“This keycard doesn’t work. I thought it would.” Mackenzie’s heart rate kicked up. This was no time to panic. She took a deep breath. “It was worth a try.”

“Your attempt could have triggered an alarm.” Alex paced the small room.

“It could have.”

“And what about cameras?”

“Yes. That too. Time for plan B.”

“Glad you’re not giving up so quickly.”

“Never. I’ve come too far for that.” She was all in, and there was no going back now.

“I’m just along for the ride, but we should hurry.”

She led him back to the main elevators. Alex said nothing on the ride up to the third floor to her office. He followed her, and she closed the door and sat at her temporary desk.

“Care to share your plan B? If we don’t return quickly, he’s going to look for us.”

“I know. So shut up and let me work.”

“Are you hacking . . . I mean, using cybersecurity methods to—”

“Access the lower level with this keycard? Yes. And to fine-tune the cameras—loop them—for a few minutes. We have ten minutes before they loop back. I hope that’s more time than we need, but I didn’t want to take longer, or Tilden will come looking for us. My regular keycard wouldn’t work on the lower level. I already tried. But this keycard is different. If I’m right, and this is a master. I have to try to add permissions.”

“You seem to know a lot about the cameras.”

“It’s something I teach in class. Not how to hack into one but that security cameras are notoriously easy to hack. And the irony is that the cameras are intended to catch people committing crimes, but with the addition of the Internet and the software to run the cameras, cybercriminals can break into the camera itself.”

And here we are . . . breaking all the rules to find a dangerous rule-breaker.

“Now to tweak this keycard.”

“So why doesn’t the company use biometrics instead?”

“I wasn’t part of that decision-making process. But no matter the access method, credentials data—biometric or otherwise—is sent for authentication in the same way. Keycards are easy to manage. Now, let me work.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Come on . . .” she mumbled, willing her codes to work. “There. I’m in the system and just gave this keycard the ability to take me to the lower level. Now, let’s go. We have one shot at this.”

And for Mackenzie to gain access to the air-gapped system. She could be using the exact same technique that someone else had used to allow a cybercriminal access. Nothing had been revealed to the cybersecurity team, and that made her even more nervous. If she was the hacker, if she was Nebulous 2.0, she would steal all the sensitive data and then set the system to crash before anyone was the wiser. He’d done it before.