Disclaimer: I own nothing. Obviously.

Author's Note: Like the last chapter, this one is drawn mostly from the bits of Claudia's hacking handiwork that show up in the episode. This one consists of a few tiny scene snippets that come together to form the full chapter. On to the chapter!

Into the Breach

Claudia had barely left her apartment since successfully breaching the firewall. Most of her meals now were takeout that she had delivered to the door. There was a cheap Thai place down the street, and she had ordered from there so many times that now she only had to give her name and the kid on the other end already knew her order. Money carefully siphoned out of a local bank helped to cover the cost. As long as she stayed on top of her rent, no one else ever came to the door.

All of her time now was spent finalizing her plan. She was closer now that she had ever been. And it was none too soon, either. Joshua's visits were getting more and more frequent. The headaches that accompanied them were steadily getting worse and she was pushing so hard that she had started getting nosebleeds multiple times a week. If she didn't get this figured out soon, she was going to crash. Hard.

She had spent the last few days carefully probing Warehouse 13's systems. So far Artie and his little minions seemed to be more or less ignoring her. Although that fact that she was being far more subtle probably helped. All she had really managed to do was cause a few shorts, a few small blips that would register as nothing more than expected anomalies in the system. But today she was trying something different. Today she was going to try to see if she could use Warehouse 13's electrical grid to determine the building's location.

She knew she was finally getting through when a portion of the system was manually reset. So someone had noticed her little light show. She still had no real control, but she did manage to flick the lights inside Warehouse 13 on and off a few times as a mocking salute.

"You better watch out, Artie," she said with a grin. "Santa Clause is coming to town. And you have been a very bad boy."

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The next logical step, of course, was for the employees of Warehouse 13 to begin examining the electrical system by hand. That, of course, could have taken days. But it only took them a few hours to find an actual short. Claudia was munching her customary Thai takeout with her feet kicked up on the desk when they reached her little trap. She swung her feet to the floor, setting the takeout box on the desk.

"Let's have a little fun, shall we?" she asked the computer. She watched the screen as they located the anomaly and attempted to fix it. Instead it momentarily fritzed Warehouse 13's electrical system before crashing all the lights.

"Oops," Claudia said mockingly. "I hope you're not afraid of the dark, Artie."

Her childish glee didn't last long. The familiar pain had started building in the back of her skull. All of a sudden it was hard to breathe. Joshua was once again on his way.

"Oh, crap," Claudia muttered. She closed her laptop and braced herself against the desk chair. "This is gonna be fun."

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Joshua's visit left Claudia completely exhausted and she ended up falling asleep at the computer. When she opened her eyes again, it was already the next morning. Her headache had receded, but she was still exhausted. Plus, her neck hurt like hell from sleeping hunched over the desk. It took a few minutes of stretching it before she could properly turn her head.

She inhaled the remains of her Thai food as a form of breakfast before getting back to work. She had confirmed her suspicion that Warehouse 13 was somewhere in the continental United States. Not only that, but it was in the western chunk. And even that field was already narrowing. If her luck held, a few more hours of fishing in the electrical grid might give her the actual location of Warehouse 13.

"You can run all you want, Artie," she told the computer. "But you can't hide."

She rubbed her neck one final time and set to work.

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"Allons-y."

A look of awe crossed Claudia's face. K39ZZZ. A chain of seemingly insignificant letters and numbers, but to Claudia it was everything. It was the location of Warehouse 13. She had done it. After all of this time, she had finally found it.

"Hang on, Josh," Claudia said. "I'm almost there."

She ran one final foray into the system, just to be sure. It was hers now. Common sense told her to back out now and go pack her bag before they noticed, but Claudia Donovan had far too much flair for that. It was time to tip her hand.

Fritzing the overhead lights was easy. Wresting full control of the lighting system took a bit more work. Once she managed that, however, setting up the rotating message she had chosen was a slice of pie.

"Knock knock," she said, an evil grin on her face. She leaned back in her chair to admire her handiwork. Someone would surely have gone to check on the lighting after her little display. It wouldn't be long before they found her calling card.

"Ready or not, here I come."

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