Chapter 7 - The Digital Breadcrumb
Inside Room 404, the air grew colder as Eleanor paced toward the door, her keys jangling nervously in her hand. "Pack your bags, both of you. We are going down to the administrative wing right now to clear up this little misunderstanding before things get entirely out of hand."
"We’re not going anywhere with you," Maya said firmly, standing up from her desk and stepping defensively in front of Leo. "We know what you and the superintendent are doing. The files aren't just on the local server anymore. I uploaded an encrypted backup copy to an external cloud archive the moment the network dropped."
Eleanor stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "You did what?"
"You heard her," Leo chimed in, finding a renewed surge of courage as he stood beside Maya. "The second the auxiliary port reconnected, the archive sync completed. Even if Mr. Vance deletes the local drive in the basement right now, the documents are already in the hands of the state department of education."
A look of sheer panic flickered across Eleanor’s face for a split second before she masked it with a desperate, menacing sneer. "You foolish little girl. You think some high school cloud account is going to save you from people who own this entire county? Thomas will wipe those servers before you even reach the parking lot."
"He won't have time," a new voice echoed from the doorway.
May you like
All three of them spun around. Standing in the threshold was Arthur the janitor, no longer holding a mop bucket, but holding a heavy industrial tablet displaying a live mirror feed of the basement security office. On the screen, Marcus could be seen standing up from his desk, refusing to hand over the flash drive while Superintendent Thomas Vance lunged forward in a sudden, violent fury.
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