Page 60 of Her Reborn Mate
“That’s not a tall order by any means,” Maliha said, filling me with relief. “If said computers are in an office, they’re all joined by the company’s intranet. And most of these connections are wired, so even if the internet is not functional, the intranet always is. All you have to do is gain root access to the admin. Can you do that?”
“I don’t even know what root access or admin means,” I said, feeling like a fool. Why hadn’t I taken the computer competency courses in community college when I had the chance? Oh, wait, I remember. It’s because our community colleges had decades-old Pentium PCs in the lab, and the only competency I could learn on them was how to operate Windows XP. In this office, on the other hand, all the computers were iMacs and Macbooks. I doubted if my computer competency classes from a community college would have helped me with this particular problem.
“It’s fine. I’ll help you. All you have to do is find a computer. Any computer, as long as it is connected to the intranet. Can you do that?” Maliha asked.
“I can. Anyways, what are you doing? Are you still waitressing for the diner?” I asked as I looked at the array of computers in the bullpen ahead of me, hoping that at least one of them would be working.
“Ah, yes. About that. I’m not waitressing anymore. There comes a time in a person’s life when they understand that they cannot skate about life doing menial chores and call it living. I’m a reformed person now. I’ve decided to teach computing to underprivileged kids at the community college. I’m there these days all the time. They’re paying good money, and they do need the help, help which I am very eager to provide. It’s fulfilling work. You should come by the campus sometime, relive some of the old memories from back in the day.”
“I’ll make sure to do so. Will wants to see the local community college. I’ve been meaning to take him some time. It's good that you’re there. Now I have two reasons to come by,” I said. “Aha!” I exclaimed as I came across one computer whose screen hadn’t been completely battered. There were lines on the screen, but at least I could see what was written on it.
“You found a computer?” Maliha asked.
“Oh, yes!”
“Good, then login through the admin panel. Here’s the trick with corporations. Most of their admin usernames are admin, and their passwords are the word password. No one ever bothers to change them. It’s stupid, but it’s true. Why don’t you try that?” Maliha laughed.
As stupid as that suggestion was, it miraculously worked, and now I was logged into the computer. I could see the tiny internet icon on the top right, meaning the computer was connected to the intranet.
“If you want root access, boot the computer in safe mode,” Maliha said.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said. “The computer is already connected to the servers. I can see the tiny server icons in the network section.”
“You cannot access them just like that. As I said, you need root access as an admin. Now, that is trickier to get than logging in,” Maliha said.
“How do I do that?”
“Search for the terminal and then do exactly as I say,” she said.
I did exactly as she asked and opened the terminal. She gave me a string of letters, numbers, and words to type in, which I did without questioning her. Maliha was a magician in her domain. There was no denying it. After I pressed the Enter key, a window popped up in front of me, displaying everything on the servers.
“How did you do that?” I asked Maliha, unable to believe that she’d helped me access the servers from so far away. “I’m sure it’ll all go over my head, but how did you do that?”
“I just did a localized DDoS attack using all the intranet’s computers on the server, disabling the server’s primary encryption, and making the data in the servers public to the intranet. Does that make sense to you?”
“It doesn’t. But one of these days, you’re going to have to teach me all this. You have to. It’s like wizardry,” I said, my mouth hanging open as I perused all the folders in the servers.
“It’s very simple, my friend,” Maliha said. “Humans built computers to be fallible so that they could extort the corporations through black hat hacking. It’s one of the worst kept secrets of all time?”
“I see you’re back to being your conspiracy theorist self,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll catch up with you soon. You take care.”
“Catch you later,” Maliha said, hanging up. Conspiracy theories or not, she had helped me with a big problem.
From folder to folder, I searched until I found one that contained Blair’s files on them. If Maliha hadn’t helped me with this, I’d never have been able to access Blair’s files.
Hundreds of call logs, recordings, documents, images, and videos. I did not know where to begin.
I randomly clicked on one of the recordings and played it in the background as I looked through the rest of the folder. The conversation being played in the audio immediately hooked me, making me converge all my attention to the voices. Three of them were identifiable right away. I’d recognize those voices anywhere. The fourth one, on the other hand, was a voice speaking in a German accent, making it hard for me to recognize it at first.
This audio file was from a few months ago before Will had been injected with Wolf’s Bane.
“Beckett. How fares the alchemy?” the mystery man asked. “Are you still stuck in the same rut as your father?”
“I may be working for you, but mind how you talk about my dad,” Blair scoffed.
“Yeah, he’s really sensitive when it comes to his father,” Maurice said.
“Aren’t you as well, considering who we’re speaking to?” the mystery man snapped.