Free Shadow Breakers by Daniel Blythe Page B

ceiling, and is accessible only by a ladder.
    Everyone is looking at me. Miss Bellini with her warm, dark eyes peering over her metallic glasses. Josh, sprawling on a chair, one arm over the back of it.
Where’s he been
? I wonder. Cal, lean and graceful. Lyssa, hands folded on the desk as if she’s in school. And Ollie, his face alert and keen beneath his mop of white-blond hair. There’s a laptop computer open on the table.
    I’m surprised how quickly I’ve been accepted here. How easily I seem to fit in.
    â€œWell,” I say carefully, “I think we’re dealing with something that, for some reason, needs
energy
. The bus — practically all the heat energy was extracted from it, right? Every ounce.”
    â€œJoule,” says Josh.
    â€œWhat?” I say, irritated.
    â€œYou measure energy in joules, May. Not grams. Don’t you learn
anything
in your science class?”
    Miss Bellini holds up a hand. “Go on, Miranda,” she says.
    I try to focus. I’ve been thinking about this. “The engine seized up, the gasoline froze —”
    â€œDiesel,” interrupts Josh.
    I look at him irritably. “All right, the
diesel
froze . . . the metal and plastic started icing up. I think that was a
massive
exchange of energy going on. As if some kind of reaction was happening that needed a lot of power. And then again, with that virus in the computer lab — something was channeling an awful lot of electrical energy through that one computer, Terminal Thirteen, which turned into heat and blew the whole system.”
    Josh gives a low whistle. “Not bad. Not bad at all!”
    â€œWhat’s the freezing point of diesel?” asks Ollie.
    â€œGood question,” says Miss Bellini. “The thing about petroleum-derived diesel is that it’s not just
one
chemical. It’s a mixture of different sorts of hydrocarbons. In Alaska, trucks can still run in temperatures of minus 46 Celsius. I’d say anywhere between, ooh . . . about minus 70 and minus 185 degrees Celsius.”
    â€œThat’s pretty freakin’ cold,” says Josh. “What have we got on the computer data?”
    â€œAll extracted,” replies Ollie, and spins the laptop around so we can all see it. The screen shows a timeline graph — a wobbly green line against a black background, plotting network activity against time. “A viral spike was inserted into the network’s copy of the Image-Ination software at 11:02,
here
. It attacked the system from within. Now, the thing about
most
computer viruses is that they’re a pain, they can wipe your data off, but they don’t actually damage the hardware itself. Well, this one did.”
    â€œHow?” I ask, genuinely interested.
    â€œYes, how?” echoes Cal. “A computer virus causing an overload of electrical energy? It doesn’t make sense.”
    Ollie grins. “I was hoping you’d ask. The virus didn’t come from Terminal Thirteen, but for some reason that was the first one to be zapped.”
    Lyssa says, “The Image-Ination software’s not corrupted, is it? No, so the virus is a decoy. It was
inserted
there so that when the techies came along to find out what went wrong, they’d be led up the garden path.”
    â€œSo,” says Miss Bellini softly, taking her glasses off and twirling them between thumb and forefinger, “our conclusion is . . . ?”
    Ollie says, “The overload was caused by something
outside
. Something, or someone, in the room.”
    There is a moment’s silence, and we all draw breath and look at one another.
    Then Cal says cautiously, “Something . . . transferring energy straight into the computer network?”
    â€œOr drawing it out,” I suggest.
    Everyone turns to look at me.
    God, I hate it when they do that. But I have got something to say, and it seems they’re listening.
    â€œGo on,” says Miss