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"What uises should work on anyone who isn’t a supervisor or battlefor the approach of anyone else, but Justin’s ruse seees Elyssa checked the time Only fifteen minutes had passed since infiltration, but it felt like er They had to hurry And what if they couldn’t find the transport schedule for Justin’s mom? She pushed her doubts away They could worry about that when they reached the objective

"There’s the office," Stacey said, pointing down the hall

A placard on the wall read, Arcsys Information Director

Elyssa peered into the office door It was a large office, though cluttered with old arcterminals and other bits and pieces of equip Asian lued to the monitor in front of him She airunt he slumped atop the touchscreen keyboard on the desk

Bella slipped a lanyard from around the man’s neck, and inspected it "This is his access card," she said, putting it around her neck and tucking it beneath the robes

Elyssa looked at the screen and saw the picture of a wet cat in a shower, its expression desperate She pshawed "Looks like he orking hard"

"That poor kitty," Stacey said, her lips pouting with e man away behind a pile of parts so he couldn’t be seen from the doorway At least the clutter had some use The Lancer dart would keep him asleep for a few hours

While Bella kept watch on the hallway, Elyssa set her phone atop the touchscreen interface on the administrator’s desk The systeh aether powered it instead of electricity and it used the aethernet instead of the internet She activated the spell Ada…Arcsys node found

Accessing…

Fail Atte root spell hack…success

Elyssa breathed with relief at the last word her phone screen Files flashed past on the Arcsys terminal, presumably as Adam’s script copied thees

Root access secured Starting search Alice…no results found

Starting search Alysea…no results found

"How er?" Bella asked, her body tense as she watched the hallway

"I don’t know," Elyssa said "It’s running searches, but it’s not finding anything" She looked back at the screen

Starting search secure transport…results found Accessing…

The last word re, she wondered if the arcphone had frozen "Co," Bella hissed "Oh, dear, it’s a battle th, and aith of the door

"There’s nowhere else to hide," Stacey said, eyes flicking around the roo Stacey down next to her Bella backed away from the door too late A man in a black robe appeared just outside the door and stared straight at Bella Elyssa prepared to launch herself at the man the runted "Where the hell is he?" hebreaks" The man looked up and down the hallway "Hey, Minh? I need you My printer is broken again" He walked away

Elyssa and Stacey blew out held breaths in unison

"How the bloody hell?" Stacey whispered

"I put up an illusion toa bead of sweat from her forehead

"Why didn’t you do that the minute we ca on it all this ti illusion of a corae red letters flashed on the screen

Access Denied

Chapter 23

Elyssa

Fighting back the despair, Elyssa touched the phone screen No response Had they done all this for nothing? She flicked a finger across the screen again, but still nothing happened Out of frustration, she rubbed her hand all across the screen

Please be patient while I work…

Elyssa breathed a sigh of relief At least the program hadn’t broken her phone or frozen it

All attempts to access data have failed Touch screen to continue

She did so

Account lacks permissions to access data node If you receive this error, it means you’ll have to access the Arcsys datacenter directly Flick the screen to track the specific Arcsys node location