Chapter 6 - The Anonymous Warning
The video on the laptop screen played silently, the harsh fluorescent lights of a St. Jude classroom casting a sickly blue glow across Arthur’s tense face. Clara turned her head away, unable to watch the cruel humiliation of another innocent student.
Suddenly, the laptop screen flashed black, replaced by a command-line interface running automated decryption scripts. A chat window popped open in the center of the display, typing characters out letter by letter in real-time.
WARNING: YOUR IP ADDRESS HAS BEEN LOGGED BY ST. JUDE NETWORK SECURITY.
Arthur slammed his fingers onto the keyboard, attempting to force-close the application, but the trackpad remained unresponsive, locked out by an external override command.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UPLOAD THE FILES, the text on the screen continued to scroll. PRINCIPAL VANCE OWNS THE LOCAL POLICE PRECINCT. YOUR DAUGHTER’S EXPULSION IS ONLY THE BEGINNING OF YOUR PROBLEMS.
"Dad, close it! Turn it off!" Clara cried out, grabbing his arm in a panic as her cell phone suddenly buzzed violently on the center console.
Arthur grabbed his phone, his heart hammering against his ribs. The caller ID displayed a private number, but a text message notification appeared directly beneath it from an unknown sender. It was a single attached image file.
Arthur tapped the notification, and the image opened full screen. It was a photograph taken from across the street, showing their house, with their front door standing wide open, the lock visibly smashed to pieces.
"They're at our house," Arthur whispered, the blood draining completely from his face.
"We can't go back there," Clara sobbed, tears spilling over her eyelashes again as she buried her face in her hands. "We have to run, Dad. Please, let's just keep driving."
"We aren't running anymore," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a cold, dangerous register. He yanked the MicroSD card out of the laptop port and slid it safely into his shirt pocket. He slammed the car into gear, spinning the steering wheel hard to make a U-turn in the middle of the empty suburban street. "If they want to play dirty, we're going to bring the whole house down on top of them."
"What are we going to do?" Clara asked, her voice small and frightened.
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"We’re going to visit the one person Principal Vance is terrified of," Arthur replied, pressing his foot hard down on the accelerator.
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