Chapter 29: Hack Cracking
Bella glared at Aro. She usually wasn't an angry person. I'd seen her look hurt, upset, and emotionally drained, but I'd never seen her downright furious. Even when she was mad at Emmett, she didn't look as scary as she did now. Aro must have picked up on her fury. Even I, who struggled to recognize human expressions at times, could read the clear death threat that was on her face. "What did you do? You can't hold us here against our will. That's called kidnapping!" she spat, poking him hard in the chest. She was a few inches shorter than him, but he still cowered away from her.
"I didn't do it, Violet's at the helm."
"Only because you turned your keys over to her! Was this part of your plan? Wait for me to show up again and then lock the place down, so you can experiment on me?" she shouted at him. "I'm not a Guinea pig! I'm a regular human woman, and Vicky is a robot."
"I took blood samples from you both, you're identical twins," he said, trying to defend his stupidity.
"No, you took two blood samples from me. You weren't subtle at all. We knew what you were trying to do, and I wasn't ready to give up Vicky. She's mine, and I don't think you deserve her."
"Not to interrupt your productive conversation, but I need to know how much trouble we're in. Aro, is Violet acting under your orders?" I cut in.
"No, I don't know what she's doing. She's only a high school graduate. I doubt she even knows what she's doing. This has to be a complete misunderstanding. She must have hit the lockdown on accident," he said, shaking his head, clearly in denial. I would suppose it was possible Violet had triggered the lockdown on accident, but I really doubted it.
"Did you do any background checks on her before you started dating her?" I asked.
He looked at me like I was crazy.
"Edward, only Emmett does that. That's not a normal thing," Bella answered, surprising me.
"But he's head of a multi-billion-dollar corporation. The labs house vital expensive secrets that can destroy the company if the discoveries are leaked out to competitors. If anyone should be doing a background check, it's him," I defended my point.
"She's your patient. Didn't you look into her?" he snapped back.
"I looked into her medical history, not her criminal history!" I yelled, exasperated.
"She seemed like such a nice girl," Aro said with a frown.
"We need to determine if we're safe of not. Vicky, hack the security cameras in the penthouse office suite. We need to see what she's up to. Display them on my laptop, please."
"The security system is not hackable," Aro said snottily, only to eat his own words moments later, when his office appeared on my screen.
"See, it was an accident," Aro said smugly, pointing to the image of Violet, munching on a bag of chips and spinning in his computer chair. "I'll just call her and walk her through turning everything off." He pulled out his phone, and we watched as his desk phone rang. She looked at it confused, but she answered it, anyways.
"Violet Industries, how may I help you?" she answered.
"Violet, sweetheart, you accidentally triggered a lockdown. I need you to undo it, so we can go to lunch, dear," he cooed at her.
She downright cackled at him. "Oh, that wasn't an accident. I did that on purpose, and now, I'm downloading all your files onto a thumb drive."
"Why are you doing this?" Aro cried.
"Think about it, Aro. All your files," she said with a sinister smile.
His face went white. "Violet, please."
"Let's just hope a fire doesn't break out and end up suffocating you all." She laughed and hung up on him.
"Vicky, he who must not be named, protocol horcrux one, now!" I ordered. Seconds later, an image of Emmett popped up on my screen. He was mid-bite of a sandwich.
"What's shakin', Brother?" he said with a full mouth. "Why are you hacking Homeland Security?"
"We're in trouble, Emmett. Aro gave his security pass and keys to a crazy woman, and she can kill us at any time."
"Why would he do that?" Emmett asked, confused.
"I didn't know she was crazy!" Aro snapped.
"Didn't you do a background check on her?" Emmett asked, appalled.
"I know, right? But Bella seems to think that's not the way you're supposed to choose a date," I explained.
"That's just playing Russian roulette, and now, you guys have the gun pointed at you. Background check, people," he said, like his point was made. I thought it was.
"We need you to disable the fire alarms. They don't spray water. They remove oxygen from the room, which would kill us. Not to mention she has the blast doors down! There's no way to escape," I squealed, getting more upset, and took another puff on my inhaler. This was turning out to be a very bad day.
"So, doors up and no fire safety, got it," he said and went to work on his computer. Suddenly, all the power went out in the lab.
"Was that you?" I asked hopefully.
"No," he said, frowning. "Do you have backup generators?"
"Yes, they should kick on any moment," Aro said nervously. "Any moment," he repeated after a minute of waiting and listening to the dying beeps of my computer backup battery pack. "Any moment!" he shouted, like they would hear him and kick on. "Why aren't they kicking on?"
"Let me dig a little deeper," Emmett said with a determined expression.
"Vicky, search for electronic wavelengths and tap them," I ordered.
"Good thinking, Edward. Send me what you find," Emmett ordered Vicky. The only powered thing in my lab was the screen he was on, because Vicky was using her own power source to run it, after my battery pack died. Finding electrical currents in a powered down building should've been easy for her, and it was.
"It looks like she's draining all the company accounts, should I reroute that money?" Emmett asked gleefully.
"Please do," Aro begged.
"Vicky, locate the inserted USB drive and delete its contents," I ordered, not wanting to lose all the hard work I had done to a competitor.
"Crazy girlfriend just uploaded a virus. The lab will lose everything if I can't stop it in time. Do you want to send a copy of the files here?" Emmett asked with a worried look on his face.
"Yes!" I shouted.
"It's got to be Aro's auth. It's his computer," Emmett said.
"Do it, for heaven sakes, save it all!" Aro shouted.
We all watched in silence, as Emmett's hands rained down on his keyboard like a hurricane.
"Transfer of files to horcrux one complete," Vicky announced to the room.
"Oh, thank goodness," Aro sighed in relief. "What's horcrux one?" he finally thought to ask.
"The Department of Homeland Security," Emmett answered offhandedly and hit a final key, sitting back with a smile. The power kicked on, and the blast doors retracted. "Time to get the hell out of there, Brother, before crazy girlfriend figures out that I freed her lab rats."
I grabbed Bella's hand, and she grabbed Vicky's. We ran for the exit as fast as possible, and Aro was trailing behind us. Mike from the lab down the hall came running out, and so did three others.
For some reason, no one but Vicky noticed a drone being flown out of the executive office's window. "Should I knock it down?" she asked, pointing to it.
The crowd that had gathered in the parking lot had grown massive. I pulled Bella a little closer to me, worried for her safety.
"Is everyone out?" Bella shouted over the crowd. "Do a headcount!"
She didn't realize that we were all very isolated in our work. There was no one who we'd know to account for. I knew Mike worked down the hall, but I didn't know the others around me. "Emmett, announce an immediate evacuation. Tell them it's not a drill!" I ordered. I knew Vicky was still tapped into him, and he was still watching the situation.
My cellphone rang, it was him. "I did a visual video sweep of the building. Everyone but the crazy girl is out. Have Vicky shoot down the drone. It's carrying something she attached to it. Most likely a USB drive with all the files."
"Take down the drone," I ordered, and Vicky very calmly made her way through the crowd. She picked up a rock from the landscaping and threw it at the drone with precise accuracy. Everyone jumped back, as it hit the ground. Police had just pulled into the parking lot to see it fall and quickly confiscated it.
"You can't stop me! I'm a supervillain, I'm bionic!" Violet shouted from the top floor window. I was sure she meant it to be scary, but from ten stories up, we could barely hear her at all.
She disappeared inside the building, and Emmett let me know that fire protocols had been triggered. The few officers who had started for the doors were now locked out. Thank heavens, or they would have been killed. They asked Aro for the office phone number, so they could speak with Violet, but she didn't answer. She went back to the window and climbed out on the ledge.
"Don't jump!" was shouted by several people.
Her response was laughing. She kicked her toes into the concrete wall. I shook my head, sure that she had destroyed the flesh structure I'd grown for her. The titanium toe bones stuck into the side of the building. She did the same with her hands, making me cringe at her destruction of my beautiful hard work. It was obvious that she was coming down on her own, so the cops pushed everyone back and prepared to take her.
She was still about seven stories up, when she realized she wasn't going to get away.
"You can't stop me!" she shouted, and to everyone's horror, she sprang away from the wall.
She did land just outside of the police, but what she failed to realize was that her titanium legs would act like spears, impaling her, stabbing up through her chest cavity, killing her instantly.
Everyone cringed away. Medics were called. Aro and I made our way forward to see if we could help, or at least identify the body.
"Do we need to redesign the product before we go to market to prevent lawsuits?" Aro asked callously. So much for loving his girlfriend.
I shook my head no. "You can use a different metal, something more breakable, but most people don't jump from seven stories high. Most also bend their knees, instead of landing straight-legged like she did as well. If she'd bent her knees, she would've just landed on top of her implants, not been impaled by them. A standard 'bend your legs when jumping from high distances' warning would probably cover you legally."
What we didn't expect was for a cop, who seemed busy with his walkie-talkie, to suddenly ask for Aro to step forward. I was sure Aro thought he was just going to be asked a few questions, since it was his company and his girlfriend who had gone crazy. Everyone was shocked, when the policeman turned him around and put him in handcuffs.
"What's the meaning of this?" Aro shouted.
"We've received information from Homeland Security of your illegal activities. You're under arrest for corporate espionage, blackmail, insider trading, illegal procurement of organs, illegal dumping and disposal of bio and toxic waste, embezzlement, and illegal disinterment," the cop rattled off.
Aro glared at me. "This is your fault!" he shouted.
"I didn't do anything," I said defensively.
"It was you and that man who tricked me into giving all the files over. You won't get away with this!" he shouted, as the cop started shoving him into the car.
"I'll get you and your little dog, too!" Bella shouted back, laughing. She put Vicky's hand up and high-fived it. "Good work, girl. You, too, Emmett. This calls for a dessert buffet tonight!" she cheered.
The cops took down our names and addresses, Bella jumped in when they got to Vicky, telling them her name was Vicky Swan, and she lived at our address. I was worried about her being caught in the lie, but she really was Vicky Swan, and she had lived at our address. Well, I supposed we'd get to take her home again, since the lab was shut down for the time being. The cops moved on to the next people, dismissing us and letting us know they'd contact us if we were needed.
I still was a bit stunned by the whole mess, but ultimately happy with the outcome. "Come on, girls, let's go home. I have a personality file to upload," I said, smiling at Vicky.
Bella jumped into my arms and kissed me thoroughly. Mike and several others wolf whistled at us. She pulled away, giggling. "Let's go, almost husband, we have some celebrating to do."
It was that night that I learned what true celebration was…multiple times.
