Chapter 38: Break-In: Successful

"Alright, let’s get to work." The moment the words left Tag’s mouth, every Vigilant moved into position with practiced precision.

Even the sleeping Juno had woken up. He was currently walking towards his work station and although the strings of his hood were still tightly pulled to cover his entire face, he knew exactly where he was going.

....Well, he knew the general direction of it, but actually navigating there was another story.

As expected, he veered off course and promptly crashed into Nico’s desk, sending her monitor tumbling with a loud thud.

But before it could reach the ground, Nico’s hand shot out quicker than anyone’s eyes could follow and caught the falling monitor.

Juno paused mid-step, then slowly turned his hooded head toward her—though it was impossible to tell if he was actually looking at her.

"...Sorry," came his muffled voice, barely audible under the fabric.

"It’s fine," she replied with a smile as she set her monitor back up, "just take two steps to your left and that’s your desk."

Anyone else, especially Silky, would’ve chewed Juno out, but Nico was Nico. There was hardly a time they had seen her mad in all their three years of working together.

Juno grunted in acknowledgment and shuffled sideways like a ghost at a funeral, eventually bumping into the corner of his own desk.

He slid into the seat without further incident, pulling his hood even lower like a turtle retreating into its shell.



Tag, on the other hand, sat behind his monitors as he had already booted up all the softwares he needed.

"Do I start now? How about now?" Zero’s hyperactive voice rung out from his corner. His fingers were barely holding back from tapping his keyboard.

"Zero," Tag said without looking up, fingerstapping "You’ll start when Nico finds a way in. Any earlier, and you’ll risk us getting caught, we already went over this."

"Ugh, fine," Zero groaned dramatically, flopping back into his chair He began spinning lazily on his seat before he jumped up again and turned to Nico, "Nico?"

"Don’t worry, I’m on it." Nico gently replied as she continued tapping on her keyboard.

From what they knew, Sentinel hasn’t been accessed by almost anyone, making it harder for the team to find an entry point, but hard didn’t mean impossible.

"Found a weak spot," Nico said a minute later, eyes scanning her screen. "It’s small but it should give us just enough of a gap to slip through."

She was able to find an opening through Drake System’s server, an opening that seemed so small that it was insignificant but it was this exact opening that the Vigilants needed.

"Finally!" Zero cheered, already cracking his knuckles. "Tag, can I go now?"

"Now you can go," Tag nodded.

"Alright!" Zero let out excitedly as his fingers flew across his keyboard at an insane speed.

Lines of binary scrolled down his screen as he made a bigger way for the rest of the team to exploit while being careful not to alert the system or whoever was monitoring it.

"I’m in!" Zero shouted. "Starting the copy now... Come on, come on..."

Lines of code filled his screen as the system began copying the data.

"Sixty percent... fifty—wait! No! It’s reversing the copy. I lost some!"

"Don’t panic," Tag said. "Just keep going."

"Sentinel’s fighting back," Bypass added. "It’s trying to lock me out. I’m blocking it, but not for long."

"Kuso, kuso, kuso," Silk cursed, typing furiously as a bubble of gum popped from her mouth. "It’s also trying to gain access to our systems."

"Hey keyboard Jesus, I thought you were blocking it." She turned to Bypass who’s gaze was fixed on his monitor.

"I’m trying," he muttered, fingers dancing across his keyboard. "It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. Every time I block a path, it opens three more. This thing’s learning."

"Learning?" Tag repeated. "As in adapting?"

"Yeah, it seems the rumors were true, this thing’s responding in real time."

A frown appeared on Tag’s face, before he turned to Juno who was also quietly typing, although it was unknown wether he could actually see what he was typing or not.



"Juno?" Tag called out.

Lazily raising his right hand, Juno gave him a thumbs up before he returned back to typing.

Not much was said, but it was enough to make Tag smile. After all, even if they hadn’t fully succeeded in copying Sentinel’s code, he was certain of one thing—there was no way it could break into their systems. Not with Juno on their side.

"Spectra?" He then turned to his gem, he knew that no matter how hard this job became, she’d come up with a way, she always does.

"I’ll give it something else to chase," she simply replied, her gaze still locked on her screen.

Unlike the others, who had full rigs built for this, she simply sat on the couch, hacking away on her laptop.

"What are you doing?" Tag asked, even though he already had an idea.

"Creating a decoy protocol," she answered. "Something shiny enough to grab Sentinel’s attention. I’ll make it think we’re trying to steal something more important on another path. That should give Zero the window he needs."

Another smile surfaced on Tag’s face. This was exactly the reason why he believed she was the only one fit to stand by him.

She was the only one smart enough to.

’Maybe I should ask her out after this job is done?’ he let his thoughts wander for a second before she shook his head, snapping himself back to the task at hand.

Asking her out could wait, after all, it wasn’t like she was disappearing anytime soon.

"Done," Spectra’s voice pulled his attention back to his monitor as he observed Zero’s copying started progressing again.

"Bypass, ready the kill switch," he informed.

"On it," Bypass responded.

"Make sure it won’t trigger on its own," Tag warned. "We don’t want it going off early and tipping them off."

"Relax, Captain Paranoia," Silk chimed in, still typing with one hand as she popped another bubble. "Bypass knows his stuff. Right, Keyboard Jesus?"

"Yes," Bypass replied flatly. "Unlike you, I actually finish what I start."

"Yeah right and you couldn’t even fini—" before Silk could complete whatever she wanted to say, Nico cut in.

"Guys," she said calmly, "not now. Zero, how far?"

"Almost done!" Zero chirped. "Copy’s at ninety-five percent. It slowed down a bit, but we’re still good. That decoy’s pulling a lot of heat."

"Perfect," Tag muttered before adding, "Bypass, plant the switch now and Juno, be ready to completely erase our presence in the systems as soon as the code is copied."

"Copy that," Bypass said, already dragging the kill switch into the hidden sublayer they’d reserved for it. His eyes moved rapidly, scanning for any security protocol that might flag it. "Planting now."



"Ninety nine percent," Zero informed again, paused and then said, "One hundred! We’re done! Copy completed. We got all of it, baby!"

"Kill switch planted?" Tag asked.

"Confirmed," Bypass said. "Sentinel won’t even know it’s been tagged."

"Juno, wipe our tracks."

A barely audible tap was Juno’s response, followed by a long stream of code silently scrolling across his screen

"Nothing’s tracing back to us," Nico added after a moment, her fingers slowing. "We’re ghosts."

"Good," Tag nodded. "Backup the copy on three mirrored drives. Isolate it from the net and encrypt it."

"You know what, I’ll encrypt the backup myself," he added after some thinking, already opening a private cipher shell.

"Hell yeah," Zero cheered. "That’s how the Vigilants roll! Mission clear!"

"Well, that was fun." Spectra said with a smile on her lips.

This was the best hacking job she’d pulled off in months—it scratched that itch in a way nothing else had.

"Good job, team," Tag said after he was done encrypting the copied code and its backups. "Now, who’s up for some victory pizza."