadn't said anything. "I've got it. Don't- uh, just come back. I got it."

She did not, in fact, 'got it'. At all.

The guard seemed to be quickly losing steam as he backtracked. A matching walkie-talkie to the one on the secretaries' desk was clipped to his belt.

Jane cursed again. Analog technology. She couldn't touch it.

Flipping back between screens, the brightly-lit waiting room once more appeared. The secretary had removed her glasses as she typed something into her phone.

Digital technology, on the other hand, she could touch.

Text spoofing. It was a relatively common exploit. Someone with the right tools could, in theory, change an unknown number on your phone to whatever they wanted.

She opened a tool-kit that had come with her version of Linux. It opened, displaying white strings of text over a black background.

She stopped. How would she get the secretary's number?

Jane hung up the call with Victoria, instead dialing the number of the school's principal office. Through the camera, she could see the secretary jump. The phone rang loud enough for Jane to hear it, echoing through the halls.

"Alexander State highschool," the secretary said, answering the phone. Her voice sounded tired. Jane almost felt bad for what she was about to do.

"Good evening ma'am, this is Alexander general hospital. We have a patient here with your office number listed under their emergency contacts," she said. Jane bit her lip. She hoped she sounded convincing.

"Oh. Oh dear, it's not Jonas, is it? What happened?" The secretary sounded horrified. Jane watched her remove her glasses and place them on the document.

"They're- uh, he is unresponsive, ma'am. We need to confirm if the phone number we have on file is yours. For... insurance reasons."

The secretary didn't hesitate, immediately rattling off a string of digits. Jane hastily noted them down on her laptop.

"Is he alright? Please, tell me what's hap-" the elderly woman's voice cut off abruptly as Jane disconnected the call.

A twinge of regret filled her gut as she watched the secretary flit about the her room, panicked. She was gathering her belongings in a hurry. The regret made it all the harder to deal the finishing blow.

With the tool-kit open on her laptop, she input a series of commands that allowed her to mask her cellphone number. She changed it to 'Jonas'. The text itself was a half-rambling mess of apologies and gruesome details of injury. The latter was a final bit of cruelty to ensure she would leave quickly, and to ensure she would stay gone.

The secretary, half way out the door, glanced at her phone as the text came in. Even through the low resolution image, Jane could see the horror in the woman's posture. Whoever Jonas was, the woman cared for them deeply.

Jane's breath caught in her throat. In another feed, the guard was reaching for his radio. He brought it to his mouth, depressing a button on the side. She could only imagine what he was trying to relay to the secretary.

The tiny bulb on the secretary's radio turned green just as she shut the door to her office. Whatever the guard had said, it remained unheard. They had narrowly avoided getting caught.

Victoria tapped her on the shoulder, nearly eliciting a squeak of surprise from Jane. She'd been so laser-focused on what she was doing that she hadn't heard her return.

Victoria's brow was drenched in sweat, and her blonde bangs clung to her skin. Her crop-top bore dark stains at the pits.

"Did you get it?" she whispered, glancing uncomprehendingly at the mess of programs and camera feeds on Jane's screen.

"I got it," Jane said, smiling. Now that the majority of the danger had passed, she felt elated. And proud. She hadn't kept her cool, but she'd survived the pressure.

"Good," Victoria exhaled, sliding down the locker next to Jane. "Because I can't run another inch."

Jane nodded. "You saved me. Go back to the classroom. I'll do the rest."

"Are you sure?" Victoria asked. A droplet of sweat hung from her piercing.

Jane reached to the side and squeezed Victoria's hand. "You saved me, Vicky."

Victoria huffed, tossing a sweaty lock from her eyes. "I guess I'm your hero now."

Jane smiled. "You are," she said.

With a muted grunt, Victoria rose to her feet, and staggered back to the classroom they had entered through.

Jane watched her go as she began repacking her things. She took a final glance at the camera feeds, assuring herself the guard was far from her planned route, before collapsing the screen and placing it in her bag.

While Jane was experienced in infiltration, that only applied to digital spaces. In truth, this was the first time she'd ever actually broken into a building. She couldn't tell if she was excited or positively terrified.

It was well into the evening now, and thanks to her quick thinking, the secretary would be half way across town. Massive hiccup aside, Jane thought that the plan was working out rather nicely.

Slowly, she opened the door to the office, the brass doorknob cold within her grasp. The secretary had left in such a hurry that she hadn't bothered to switch off the lights, or power down her computer.

Jane entered, before turning to lock the door behind her. It wouldn't do for someone to walk in on her in the middle of her snooping.

She crept across the room and drew the blinds over the window.

Seeing it with her own eyes, the office was larger than she had anticipated. From the camera's view in the corner of the ceiling, it seemed cramped. Stuffy.

In truth, the office chair was thickly padded, and though filing cabinets lined the walls, they provided no imposition.

Jane tapped the enter key on the computer. Silently, she celebrated. The secretary had left her computer unlocked. That would save her plenty of time.

"Okay, Beatrice, lets see who's protecting you," she whispered.

The screen showed the computer's filing directory system, a pale background interspersed with stylized icons of document folders. Jane selected the emergency contact registry.

Her phone buzzed. Jane ignored it, focusing her attention on the edit history.

Finding what she was looking for wasn't difficult, especially since it was exactly at the top of the list. Next to the exact date and time she had been searching for, a short note scribbled by the secretary herself was visible.

'BY ORDER OF BOARD CHAIRMAN JACKSON,' it read. Ryder's dad.

Jane's heart descended into her stomach. So Ryder truly was involved.

She'd expected as much. The sudden proposal, how he seemed to turn up at the strangest moments, his connection to Beatrice and her group. There was no way he couldn't be involved.

But then why did it hurt so much?

In another tab within the same window, Jane checked the previous versions. There. An automatic backup that the secretary had missed, dated several weeks before Beatrice's records had been deleted. If Jane had waited one more day, it would have been overwritten by the operating system.

Jane ducked beneath the desk and plugged a thumb-drive into the casing of the computer. With a few clicks, she had uploaded the backup to the drive.

She pumped her fist. Mission success. This was exactly what she-

The doorknob rattled. Jane gasped, her eyes flying to the frosted glass in the center of the door. Even in the dark of the hallway, she could make out a vaguely guard-shaped silhouette.

"Ma'am, did you receive my report? I sent it over the radio," the same masculine voice from earlier said.

Jane's phone buzzed again. Her thoughts were spinning. The voice was scolding her.

Going quite nicely? Mission success? What were you thinking, Jane?

Forget that. Figure a way out. And quickly.

Jane retrieved her bag from beneath the desk and sprinted to the only other door in the room, one leading to the principals personal office.

"Ma'am? Are you alright?"

More shaking as the security guard twisted the doorknob again.

Jane reached out and opened the door to the principals office. Or she would have, if it hadn't been locked.

Her mind, having arrived at the conclusion that they were trapped, immediately threw a fit. Her thoughts became a whirl of anxieties and images of being expelled. She jammed the tip of her thumb into her temple, willing herself to think. Willing her brain to work.

The security guard was jingling something in the hallway now. Jane could only imagine it to be a ring of keys.

She glanced at the window behind the desk, blinds obscuring the parking lot beyond.

There was no other way.

The doorknob rattled again. It was now or never.

With a repressed grunt, Jane hurled the chair through the window. The blinds bent and tangled around the projectile as it passed through them, shattering the glass. The sound was positively deafening from within the office.

Wasting no time, Jane leapt through the opening, her extremities buzzing from adrenaline. At the same moment, the door flew open.

Jane didn't dare turn around as she sprinted away, zig-zagging between parked cars.

She could barely believe it. She'd pulled it off.

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