Free Shadow Breakers by Daniel Blythe

listening down the corridor for any signs of movement.
    â€œWhat’s happening now?” I ask.
    Lyssa holds up a stubby red flash drive. “Stealing!” she says.
    Lyssa, I have discovered, is a girl of few words. It’s left to Cal to give me the proper explanation.
    â€œAll we have to do,” Cal says, “is rip the event history data off this hard disk and get it back to base for analysis. We can’t do that remotely, though. We have to get it off this actual machine. Problem is, a lot of it will be encoded. It’s not designed to come off. But if anyone can get through the firewalls, Ollie can.”
    â€œOkay, I should say you lost me shortly after
rip
,” I admit.
    Cal sighs and leans her head to one side. “All right, Scrappy. Just bark if you see anyone coming.”
    Lyssa plugs the flash drive into the computer’s USB port and a number of pop-ups flash up on the screen. I watch in awe as Lyssa’s hands flicker across the keyboard, entering strings of numbers.
    â€œMake sure it’s not traceable,” says Cal. “Can you patch a block in to disguise the incursion?”
    Lyssa nods. “Doing it now,” she says.
    â€œCouldn’t Miss B have done this?” I ask.
    Cal shakes her head. “She has to be hands-off sometimes. And her login could be traced.” She checks her watch. “Come on, Lyssa. Speed it up.”
    Lyssa looks up and smiles. “You don’t want me to do any damage, do you?” She leans back, hits a couple of keys.
“There.”
    The screen goes black. We all hold our breath.
    Across the center of the screen, I can now see a bar, filling up like mercury in a thermometer as the data transfers across.
    I blink, remembering the heat when I first saw the computers erupting. I brush the perspiration off my forehead. It’s still warm in here.
    The bar turns red agonizingly slowly. Beside it, there’s a running count in yellow digits of how much data has been transferred to the portable drive: 10%, 15%, 20% . . .
    â€œDon’t you find it hot in here?” I ask, a little nervous.
    Cal and Lyssa look at each other. Cal looks back at me. “Do you feel something?” she says urgently. She grabs my shoulders. “Don’t run away from it. What is it? Tell us.”
    I shake my head, almost angrily. “No. I don’t feel anything.”
    Something — there — over her shoulder — a fleeting shadow?
    I gasp, pull back from Cal. She suddenly scares me.
    â€œYou’re lying,” says Cal.
    But then we all hear it. Outside in the corridor, a door slams and the sound echoes through the whole floor. Then there’s a jangling noise, and shuffling footsteps.
    This is a sound in the real, physical world. And the footsteps are human. I whirl around to face Cal and Lyssa.
    â€œSomeone’s coming!” I whisper, glancing up the corridor through the gap in the plastic sheeting.
    Cal looks at Lyssa. “How much further to go?”
    â€œAbout fifty percent done,” Lyssa says, looking up calmly.
    I try to listen, see if I can pick out where the footsteps are coming from, but there’s too much echo. I bite my lip, frantically looking back and forth from the corridor, into the room, and out again.
    â€œSeventy percent,” says Lyssa from the terminal.
    We all hold our breath, uncertain what to do. The footsteps are coming closer.
    My heart is thudding. We’re going to get caught.
    â€œWe need this information,” says Cal firmly. “We can’t leave without it.”
    I look in panic at Cal and Lyssa. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here — right
now
!”
    Outside, the slow footsteps come closer and closer. . . .

“THE CLOSET,” SAYS Cal. “Quickly!”
    For a second we stare at her as if she’s mad. And then we look over at the big storage closet in the corner of the computer lab, where they keep the manuals and