Chapter 17

Patricia strode confidently to the keyboard, slipping a flash drive into a computer port. The program she'd crafted sprang into action immediately, and the IBM machine whirred to life. The room filled with the blare of alarms, sending the men behind her into fits of laughter. But their amusement was short-lived as the alarms abruptly ceased, silenced by Patricia's program, which continued its upload unfazed. It took a mere eighteen minutes for the program to finish its upload, during which Patricia didn't glance away from the screen, as if etching the code into her memory as it scrolled by. When she spotted what she needed, she swiftly jotted it down on a notepad. The sequence repeated seven times, skipped three, then repeated five more. A grin spread across her face. "Those IBM folks never change their tune," she murmured to herself. "They tweak the code, but the patterns remain." With a sense of triumph, she realized she was in.

Now, what t