“I did. This isn’t my cell. It’s a cheap one I picked up on my drive to Montana. I’ve encoded it with the necessary information to allow me to gain access to the air-gapped system, just in case.” She handed it to Alex. “And this is where you really get your hands dirty. I need you to set it on top of the server. I’m not tall enough.”

He took the cell and could barely reach the top. “Once this goes up there, it’s not coming down. And it’s incriminating.”

“And untraceable. The code will crash in forty-eight hours.”

“We need to go to the authorities with this soon.”

“Timing is everything, and we were out of time when I got that message. I’m afraid he’s going to go for Nora. She brought me in. At the very least, she needs to be free from the threat.”

Cyberwarfare used to be the way of the future but was now a present reality as well as a threat level on the scale with biological warfare. Companies were already being crippled via ransomware. In this case, no ransom was involved.

Alex headed toward the back end of the server room, opened the door, and stepped down. Across a short corridor, a glass-encased room remained in the dark.

Mackenzie followed him. “We need to hurry, Alex. What are you doing?”

He stood at the door, itching to get inside and take a look. He couldn’t see inside the dark room because the dim lighting in the server room created a mirror effect.

“Have you ever considered that Nora could be behind everything?” He hadn’t wanted to bring it up and hoped Mackenzie had already thought about it.

“No. She’s too scared.” Mackenzie stood next to him.

“It could be an act. Or she could be working with the person behind it, either by choice or because she’s been threatened.”

“I know my sister. She’s not that good of an actor.”

“Your emotions could be clouding the truth. You don’t want her to be behind it.”

In the reflection, Mackenzie shivered. He should have waited to bring up the possibility.

“It’s impossible to see,” she said.

Redirecting the conversation?

“Can you get us inside?”

“We have three minutes. And you can see that this time, a biometric handprint is required.”

“I was hoping you would have a workaround.”

“Nothing I can do in three minutes.”

He removed the night-vision monocular from his jacket.

She arched a brow. “Really?”

“Aren’t you glad I’m resourceful?” He peered through the monocular. “Looks like a large, disassembled drone on the table closest to the door. Lots of drones in various states of assembly. Looks like a test facility.”

“Well, that makes sense. The software is tested here even though manufacturing is done elsewhere.”