The USB drive clicked right into place.
We both stared at the screen in front of us which seemed to be inactive as nothing was happening.
Then —
A flicker.
The screen went black.
Then all of a sudden lines of code began pouring down like digital rain — fast, endless, unreadable.
And then, in the corner:
00:10:00
Ten minutes.
"What is this?" I breathed.
Femi leaned in, eyes scanning."It's a timed sequence," he muttered as his eyes were locked on the screen. "The drive came with an encrypted payload — probably a decryption tool. But it's locked behind a failsafe. If we don't solve it before the timer hits zero… everything's gone."
My mouth went dry. "And Chiamaka?"
He didn't answer.
00:09:33
The screen was a mess — scrambled code, decoys, fake folders, loops that led nowhere. Femi was already deep, fingers flying all over the keyboard. But the system kept pushing back, reacting in real time. It wasn't just encrypted — it was personalized.
"This thing is locked to your device," he said. "It's tied to you — your logins, your system clock, even your typing speed. They made this using everything about you."
00:08:41
My eyes then caught a folder flashing in the corner:
Ada_M.LastSeen.001
It was another footage from that night at the lab. My reflection in the screen. The moment before the email.
I typed instinctively:
01:42AM_2105
Access Granted
The timer paused.
Then resumed — this time in green.
00:07:59
Femi stared. "What the hell just happened?"
And just like that — we were in.
Inside the folder where two files.
i. CHMKA_LOCKVID.avi
ii. LOC-SIG.map
I clicked the video (the .avi file).
There she was
Chiamaka. Tied to a chair, shaking as she kept begging for her life.
"She's still alive" i muttered.
Behind her — blinking servers.
I recognized them, but I can't remember where that is.
"That's the old server room," Femi said. "From the CampusNet breach reports. But that place was shut down last year."
"Then why is she there now?"
He shook his head. "She's not. That footage is from two hours ago. They've already moved."
"Then where is she there now?"
I opened the .map file.
Multiple red dots. All blinking.
All in different campus zones.
"It's a decoy," Femi said. They're hiding her location."
Then an audio played.
A voice — deep, robotic and distorted:
"The code was never yours. But the consequences will be."
And right before the clip ended:
"One more trigger left. One more friend."
This made my stomach twist.
We both froze.
And turned almost at the same time.
The backup laptop.
Femi's old machine — untouched for weeks — powered on by itself.
A live feed lit the screen.
Me.
Laughing. Talking. Sitting in the hostel common room.
Next to me in the frame: Zainab.
My coursemate.
The girl who "didn't know how to use Git."
The one who sat beside me when I uploaded the FaceTrace build.
"No…" I whispered.
"She planted the backdoor," Femi said. "She's not your friend. She's a part of all this."
A new message flashed:
TRACE DETECTED. SYSTEM BREACH INCOMING.
Femi jumped up and yanked a cord. "We have to wipe your laptop. Now."
"What? No — the files — "
"I'll clone them. But they're inside your system now. And they're watching us."
Then —
Darkness.
The power cut.
Everything went black.
A second later, outside the window —
We heard footsteps.