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I don't have time to decide if I should feel offended or not before they wheel me right into position across from Ella, who's obviously fully made up already. She smiles in support and approval. “You look great. You're going to be fine.”
I don't have stage fright. Compared to what I’ve been through the past couple weeks, this is nothing. I smile and nod because she’s expecting it. This whole experience feels so rushed and so surreal that I don't know exactly how to handle it anyway.
“You look fucking gorgeous,” says Scrapper from just off-stage. Next to him, Faith is getting it all on her phone, prepping for her own release. He grins. “Should doll yourself up like that more often.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t hold your breath, I feel like a literal doll.”
“Just enjoying the view, that's all.” He makes a gesture of zipping his lips shut, then winks.
And then my attention is on Ella as she starts her interview. I put all my concentration into answering her questions and trying to seem like I actually know what I'm doing on TV, and not like I'm just a student who doesn't even have her degree yet, sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. We do several takes for each question, right up until the camera crew gives us the thumbs up.
I'm just getting off my chair when there's a loud crash in the hall outside the press studio. Everything stops for a moment as all heads turn to the noise. “Scrapper?”
“Looking into it, babe. Hang back.”
Him, Bull and Mad Dog close in on the door to the outer studio. Scrapper opens it carefully and peers outside. My brain goes straight to the worst case scenario, but it was probably something that was stowed incorrectly or something. We walked past an awful lot of equipment and props through the studio warehouse on the way here.
“See anything?” asks Bull. He hasn't drawn his gun, but he's pushed the side of his cut back and is resting his hand on the handle. If you're behind him, it's not obvious, so maybe the people here haven't figured it out yet, but it's got me nervous, that's for sure.
“Nothing yet. I'm gonna?—”
And that's when something explodes down the hallway
32
REAPER
“I'm in.” The drama that Snark puts into those two words makes me think of some kind of old hacker movie or something. I'm sure he said it that way on purpose, and he looks a little annoyed when me and Mack don’t know the right response. “Whatever. Come look.”
We gather behind him to read over his shoulder. All I see are some black windows with green text that he keeps flipping between, typing commands that might as well be eldritch fucking magic as far as I'm concerned. I didn't know a computer had that much fucking punctuation.
“Alright, for those of us who don't spend all our time in cyberspace… what the fuck are we looking at?” Mack scratches his beard, frowning at the screen like he's expecting it to make sense.
“For being a big shot judge, Kincaid's got some pretty flimsy home network security. The WAP protocol is out of date, and he hasn't upgraded to a higher bit encryption algor?—”
I clear my throat.
“Oh fuck off. I'm trying to enjoy my moment of glory here. Fucking Philistines. Anyway, I've broken into Judge Kincaid's home network. Everything that happens there, I now see it. Anything he's got stored on there, I can access. And if there's anything here I can fuck with, I'm gonna fuck with it.” He looks up from the screen to scan between us. “Oh come the fuck on, boys, this is hard shit. A little acknowledgement? Applause? Something?”
“Can you get rid of the video file of Danny? Eagle-eye's gotten him transferred to solitary for now, to put him out of reach, but that won't last forever.”
Snark turns serious immediately. He saw that video too. “I can’t promise it’s all the copies he has, but if it's here, I'll take care of it. Trust me.”
I pat him on the shoulder. “Good work.”
“See? Was that so fucking hard?”
We leave him to it. Nothing we can do to help him, and he knows what the fuck he's doing. If there's something there to fix, then he's gonna fix it. Easy as that. Snark's smarter than I'll ever be.
As me and Mack are coming down the stairs to the common room, his phone rings.
“What the hell does Hellfire want? I paid him,” he muses then taps the button while we keep walking. “Talk to me, Hellfire.”
I give him a curious glance while I wait for him to finish.
“Yeah? You sure? And they're… oh motherfucker. Fuck. Alright, thanks for the heads up. Ride safe, man.” He jams the phone in his pocket, then turns to head right up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He yells over his shoulder. “What the fuck are you standing there for. Come on, we need to talk to Prez, now.”
I have no fucking idea what's happening, but if Mack thinks it's serious, it's fucking serious. I'm with him immediately.
