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Aside from not knowing how to hack her way out of the place, captivity was treating Jeuley rather well. She’d been given free roam of the building, but anything of interest was locked up.
There was no boat. There was no internet access. There was nothing at all useful except the tablet she’d been given the day before. Once she’d calmed down from her initial shock, she realized that Ordal’s plans didn’t involve killing her. They did, however, involve using her and she wasn’t entirely keen on that prospect.
The remainder of yesterday had been spent watching anime vids in her captive hold. Her eyes were occupied by the moving pictures, but not her brain. She was plotting escape, but she kept running into the same two snags–no boat and no internet access.
Swimming wasn’t an option. The longest she’d ever swam was about three laps in the school pool.
Shortly after showering in the facilities next to her hold, she’d tried to access Second Thought again, but the panel in her room wouldn’t open. Ordal must’ve locked it. No big deal. Jeuley could find another panel in another room.
The compound was mostly empty. Ordal only used three or four rooms, all of which were off limits to her. If he wasn’t sleeping in his hold, he was in his office or in some kind of lab down the hallway from Jeuley’s room.
She’d once caught a quick glimpse when Ordal was exiting. There were two rooms beyond the door, but all she could see was that one of the rooms had lots of bottles in cabinets along the walls. To her, that meant chem lab. But was Ordal Laverock smart enough not to destroy his whole island with one incorrect use of Fleetomite? Jeuley didn’t want to dwell on that. At least not yet. Perhaps she could get into the chem lab and see if she remembered anything of the chemistry classes she’d taken before she’d discovered Physics and Computer Science.
It’d been quite some time, but perhaps there was something in her magnet-of-useless-information brain that she could use. Maybe she could find or build something that would dissolve the lock on Ordal’s office so she could overtake his gateway and get a message to Brad, or the enforcers, or both.
Interrupting her planning, Ordal’s voice, not to mention the scent of garlic, preceded him entering her hold. “Ms. Crithin. Are you ready for work today?”
“You’re kidding, right?” She looked up from the tablet.
“You will remain here until I have what I want from you.”
“Run that by me again, because I never got it straight.”
Grimacing, the little man stepped closer and looked at her tablet with genuine curiosity. “You’re working on new programming for the Blue Root?”
Jeuley set the tablet to power down. “Why? So you can steal it from me?”
“You won’t leave here until I have three new programth. After that, we’ll negotiate.”
So, if I fart out three stupid little twiddle-your-diddle programs, you’ll let me outta here? Why didn’t you tell me that before? I coulda been gone a helluva long time ago. “Everything after that’s negotiable, huh?”
“There’s a little more to it, but we’ll work that out later. Right now, I need good Jeulmitht programming.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Ordal whipped around and stalked toward her, immediately putting her on the defensive, ready to smack the tablet down on his head if he came any closer. “No quethtions allowed. Do your job and maybe you’ll get to go home.”
“Three programs, coming right up.” Jeuley watched him shuffle from the room. With what she knew about his compound, he’d have to email or upload her programs. Maybe a strategically placed virus would work. Shut down his network so he’d have to reboot. And during that time, she could make her break. But damn, the lack-of-boat problem again.
Hidden scripts might work. Brad would be the only one smart enough to access them and know how to decipher them, though. And what if he had his nose in other things like the stuff she’d asked him to do before she left?
At this point, there was only one card left to play, so she might as well flip it over.
