"Are you finished yet?"
Stella didn't answer. She didn't let Graham's annoyed huff distract her, or the sound of thunder and lightning, or the sharp pitching of the ship as it reacted to the storm-tossed waves. She kept her focus on the computer in front of her. A few minutes later, her patience paid off. The computer was hacked.
"Now, we're in," she said, grinning.
Graham didn't answer, he'd wandered over to the door, and had his ear pressed against it. Stella didn't know if he'd actually heard someone coming, or if he was just bored. She didn't ask. If she couldn't get what they'd come for, Captain Dram would have their heads.
She searched through the computer's files quickly until she found what she was looking for - the image of a crow. She opened the file and copied it to the drive embedded in her bracelet. Then, she deleted everything on the computer.
"We're finished," she said.
Graham hadn't moved from the door.
"Is there a problem?"
'Someone's breathing out there,' he spoke to her telekinetically.
Stella resisted the urge to shake her head. She hated when he did that. It always felt like she had an itch somewhere impossible to scratch. Since she couldn't speak back in the same way, she waited for him to tell her what he wanted to do.
'I think we'd best take the window exit.'
Stella did groan this time. The window in this office was so small as to make her wonder why it even existed. Taking the window exit meant blowing a hole in the side of the ship, which meant blowing their cover. She wanted to ask why, but for as much as Graham could be impatient, he wasn't reckless. She didn't know what he could hear breathing, but it must've been something downright nasty. So, without a word, she set three explosives along the window, activated her blast force field, and then set them off.
The noise was every bit as terrible as she’d expected.
Challenge cards that sparked the story
A computer is hacked
Ship
Stella met Graham ten months after she started working for Captain Dram. Graham had been on a long, undercover assignment that ended rather spectacularly and suddenly in ways that no one could have predicted (that is absolutely not what Graham writes in his report). They are complete opposites but connect immediately. Stella can look at anything - a computer program, an elevator, a road map - and tell you three ways it could be tweaked in order to be more efficient (or rendered broken beyond belief). Graham can look at any person and tell you three ways to get them to spill their deepest secret.
Together, they’re more than quite effective - as the owner of the data they just stole is about to find out.
Until next time,
Kimberly
That is an intriguing ending.