CHAPTER THREE – DAVID

"Things were bad enough as they were, now this."

Swift paced up and down restlessly, his great strides forming tiny clouds of dust with each footfall. "You shouldn't have been involved with anything that happened in the forest, and now Optimus has gone and roped you into danger," he continued.

Swift had driven me back to the caryard as soon as Optimus had told me of his plan. It had sounded exciting, something that a boy would daydream about during class, but I knew that in reality what I had volunteered to help with was well above my head. I feigned confidence. "I'll be in the House of Records, Swift. I know that place like the back of my hand, and it's well guarded."

"Guarded?" he laughed. "By what, humans? That's hardly going to…"

"Alright! I get your point, but I'm going to try anyway, okay? If this war is going to affect us just as much as you, I'd like to think that at least I did something," I retorted.

He paused. "Sorry. I just…get over cautious about these things now. You're sure you will remember everything?"

I pulled my sleeve up on my arm to reveal my scrawled handwriting. As Optimus had told me what to do, I had grabbed a pen from my pocket and, with no paper around me, had etched it onto my skin.

I left moments later with a wave, and turned away with the sound of Swift changing back into a car at my back. I had two days to get as much information as I could. I'd have to be inconspicuous, not hard since I was hardly noticed in the first place, but Optimus had told me clearly what I had to do.

"Utterly insane," I muttered as I trailed down the road that eventually met up with the bottom of my street. My head was still swimming, and the desperate voice of reasoning in the back of my mind screamed for me to forget everything I had just experienced, but I couldn't.

"You are doing your kind a great service," Optimus had said to me, and inside a feeling of worth had bloomed. I liked that feeling, and wanted to keep it.

The House of Records looked like a building pulled out of Ancient Greece. Great textured pillars supported the heavy overhang and marble and sandstone lined every floor. Inside was like a giant library, though it was not books that lined the shelves, but documents. They ranged from everything to government regulations, police and military reports to who won the junior football game on Saturday morning. In the afternoon, as the orange sun sent fingers of light through the upper windows, few people noticed me as I swept up the dust away from the desks, or cleaned the keyboards of the computers. One person, however, always managed to say hi, and always managed to make my knees turn to jelly. David. In junior high I had scribbled his name in secret corners of my text books, and tried to see if his last name sounded good with my first name. But our relationship never extended beyond a smile and a few words.

"Hey, you're here early," he remarked from behind the reception. As the son of the building's director, he usually did odd jobs around the place that meant we would bump into each other.

"Oh, you know, just thought I'd get a bit more done tonight. Some kid's spilt his choc milk on the floor in Room 4, it's gonna be a big job," I replied, somewhat airily. There was actually no spill in Room 4, but that was where the mainframe computers were, and the target of my first task.

"You alright? You look a bit tired," he asked, with a crease of concern on his forehead.

"Oh, er, just had a rough sleep last night," which of course related to the fact that I didn't sleep at all, and it would be much of the same story again that night.

"Damn. Happens to the best of us, though, doesn't it? I guess, then, you're not up for another late night? Coz me and a few friends were going to head out to the Pig and Whistle after for a few drinks and I thought that maybe, if you wanted, you could come."

I felt my stomach drop. No, not now, not when I actually had something to do! The overwhelming urge to say "Hell yes!" came over me, but I replied flustered: "Sorry, can't tonight, I'm…seeing a friend. A girlfriend. Well, no, not a girlfriend as in relationship, but a girl who is my friend and…"

He laughed. "It's alright, I get it, I get it. Maybe another time, eh?"

I nodded stupidly, mentally slapping my head in embarrassment as I walked away with the broom in my hand.

By 5:15 all the public had gone home, and the only souls left in the House of Records were the cleaners, David and his father, and a few security guards, but Room 4 was deserted. Hauling the mopping bucket inside, I gently closed the door behind me and hung the 'Cleaning in Progress' sign on the outside handle. I hoped it would grant me some privacy. I sat down at one of the computers and opened the Records internet, taking out a piece of paper in which I had recopied all of Optimus' instructions. There were about twenty steps involved before I would reach the site I needed to retrieve the information.

"So, what am I looking for?" I had asked Optimus the night before.

"A list of access grants to military information," he had replied.

I raised my eyebrows. "There could have been hundreds of people who had done that, we get all sorts looking up that kinda stuff."

Optimus' eyes flashed. "Not from the sites I'm thinking of. Your internet is more expanded than any human believes. It is like a digital organism – there are billions of pathways that can stretch all subjects all around the world…and beyond."

I went to smile but I realised he was serious. "Beyond? Hang on, are you suggesting that aliens are using our internet? Like logging into Hotmail and Googling their names?"

"This is no time for humour, girl. Like I said, the internet is a much larger organism than you are aware of, and can be tapped into easily. The sites we are concerned about are directly linked to the American Government, and are not accessible to normal civilians. Unfortunately, this means that Decepticons can hack into the information easily – they are used to much more advanced technology and will find no difficulty in it."

Back in Room 4, I glanced down at the piece of paper with a smirk. The first instructions were: 'Go to Google." Advanced technology indeed. I followed each step gradually, and began to notice the stripping back of advertisements and accessability. Codes were needed soon, luckily Optimus had them, but I had no idea how. My eyes strained as I searched each page for the next link, and eventually the screen just became black with small, lime green font. Then I found what I was looking for.

A link appeared with 'Access Grants, 1/15/07 – 7/15/07'. I clicked, and the room around me was lit up by the green flashes of text as it spilt down the screen in a long list of names: Authorised Army Chief of Staff, T.S Fawlkner; Authorised Lieutenant General, F.S MacDougall; Authorised Major R.J Nicholson…the list went on.

I sighed, scanning down the pages. There was nothing there, just access dates and what they had access to. I kept scrolling, there must have been thousands of entries. My eyes began to blur until, amongst all the green font, red writing appeared: UNAUTHORISED T6D99EN4884738, Area 566: MapBlueprint/Arms;Scale1:16/45. I stared hard, wondering if this was what Optimus was after. Just a few lines down was another entry that looked the same, and a few more later on. I hit 'Print' and gathered a few copies, shoving them into my overalls pocket.

Optimus's instructions led on to more sites, each containing similar instances of unauthorised access. I printed off as much as I could, until a red light flashed on the printer. No paper.

"Damn!" I cursed quietly, looking around me to see where there would be more paper. The cupboard. I wrenched at the handles, but it had already been locked. I fished the paper out of my pockets and began to feed it in upside down.

"Rose?"

I yelped and looked across to the door. David stood framed in the doorway. Panic. "Er, hi, David. I'm just looking up something quickly…"

He came into the room and turned to look at the screen. I launched myself forward and hit the escape button, but it only made it worse – sending me back to the military's main site. I bashed the escape button repeatedly, giving an awkward laugh.

"What is this?" David asked, frowning. He was looking now at the papers in my hands. "What are you doing looking up military stuff? I didn't think we had access to that kind of thing here."

"Just a p…project I'm working on," I stammered, thrusting the paper back into my pocket.

"Can I have a look?" he asked with his arm extended.

"No! I, er, I mean that, well, it's a little embarrassing, me looking up tanks and stuff. You know, not exactly girly."

"That wasn't tanks on the screen, that was something else," he remarked suspiciously. "I better see it, Rose. You might have accidentally stumbled upon restricted information. Rose, come on, hand it over."

"David, don't," I pleaded quietly.

He surveyed me for a moment. "Something's wrong, isn't it? You've been acting weird since you got here; ducking into shadows whenever I walked past, glancing around you like you're being watched. What's happening?"

"Nothing, I…"

"Don't lie to me."

"David, trust me. Just let me go, don't ask anything, just pretend this never happened. I'm not doing anything dangerous, but I still can't tell you what it involves. Please, I'm begging you." I stared at him desperately, and it must have showed.

His tone changed. "If it were anyone else, I'd have called security by now. Promise me you're not plotting to blow something up, or kidnap someone." He gave a smile and I felt every single muscle in me relax with relief.

"I promise. I promise wholeheartedly."

He seemed satisfied. "Alright then. Finish up and I'll walk you out."