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“Understood. Keep monitoring it. I want to get this done and get out of here.” I navigated to the subfolder and started to select the files in order to copy them when they suddenly disappeared. I refreshed my directory and caught a glimpse of them before they vanished again.

My hands flew across the keyboard. “Elvis, what’s going on? Is the security system onto us? It looks like it is randomly renaming the files.” I refreshed the directory and everything changed again.

“No.” His voice sounded puzzled. “There is no indication the security system is aware of our presence at all.”

“Once again, the back door is showing increased unknown activity,” Xavier offered. “Can’t explain it, but it’s definitely there.”

What the heck is going on?

I jumped out of the hack to write a quick script and readied it for my next attempt. “Elvis, I am going to try and copy a file in about ten seconds. Are you ready?”

“You’re good. Go for it.”

I ran the script, then hit refresh. Immediately I received a message confirming I’d retrieved the file. But when I went to where the copied file was supposed to be, the directory was blank. My log showed I’d copied the file, but somehow my copy had been routed to some unknown directory.

“What’s going on?” I asked, mystified.

“Back door activity spiked about fifteen seconds ago and has since gone back down,” Xavier stated calmly.

“No change in the security software,” Elvis reported.

Frustrated, I revised the script to make two copies instead of one, routing the first to the same new temporary subdirectory I tried to use last time. Concurrently, I secretly sent a second copy directly back to my laptop through the back door. I alerted Xavier and Elvis of my planned maneuver and ran the script. Abruptly, I was kicked out of the system.

“Back door just went down and then came back up,” Xavier said.

“I’m knocked out,” said Elvis.

A quick check confirmed my copy of the file did not make it through the back door before it went down. That meant only one thing. There was no automatic software that could be responding in this sophisticated a fashion.

We were facing a human opponent. Someone who was good.

Verygood.

“Holy crap!” I breathed. “There’s someone on the other side in real time, and they aren’t using the regular security software. We must have tripped a hidden alarm when we first started looking for the files. Who could it be?”

“No idea,” Xavier said. “But it’s weird. The defensive activities are being directed from outside the back door and corresponding with the activity spikes.”

No way was that right. “That’s...impossible!” I stared at the screen. “Outside protection on files that are seven years old? Through a hidden back door supposedly only known by you and Elvis and being handled by an incredibly talented hacker?”

“Crazy.” Elvis’s shoulders were tense, but I heard a note of excitement in his voice. He wasn’t used to meeting anyone approaching his level of skill. “Who the heck are they hiring at the CIA these days?”

“It just doesn’t make sense.” My brain hurt. Someone had anticipated and counter opposed my moves effortlessly. “It’s bizarre. It’s like whoever is on the other side can read my mind and knows what I’ll do before I even do it.”

Xavier swore when the back door suddenly dropped offline again. “I know, right? This is wizard-level planning and execution. With the exception of a few Russian and Chinese hackers, there isn’t anybody I know with moves like this outside our group.”

My fingers froze on the keyboard. OMG. The pieces suddenly fit together.

Gwen, who must have been in the kitchen, ran in to see what all the excitement was about. “What’s going on?”

“We’re close to our prize,” Elvis said. “Come on, come on. Xavier, get that back door open again.”

“Lexi,” Xavier barked, snapping me out of my trance. “The door is open. What do you want us to do now?”

Nothing. I was numb. There was only one person in the world who would know about the Zimmermans’ back door and would know my moves, our moves, like that.

“Abort,” I said quietly.

“What?” Elvis threw a wild glance over his shoulder at me. He had the hacker glaze, a look we got when we get close to the target of the hack. “Are you kidding? We’re so close.”