Sharon moved with well-rehearsed motions, sliding the weapon out of her pocket and putting it to the head of the male who sat at the terminal. His hands froze when he felt the metal against his skin.

"Out of the chair," she ordered.

"Wait! You must be with Juno, right? I've been waiting for you!" he blurted.

I narrowed my eyes. Juno seemed to have his finger in everything. Still, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Get out of the chair then," Sharon growled again.

He scrambled to comply. "Juno sent word you'd be coming soon. I didn't know it'd be this soon, though."

I sat in his place and looked at what I had to work with. I had an enormous holographic touch screen in front of me straight out of a sci-fi movie with an alternate input pad I had no hope of being able to use. Underneath it was a box I recognized as the equivalent of a server hard drive. And, wouldn't you know it, right there in front was the access port I needed for the storage device. "ID-10-T," I muttered.

Before I began, I talked to Sharon over my shoulder. "Secure him in the bathroom so he doesn't watch and remember what I'm doing."

Sharon fired the weapon at the male's torso, and he slumped to the floor.

I spun to face her. "What are you doing? I said to secure him!"

"He's just stunned. He'll come around eventually," she assured me, rolling her eyes. "Get to work. We've got a mission." She leaned down to start searching his pockets and held up a square of plastic, a smug look on her face. "Now we've got a second ID."

My nostrils flared, and I scowled, itching to argue, but I turned back to the terminal. The mission was more important. I slid the storage device from my pocket and looked at it, remembering that Juno had given me a new-and-improved virus. I hesitated for a moment before fishing out the device he'd given me and inserting it into the access port, saying a little prayer as I did.

A window in English appeared in the corner of the main touch screen. It explained how to find the root folder I needed. I touched the appropriate part of the screen, and the file network structure appeared, showing the terminals, nodes, security hubs, and the data lines that connected them.

I felt light-headed and paused, pinching the bridge of my nose.

~

"You need to hack the nodes and terminals before the security hubs can secure them," the woman teaching the off-world tech training class explained.

"How do I do that?"

"First, you need to touch the terminal or node icon you want to hack so the software knows which one to analyze. Then, hit 'Begin,' but when you do that, the security hub will start trying to take over the terminal and everything else. You'll have some tools to use, like web nukes, to slow it down, but you only have so many of those, so you have to strategize."

"Can I overclock my terminal to make the process faster?" I wondered allowed.

"Oh, sure, you've got software for that, too. Just be aware of potential overheating issues. It's easier to use other things, like the clock virus, before doing that."

"Okay, let me give it a try."

I touched the node icon networked to my terminal, which separated my station from the main one I wanted to take over. From the hacking window, I chose 'Begin,' and I watched as the network display showed my hacking progress in blue. A counter showed me how much time was needed to take over the network.

Immediately, the nearest security hub sent out a counterattack to all the nodes and terminals it was connected to, including mine and the one I wanted. A timer also showed me how long the security node would need to take over. I could see I wouldn't have enough time to hack both my node and the final terminal before the security hub took control of the end goal. I had to either stop it or slow it down.

From the menu in the hacking window, I chose a clock virus and released it on the network. It managed to stop the security hub for five seconds, just long enough for my attempt on the nearest hub to successfully take it over and move on to the end terminal.

I began the hack on the prize and watched my progress easily outstrip the security hub, gaining control of the end terminal and the entire system. Easy-peasy.

"Great job for level one! You want to try something a little more challenging?" the tech asked.

I smiled, interlocked my fingers, and flexed them. "Oh, yeah. This is like a game." My heart beat fast; this kind of thing was right up my alley.

She nodded. "Yep. That's exactly how we set it up. Keep at it. I'll come and check on your progress in an hour."

~

My head twinged from the outpouring of memories about the training I'd undergone. I breathed a sigh of relief that I remembered what I needed to finish the job.

I studied the complex structure on the screen. I hadn't tried to hack anything this complicated, even on the most advanced levels of training, but I set my jaw and shoved the fluttering in my stomach aside.

Finding the end terminal amongst all the others in the network took a second. I then started tracing a path from it back to my terminal, noting that some connections were one-way. That would slow me down, but it would also slow the security hub down.

Sharon peered over my shoulder. "What are you doing?"

I ground my teeth. "What does it look like? I'm hacking the system."

She held up her hands. "Hey, no need to be like that. I'll leave you alone." She leaned on the desk beside me, keeping an eye on the door. "How long do you think it'll take?"

I sighed. "I thought you were leaving me alone?"

I felt her stare bore into me, but I ignored it. I breathed, touched the nearest node on my chosen path, and chose "Begin."

It wasn't until the node was taken that I was detected, then the image lit up with counterattack red. I touched nodes and terminals quickly, uploading viruses as fast as the system allowed. Some were overtaken, some had no effect, but some bought me precious seconds.

My path through the network was thrown off course several times, and I had to adjust. Once, I had to use a web nuke, which nearly guaranteed my detection, but I had the sense to use a masking virus beforehand and could pull off its deployment without alerting the security hub of my actual location. All it knew was it was under attack. It didn't learn from where, which was critical to my success.

I maneuvered through the network, using all the skills I could muster. In the end, it was a race for the end terminal. I had no choice but to sit and watch the two timers, one counting how long I had before my virus took control and one showing the security hub's efforts. Ten seconds was a phenomenally long time when an entire mission relied on it. The digital displays moved so fast that I couldn't tell which was leading. I held my breath.

"Yes!" I shouted when my virus gained control a mere tenth of a second before the security hub finished.

The hacking window turned into a countdown timer, working backward from one hour and thirty-two minutes. I scrambled to set the key's watch face back to Earth. When it dissolved to the correct one, I noted when it would be an hour and a half later.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here," Sharon urged. "No telling how long we have left before the system figures out we're not the guard." She yanked the inner door of the vestibule open, I grabbed the cleaning supplies, and we hurried inside.

Once it had shut, she put the guard's ID on the outer door, and I tried not to fidget as we waited for it to open. When it finally did, we ran for the exit door leading to the service elevator.

The numbers above the elevator's doors lit up as it sped to our floor. We moved out of the way as it neared, just in case it contained people we didn't want to deal with. Our luck held; it was empty.

I jammed my thumb on the basement button. We needed to get our clothes and weapons from the lockers if we wanted to stand a chance out in public. Halfway down, the elevator slowed and stopped, the doors swooshing open to admit a gray overall-clad female and her cleaning cart.

I nodded to her, and she smiled wearily. She didn't seem inclined to talk to us any more than we did to her, and I was grateful. We rode on in silence.

Just as I thought we might make it, an alarm began blaring, and the elevator abruptly stopped at the next floor. The female's eyes widened as a voice announced intruders in the building. I made my apologies as I forced her cart from the elevator quickly.

"Stairs?" Sharon asked the female, who pointed down the hall.

We flew for the stairs, crashing through the door and taking them two at a time. When there was a commotion in the stairwell above us, I paused long enough to see uniformed guards working their way upward closer to the top of the building.

We slowed and collected ourselves before exiting the stairwell, trying to walk fast for the locker room without looking out of place. Right as we reached the door, two guards popped out.

"Hey! You! Identify yourselves!" one of the guards demanded.

I swung my bucket of supplies at the nearest guard as Sharon engaged the second. It connected with the side of his head, staggering him, giving me enough time to pull it back and bash him in the face. He went down to his knees, face bloody. I hit him again, and he was out cold. A split second later, Sharon's guard hit the floor, too. We worked fast to get them hidden inside the locker room. In under three minutes, we exited onto the street, the closing door behind us finally silencing the alarm that jangled my nerves.

Getting out of the city was our top priority. We dug out the tickets that would get us back to where the gates were located. The sun was rising, and the streets were bustling with workers hurrying to their jobs. Sharon and I walked briskly, blending into the crowd, hoping we wouldn't draw too much attention. We knew it wouldn't be long before the guards discovered our escape and sent out a search for us. We had to disappear before that happened.

Sharon glanced over her shoulder as we walked, scanning the crowd for any sign of danger. Her face was emotionless, another testament to her calm demeanor under stress. As for me, my heart pounded, and I kept an eye on the public displays for our faces, flicking my attention from one to another.

We made it to the train station and waited for the next one to arrive. We shuffled into the crowded car, found something to hold on to, and braced ourselves for the take-off.

Sharon glanced at me when the doors shut, and the train accelerated away. "We need to find a gate home."

"We have to return to the Alpha Centauri system," I reminded her. I checked my watch. We had just over an hour.

She looked at the transport map. "This train takes twenty-three minutes to get to our transfer point. Then, we take the car and get to this planet's gate system. The car isn't too long of a ride, but we don't know what the wait will be."

"Yeah, then we don't know how long of a wait at the gate we will have." I glanced at the watch again; I could feel the time crunch in the tension in my shoulders. "We can only do what we can do. One step at a time. Let's get transferred to the cars first."