The Cyber Twins novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Wall and Ghost

Nico's study had three monitors, one chair and a leather couch he never used.

At 5:20 in the morning I dragged the couch against the desk.

I sat on it with the old laptop on my knees and pulled him down beside me.

"Show me," I said.

He turned the center screen.

A red banner crawled across the Elizabeth terminal's dock map.

*ALL PORTS LOCKED. PAY 40 MILLION BY 9 A.M. OR THE CRANES STAY DEAD.*

Underneath it, a timer was counting down.

"Crowe," Nico said grimly. "He can't have written this alone."

"He didn't." I leaned closer and read the code scrolling on the side screen. "Look at how it enters. It goes in through the back, through the tracking database, where nobody watches."

"The tracking database isn't mine."

"It's Jillian's."

He went still.

"She built it," I said. "Two years ago. You said you'd audit it, and then you didn't, because it was hers."

"I trusted her."

"I know."

"She's the one who gave him the key."

"No," I said. "She sold him the shape of your Wall. Everything you check, and everything you don't. Crowe is only the hand."

Nico dragged both palms down his face.

"I can't beat her at this. She knows how I think. She taught half of it to me."

"Then stop thinking like you," I said.

He turned his head.

"You've built your Wall so that everything pushes toward the middle," I said. "She knows that. Everything she wrote aims at the middle. So don't defend the middle."

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