Page 31 of Seth
Gustavo disconnected. As the adrenaline and distress diminished, awe and admiration welled up. “How did he do this? Who is examining the footage? I’d like to see it.”
Three minutes later, Gustavo stood in a weakly lit server room in front of the gaunt man with black, shaggy hair. Gustavo’s presence didn’t seem to bother him. Sitting on his ass on the tile floor, he didn’t look up once. Holding the laptop closer to his chest, he stared at it over the thick glasses, eyes screwed-up.
Without thinking, Gustavo slumped next to him, shoulder to shoulder, watching four squares of the night’s footage fast-forwarding simultaneously.
“Anything?” Impatience made it hard to sit still.
“Nothing,” the man replied. Fitting his scrawny figure, his voice sounded uneven, as if only now breaking, even though the man looked in his late twenties. “I rewound the footage three times. I only see guards. I think someone from within directed the cameras away. Like here…” He opened another footage, typed in the time. “See? The cameras do one hundred and eighty degrees spin then only forty.”
Gustavo leaned closer, cocked his head, watching the cameras reduce the field of vision. “Diego, go and check the cameras for me.”
The shadow in the doorway disappeared. Gustavo huffed, “Let me see.”
He snatched the laptop from crooked fingers of the IT guy, scrolled back, then watched the footage on fast forward. The accusation was ridiculous and hit his pride. He surrounded himself with loyal people, and he refused to believe Seth managed to put a mole into his security team. But no matter how long he looked, he didn’t see anyone approaching the guardhouse.
“What the hell,” he breathed.
A shadow flickered in the doorway, eclipsing the searchlight leaking from the outside.
“Pick a hand.” Diego bustled in and extended both fists forward, a smug grin playing on his face.
Gustavo glared, refusing to play his games.
“Come on, pick.” He squatted before them, his fists hovering an inch away from Gustavo’s face.
With a weak slap, Gustavo averted Diego’s hands away. “I’m not in the mood. Spill it.”
“You are no fun,” Diego replied with a snort, seized Gustavo’s hand, and dropped four tiny screws on his palm. “They were jammed.”
“Not possible.” The IT guy shook his shaggy head, yanking the laptop away from Gustavo, and nesting it on his knees again. “I don’t see anyone sabotaging them.”
He tore off his glasses, rubbed the lenses with the hem of his shirt, then put the glasses back.
Gustavo examined the tiny golden screws shining on his palm. He chuckled, flipped them in his hand, then pocketed them. “Show me again, on slow now. Let’s go in a reverse way from the moment the cameras were jammed; maybe we will notice something. He can’t be invisible, can he? Someone put the screws there.”
The front cameras above the door stopped working almost simultaneously.
“He did it from the roof,” Gustavo said. “Let’s watch the other cameras. Where did he climb?” The view switched, and Gustavo leaned into the screen. “Wait… What’s this?”
His finger outlining the translucent rectangle made the IT guy cringe. The man wrapped his shirt over his fist and rubbed the screen where Gustavo’s finger had pressed to the image.
“A glitch?” he said, more annoyed than he should have been when talking to his boss. “Cameras sometimes do that.”
“It wasn’t there before. Look.” Not offended at all, Gustavo slapped the man’s hand away from the touchpad and winded the footage backward. “Any more glitches like this? Could it be he cut himself out of the footage?”
“I found no signs of a break-in into the server room. Our firewalls didn’t register an intrusion.” Diego butted in as he bent over the screen and looked at the footage from above.
“Could he have used the guard’s key?” Gustavo said.
“The guards don’t have keys for the server room. Also, the log doesn’t show anyone entering.” Diego replied.
“Watch the footage again, on slow now. Find me all the glitches like this, combine them, and send them over to my email. Now.” Gustavo got up, ran his palms down his pants to smooth the wrinkles, then strolled out of the server room. “Let’s see about that dog now.”
Only two hours later,after completing the whole round and visiting every facility to assess the damage, Gustavo entered his office. The wind washed over his face and flipped through the papers scattered over his desk. His feet rooted to the ground. He never left the windows open overnight. Every nerve strained, he scrutinized the displays and furniture, looking for signs of foreign presence.
A movement from behind hauled his attention to Diego, then to the direction he was staring. In the empty frame that had held “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee”, a note written in red hung on the wall.
“Return what’s mine, or I’ll take what’s yours.”
