Beneath the Fallen City - A Dystopian Fantasy Romance

Chapter 8

Elyot stared at the code on the screen. "No way! She wrote that? I thought she was a scavenger."

Cruncher chuckled at Elyot's reaction. "Yeah. That's what I thought too. This is the same code she wrote to distract Ramiro so she could steal the Aurelia Data Cube."

Elyot let out a low whistle and gestured to his sister. "Lisia, you're a tech. You should see this."

"I'll pass." She waved him off, not bothering to turn away from her screen. Elyot started to make a comment but fell silent when he noticed Carl standing in the doorway.

"Hey, Boss. Didn't know if we would see you today."

"Yeah, I've been on my commlink all morning." Carl leaned over the desk to see what they were working on. "What's this?"

Cruncher sat back in his chair and gestured to the monitor in front of him. "I was showing Elyot the code Kayla wrote when she stole the data cube. She modified it so it'll protect our system from the same type of attack. Apparently, some of our critical base systems were vulnerable."

At Carl's obvious interest, Cruncher entered a few commands. The new code appeared on the screen, along with the overlay system Kayla modified.

Carl looked at the code in surprise. "When did she do this?"

"She started working on it yesterday. Then, this morning when she woke up, she insisted I hook her into the system so she could work on it from the med room. For the past several hours that girl has been tearing apart our security and rebuilding it."

Carl chuckled, imagining the scene. "She's been doing all this from the med room?"

"Yeah, she was pretty pissed with Veridian for not letting her get up. Veridian compromised by letting her work from the med room. That girl is something else. I've never seen anyone with her skills either above or below ground. I don't know how the hell she does it."

Lisia turned away from her screen and stared at the three men, not bothering to hide her disgust. "How much longer are you going to keep going on about this? I'm sick and tired of listening to you guys fawn over her."

Cruncher raised an eyebrow. "When you start bringing in a fraction of the credits that girl does in a week, let me know. Then I'll start singing your praises too."

Elyot moved between them and held up his hands. "Come on, Cruncher. Leave her alone."

Lisia shook her head and pushed away from her desk. "No, Elyot, I'm sick of this. Every single one of you has been going on about her since she came up on your radar. But how much of it is her so-called talent you're admiring? From the looks of things, she's been nothing but trouble since you first saw her. She's got us on lockdown over here, and we're working around the clock because of her. Personally, I think it's her assets that have you drooling."

Carl had just about reached his limit with her attitude. Cruncher wasn't helping matters either; he'd never been fond of Lisia. "That's enough. All of you. Lisia, you're a good tech and we appreciate everything you do. You and Kayla are both valuable members of this team. We need to work together and try to get along."

Lisia let out a forced laugh. "So maybe I should mimic your behavior and try sleeping with her? Because from where I'm standing, that's what it looks like you want."

Elyot's eyes widened. "Lisia... don't," he said in a low whisper.

Anger floored Carl, but he managed to rein it in. "This conversation is over."

"Fine." Lisia slammed her monitoring station shut. Without another word, she stormed out of the room.

Elyot looked sheepish and ran his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry about that, Boss. I'll talk to her."