Make a call? Was that what he was going to say? She lifted a finger, signaling to Alex that she wanted quiet. “Tomorrow, while I’m at Hanstech, I’ll search for the access point. I can physically walk through the place, and the amplitude should get stronger the closer I get. I’ll work it that way, now that I know he is definitely in the system. In the meantime, I’m deploying my own countermeasures to stop his attacks.”

Mackenzie spent another hour working to counter Nebulous 2.0’s planned attack. A sense of purpose filled her, and even the feeling of victory that she’d found him. But it was short-lived, considering she alone was the reason he was in the Hanstech system.

A code name intrigued her—D-Swarmbut—but the data would take too long to go through. She searched the code name in another window, and after digging deep, found a short video clip. Tiny robots crawled along the street of a small town while drones swarmed above them—all working in tandem.

Alex was back, leaning over her shoulder. “Swarming drones?”

“One of DARPA’s experiments. It’s just like a sci-fi movie.”

“Robots and all. Well, tiny ones.”

“Gives me the creeps to think it’s real.”

“But they’re good tiny robots that will assist in military missions.” He sighed and moved away from her laptop. “UAVs are part of our military now. We know that.”

“Alex, I know about drones. Dad wanted to use them for good, but there’s a dark side to all this.”

“They can be used against us.” He crossed his arms and lifted his hand to his mouth in thought.

Alex was handsome and brilliant. Under these precarious circumstances, she couldn’t believe her thoughts actually went there. But she couldn’t stop them or the admiration she had for him, along with something warm that fluttered through her. She took a deep breath to clear her mind and waited for what he would say next.

“You mentioned the rogue access point. You’re using a smartphone. What if he’s doing the same thing, only he’s accessing the information with a drone?”

She pursed her lips, pressed her fingers against them. “Hmm. The servers are underground, but there could be another entrance to the building. Maybe at the back. A tunnel. Something. I don’t know. But you could be onto something.”

Mackenzie rewatched the video with the drone and tiny robots. It was a couple of years old, but because she found the code name reference on the secured servers, it left her to wonder what role Hanstech had played. Had Hanstech assisted in creating these drones? Was their current project along the same lines as what she saw in the video?

What if Nebulous 2.0 was putting additional code in for use later when the most damage could be done? That thought sent a chill down her spine.