Chapter 2 Saving Isla

AUDREY

The parking garage hits me with a wall of stale air – motor oil, exhaust fumes, and something sour that might be someone's week-old sandwich decomposing in a backseat. My little Honda looks embarrassed sitting between the sleek BMW and Tesla, like she knows she's not fancy enough for this emergency. But she's reliable. She's never let me down. I throw my bag across the seat so hard my laptop rattles, and when I turn the key, her engine responds with a familiar wheeze that sounds like determination.

My phone's already connecting to the car's Bluetooth, Martinez's panicked voice filling the space around me.

"Ms. Romano, are you there? The children are starting to panic. Some of them are crying."

"I'm five minutes out from the highway." I reverse out of my parking spot fast enough to make the tires squeal. SCREEECH. "Is Isla okay?"

"She's... she's actually trying to calm the other children down. She told them you'd fix it. She said her mommy can fix computers."

Something breaks open in my chest. Pride and terror spilling together like split paint. She's taking care of everyone else. She believes I can save them. Because I always have before. The weight of that trust sits on my ribs like concrete.

"What's the building's network setup?" I'm weaving through traffic now, past cars driven by people who have nowhere urgent to be. People whose children are safe at home, doing homework or watching cartoons or complaining about vegetables.

"I... I don't know. We have WiFi? And the security system was just upgraded last month."

Brand new security systems are always the most vulnerable. All the bugs haven't been worked out yet. All the backdoors haven't been discovered.

"I need you to get to the server room. Right now. It's in the basement, behind the custodial office."

"I can't leave the children-"

"You can't help them from the hallway either." I take a corner fast enough that my tires scream against the asphalt. SQUEEEEAL. Someone honks at me. HOOOOOOOONK. I don't care. "The server room, Martinez. Move."

Through the phone, I can hear him running. His breathing is ragged, footsteps echoing off what sounds like concrete stairs. Good. He's actually listening.

I'm on Highway 36 now, doing seventy in a fifty-five zone. My laptop is balanced on the passenger seat, already connecting to my phone's hotspot. The screen shows system diagnostics running, network maps loading, vulnerability scanners doing their thing.

"Okay, I'm here. It's dark. Where's the light switch?"

"Forget the lights. Look for a black box labeled 'Fire Safety Override.' Should be on the main server rack."

While he searches, I'm diving into the school's network through a maintenance backdoor I found six months ago when Isla first enrolled. Call it paranoia. Call it being a protective mother. Call it being the kind of person who checks every lock twice and always knows where the exits are.

What I find makes my stomach drop straight through the car floor.

This isn't a malfunction.

Someone has rewritten the school's safety protocols. Every single security measure has been turned into a weapon. Doors that should protect have become cages. Fire safety systems have become drowning hazards.

"Found it! But it's locked."

"Break it open."

"Ms. Romano, I can't just-"

"My daughter is going to drown in twenty-six minutes because someone turned your fire safety system into a murder weapon. Break. It. Open."

The certainty hits me like cold water. This is intentional. This is targeted. This is someone who knows exactly what they're doing, who planned this, who chose today and chose this school and chose these children.

Chose my daughter.

Through the phone, I hear the sound of metal being pried apart. Martinez grunting with effort. Then CLICK.

"It's open. There's a keypad and a bunch of switches."

"Good. Now listen carefully..."

I'm doing eighty now, maybe eighty-five. The speedometer needle is dancing between numbers while I dictate override codes with one hand and trace network intrusions with the other. The laptop screen is showing me code signatures, attack patterns, digital fingerprints left behind by whoever did this.

And that's when I see something that makes my blood turn to ice.

Buried in the malware, hidden in subroutines designed to look like normal building protocols, is a signature I recognize.

Code I helped write.

Code that was supposed to protect people.

Code that someone has turned into a weapon aimed directly at my child.

Twenty-four minutes and counting.

---

AUDREY

I can't get my seatbelt off.

Five minutes ago...

***

My Honda slides into the school parking lot with smoke rising from the brakes. The acrid smell burns my nostrils as I wrench the gear into park.

Emergency vehicles are already here – fire trucks, ambulances, police cars painting the building in urgent reds and blues.

***

Now...

My hands are shaking so hard the metal buckle keeps slipping through my fingers. Click, slip. Click, slip. There's a fire truck blocking my view of the building and I can hear sirens but I can't see Room 15 from here and I can't get this stupid-

CLICK.

Finally.

I stumble out of my car and immediately trip over the curb because my legs feel like water. There are parents everywhere, some crying, some shouting at the firefighters who are setting up equipment that looks completely useless against locked doors.

My laptop bag is still in the passenger seat. I grab it with both hands because I don't trust my grip right now. Everything feels slippery. The world looks too bright, too sharp around the edges.

Focus. Isla needs you to focus.

I walk toward the building and then stop. Because everyone else is doing the obvious thing - running at the doors, yelling at the firefighters, demanding action. And none of it's working. The doors are still locked. The countdown is still ticking.

So I walk back to my car and pop the trunk.

The emergency kit I built six months ago sits exactly where I left it. A second laptop wrapped in foam. Portable router. External batteries. Cables for everything. I built this kit because I'm paranoid, because I research school security systems when normal mothers research bake sale schedules. Because I've never been able to turn off the part of my brain that plans for worst-case scenarios.