Page 231 of Fragments

So funny that I used to seeVelleasthe big asshole. Sure, he’s still a big asshole, but he’s definitely the lesser of two evils. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I consider him a friend on some level.

If it comes down to us versus them, I’d side with John Chevelle in a New York fuckin’ minute.

Back inside my cell, I wait for the sounds of the Warden’s Gestapo to clear, then I get to work. I loosen the stitch in my mattress, digging inside for my device. Pulling it out, I smile fondly.

Hello, darling.

LOIS 2.0 is a real brick-and-mortar type machine, but she works. I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into this thing—literally—and I couldn’t be prouder. She’s mybaby, born from nothing but spare scraps and my motherfuckin’ wit.

I really am Dr. Frankenstein up in this bitch. ’Cause it’salive.

By only sheer luck, I managed to get all the pieces together right before the new guards arrived. I’ve done nothing but program for the last however many weeks. Hours and hours spent with bloodshot eyes, cursing and praying to the gods of technology that this would take.

When I saw my first blue screen, I burst into tears.

Naturally, that was just the beginning. And now, hundreds of hours of coding later, I think I’ve finally got it.

Something you might have noticed about me is that for a dangerously smart guy, sometimes I can be pretty freaking dumb. Not necessarily stupid, justreckless. But only when it comes to the people I love.

That time I fixed the servers in the East Wing? Yea, fixing the glitch took1 all of five minutes. The rest of the time was spent studying every square inch of the Alabaster Pen servers and their code, then programming a wireless driver, which makes for easy pairing—the hacker’s best friend.

And here’s something I’m sureno oneknows… the servers for both control rooms are connected. They run on different bandwidth, but essentially, they’re all one system. Meaning that anything I did in the East also works in gen-pop.

Pretty cool, huh?

I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t disrupt the servers with the fixes I made that day. Because realistically, it wouldn’t do me any good. Simply wiping them out wouldn’t have helped me, not back then, and certainly not now.

What Ididwas drop a tiny bug in there to lie still and wait. So that in the event I ever got LOIS 2.0 up and working, which I have, my hibernating ninja parasite could wake up and infest the damn system.

Gazing at the screen now, I’m rippling with excitement.

I can’t believe I actually did it.

Everything takes infinitely longer with this device than it ever did with original LOIS. By the time the lights turn off in the row, my back is cramped, and my ass is numb from sitting for so long… But I’m in.

I’m fuckingin.

Locked onto the servers. In control of Alabaster Pen with the push of a few buttons.

“Holy shit…” I breathe, biting down hard on my lip. “I… am a fuckinggod.”

Seriously.I want to jump up andscream, and happy dance like a brilliant madman. But I can’t. I can’t draw attention from the new guards.

As robotic as they seem, this device can’t power them down. Maybe next time.

Still, I allow myself a few seconds to stumble to my feet and do the cabbage patch around my cell.This is a million times more amazing than hacking into the Pentagon!

Because with this, I can…

Slowly inching over to the bars, I go for my first official test, typing, clicking, and swiping. My eyes stay up on the camera in the corner of the ceiling as I hold my breath.

Here goes nothing…

Tap. The camera’s red light goes black, and it slumps over, powered off.

“Yes!” I do a little hop, celebrating as quietly as possible. “Oh, man. So frickin’ cool. Now for the coup de grâce.”

My fingers work on the screen, sifting around through back-end controls.