Page 50 of Hollow Code
"Shit," Gideon mumbled.
"What is it?" Neve asked.
"GR-11SEC and IY-SEED-ETH9."
"What is that?" Coulter moved to the center of the room.
Gideon's stomach soured.
He highlighted the letters and numbers on the screen. "GR—my initials," he said. "Eleven seconds, which was the exact time between my breach detection the day I was fired and the system locking me out."
"Who would know that?" Coulter asked
"Finch and whoever flagged my breach." He pounded his fist on the desk. "Isaac knows I was in the system."
"How do you know that?" Coulter stared at him.
"Because IY are Isaac Young’s initials and ETH9 is the test I ran that day."
"What does SEED stand for?" Coulter asked.
"It’s not a system term. It’s not part of any protocol or log format. It’s plain fucking English for planted." Gideon ran his fingers through his hair. "Isaac hacked into the HELIOS and ETHER test. He fucked with my data. And then the bastard made it look like I tried to reroute my access credentials."
"He’s been behind this the entire time," Zadie muttered. "But he didn’t come after me just now. He can’t know what I did."
"Maybe not. But he’s going to go looking for what I might have done."
"It’s going to be hard to find." Zadie pushed her chair back. "It would take a team of people running scripts around the clock. Not to mention they’d have to know what to look for and last you saw him, you were blowing up nodes, not trying to access the system."
She had a point.
"This might be a dumb question, but why would Isaac, or anyone at Hyperion, let you know that were watching this attack a few minutes ago."
Gideon read the string one more time. Eight characters. A signature and a timestamp from the worst day of his life, served back to him like a greeting card.
"Isaac wants me to know that he sees me and that he’s coming for me."
Chapter Twelve
Zadie braced her back against the concrete base of the relay tower and scanned the area, rifle in her hands. It had been less than twenty-four hours since they’d hacked into Hyperion, and in that time, things had been tense. Not just because the team had shifted from casual, not sure what was next—to mission-focused.
But something had changed in Gideon, and Zadie didn’t know why. When they’d gone to bed, he reached for her, and she gave into the moment. Caved to what felt like his need to lose himself in her. Maybe she was selfish to take it, because she’d needed him too.
Not that there was a distance between them. However, something was obviously bugging Gideon, and the first chance she got, she was going to find out what.
"Can I do anything?" Zadie asked.
"Not yet." He was three feet to her left, crouched against the concrete with his laptop balanced on his knees and a tangle of cables coiled beside him.
The node sat twelve feet above them, mounted on the steel arm of a BC Hydro substation forty minutes east of the valley. Same kind of infrastructure Gideon had been dismantling when she'd found him—weatherproof casing, industrial mounting bracket, hidden in plain sight among the transformers and junction boxes that nobody looked at twice.
Only this time, they weren't here to destroy it. They were here to listen.
"Comms check," Neve said through the earpiece. Her voice was low and even. The same operational tone she used on every mission. The same voice that kept the team steady, alert, and alive.
"Coulter here. West tree line. In position."
"Scout here. At the Ridge. Eyes on the access road and the north perimeter."
