The Girl with the Last Miracle

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As it turns out, Caden was not an incompetent nobody. He was instead a brilliant hacker. He had hacked into Everett's private jet and determined the flight patterns, which were, as expected, to Philadelphia. Abrams had his own jet, and right now Caden and Abrams were flying over America. Caden was balancing his laptop on his knees, typing rapidly. He was trying to hack the mainframe of the base where Everett had worked.

It felt so natural to be on a computer again. For too long, he had been the pawn of Everett after his father, one of Everett's most trusted advisors, had given him an 'internship', which basically just meant that he could be used however Everett wanted, and Caden was powerless to stop him. Now, Caden typed with renewed fervor. This time, his hacking was personal. He meant what he had said on the train. He was going to take revenge on those assholes, for everything they had done to him and anything they were doing to Ainika.

"Yes!" Caden pumped his fist in the air. It had taken him a little while, but he had finally cracked the firewall of the military base. Quickly, he pulled up the security footage from the every room. He found what he was looking for, but then he watched it again. "What the hell?" He whispered. "Abram, you need to see this." Abram entered a few commands to set the plane on autopilot, then looked over at Caden's computer.

"Well, shit. If she's loose in the city, it's going to make finding her a lot harder. But we need to catch her before they take her back."

"I'll set a marker to notify me if she comes back to base, and I'll start hacking the camera mainframe to see if I can find her."

"Good," Abram responded in his gruff way. Caden raised an eyebrow. Even this slight acknowledgement was a lot of progress since yesterday. He knew Abram would never admit it, but he could tell that Ainika meant a lot to him. If he had to guess, Ainika was like a daughter to him, and she likely loved him like a dad. He wasn't surprised why, considering her real dad was a total dick. Even from the short time he had known both of them, he could tell they both had good personalities hidden beneath many layers of hiding. Both of them had secrets that no one had even bothered to learn. He barely even wanted to admit it to himself, but he wanted to learn Ainika's secrets. He already felt that he knew her better than many people did, just from their short train ride together. He could still feel the shadow touch where her hand had been in his, and he wanted to hold her again. He wasn't even exactly sure if he had a crush on her, but he did want to get to know the girl behind the miracles even more. But more than anything, he wanted to save her. He wanted to protect her, for she never let anyone protect her. He could tell that she saved everyone, but no one saved her.

They landed near Philadelphia in a private airstrip owned by a friend of Abram's. They then took a car into the city. They decided to focus in the north section because that was where the army base was.

As they checked into a hotel, Caden made sure his leads were all set, and then they prepared to sleep. They were severely jet lagged and knew they couldn't help anyone in this kind of state.

Sleep came easily to Caden. Abram had volunteered to stay up and watch for any intruders, but Caden could tell he was exhausted too. Instead of letting him watch, he alarmed all the doors and windows and set a perimeter watch on all sides of the hotel. He also hacked the hotel's security cameras  and patched their deeds directly into his computer. Once this was accomplished, they double checked the locks on everything, and then they settled into bed. Caden set alarms for himself every few hours so he could check for intruders, but after the first too went off, he knew he didn't have energy to get up again. He was already extremely sleep deprived, and he would be no help to Ainika or himself in this state. He made sure everything looked okay, and then he decided to turn off the third and fourth alarms. If anything popped up, he would be notified, but he didn't need to wake up to check nothing.

With this rationale in mind, he fell asleep again. He didn't even hear the skkt of the doorknob turning.