Chapter 3 - The Glitch in the System
The metallic click of the security door’s auto-lock mechanism echoed sharply in the confined hallway, sounding like a gunshot in the tense silence. Leo lunged forward, slamming his palm against the exit sensor, but the green light flickered twice and died, replaced by a solid, unforgiving crimson ring.
“What did you do?” Sarah shrieked, rushing out of the server room and grabbing Leo’s jacket. “Why did it lock? You said you disabled the auto-lock!”
“I did disable it!” Leo shouted, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he hammered his fist against the casing. “The system is overriding my command. Someone is rewriting the root permissions from a remote terminal.”
“A remote terminal?” Maya asked, her mind racing as she stared at the glowing ceiling monitor. “Who has district root access on a Saturday night?”
“Only the head of IT,” Marcus murmured, his face pale in the blue light of his phone screen. “Or someone who stole administrative credentials.”
“Like Bryce,” Maya concluded, her gaze snapping back to the hallway where the shadow on camera two had stopped advancing. It stood perfectly still beneath the lens, waiting. “Leo, what did you take from Bryce’s locker last week? When you guys had that falling out over the coding competition?”
Leo swallowed hard, his eyes avoiding her gaze. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the heavy letterman jacket rustling in the quiet air.
“It was just a flash drive,” Leo muttered defensively. “He left it sitting on the library desk. It had unreleased source code for the district's new firewall protocol. I wanted to see how they built it.”
“You didn't just look at it, did you?” Sarah demanded, stepping between the two boys. “You uploaded it to the open-source repository to humiliate him.”
“I wanted our team to win the state grant!” Leo yelled, his voice cracking with frustration. “Bryce was hoarding the code. He was going to sell it to a private tech firm and leave the rest of us in the dust.”
“And now he’s here to take it back,” Maya said, pointing up at the monitor.
On camera two, the figure reached up, grabbed the ceiling camera housing, and slowly twisted it off-axis. The screen went entirely gray, hissing with static.
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Before anyone could speak, the digital timer above the server room door suddenly beeped twice and changed color from red to bright, blinding white. The remaining countdown time flashed zeros, and a synthesized voice echoed from the hallway speakers: Isolation protocol engaged. Purge sequence initiated in twenty-nine minutes.
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