“Let’s get to work,” she said.

We sat at her dining table, which was covered in dual monitors and tangles of cables.

I plugged the old hard drive into her computer.

The drive whined, a high-pitched hum that sounded like a warning.

A directory window popped up on the screen.

I scrolled through the files until I found the folder labeled *SECURE_GATE_BACKUP_2020.*

“There it is,” I said.

“It’s encrypted with a 256-bit key,” Sarah said, her fingers flying across her keyboard. “Enter your old employee credentials.”

I typed in my username and the password I had used five years ago.

The progress bar appeared.

*Decrypting… 10%… 20%…*

My phone buzzed on the table.

It was a text from Blake.

*I’m outside your apartment. You’re not here. Where are you? Helena’s lawyers are pushing for an emergency hearing tomorrow morning.*

I stared at the message.

Tomorrow morning.

They weren’t even giving me time to find a lawyer.

“Sarah, how fast can we do this?” I asked.

“The decryption is going to take at least an hour,” Sarah said, looking at the screen. “And then we have to search through millions of data packets.”