'Why is he here?" Sophia asked immediately after they sat down. "Honestly, I have no idea. Katie and I arrived and saw him just sitting there", Jessica said. "Sophia, you know he came here to see you, right?" Katie looked at Sophia with a smile.
"It's not funny Katie" Sophia sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Can't you just tell his parents that he's troubling you or something?" Jessica suggested. "And risk eternal feud between our parents? I think I'll pass on that one", Sophia shook her head and fell silent.
Maybe it was because he didn't know she knew his secret or something. Although she wasn't planning on doing that yet, she had no other way of telling him to stay away.
"This topic of Daniel is exhausting me. Alright, tell me what's up? You appeared troubled", Jessica waved her hands in dismissal. Sophia's face became conflicted.
How would she start? That Simon had warned her not to open her computer, or that Mark had stolen her works and wanted more of it? That her father was giving her more heartache?
She was so deep in her thought that she didn't even know tears were streaming down her face. "Aww Sophia doesn't cry", Jessica's expression changed to empathy as she came closer to her and hugged her.
"I'm sorry, I've just had a long day", she said amidst sobs. "It's okay if you don't want to tell us. We're sorry for upsetting you", Katie, who also came closer to her hugged her also.
"No, none of you did anything. It's just that things have not been going well for me lately", Sophia said with a shaky voice. "Sophia, please unburden your burdens to us, let us help you carry them", Jessica said, looking into Sophia's eyes.
So that was how she spent a whole ten minutes explaining everything, not missing one detail out of it. By the time she was done, she felt a huge burden lift off her heart.
Jessica was not wrong. She felt better after sharing her woes with her two best friends. Sometimes, she felt grateful for having them as friends. The going out, the little gossip—these were the little things that kept her going.
As soon as she was done talking, Jessica began brainstorming, not speaking for a while. Katie had to keep the atmosphere lively. "So how did you know that your computer was being hacked?" She asked.
"I didn't. The Simon guy warned me to turn off my laptop, so I did just that", Sophia answered, already feeling better. "So you told him to remove your research from the internet, and somehow he ended up inside your computer? What he was doing there was one thing, but one thing that bothered me was why Mr Mark would steal your research. He shunned your work, so I'm baffled", Katie raised her brow.
"Even I am still confused up till this day. But here I am, unable to use my computer because apparently, he had sent a hacker to wipe off my drive and steal the remaining of my hard-earned research", Sophia laughed at herself.
All her life, her fate was always decided by unwitting adults. Her father wanted her to be a model, her biology teacher wanted to claim her works as his, and so on.
Suddenly, Jessica's face brightened. "I have an idea. Why don't we invite Simon? Since he knew all these things, I bet he could explain it in detail to us", she said.
However, Sophia shook her head negatively. "I saw him on Fiverr, besides I don't think he'll come even if I invite him. You know he just did something illegal for me", Sophia said.
"See? This Simon did something unethical for you, which meant that there was a reason he or she even did it in the first place", Jessica's smile then faded.
Sophia thought for a moment before saying. "Even if I wanted to contact him, he always calls me on a private number, so unless I can access my already compromised MacBook, there was no way I can find him", Sophia said.
"You said you met him on Fiverr, can't you just search for him there and send the invite there?" Katie chipped in. Sophia's face brightened. "Oh yeah of course, how could I have forgotten that?"
Sophia took out her spare computer and logged in to her account and searched for "cyber security", and sure enough, the name "Simon Pierce" appeared at the top result.
"That's him", Sophia pointed out and clicked on his profile. Then she composed a message, describing who she was, how they met, and a request to invite him for lunch.
As soon as she was done, she clicked send, and then she waited. "Do you think he would reply?" Sophia asked nervously. "Don't worry. If he's who we believe he was, there would be no reason he would reject your invite", Jessica assured.
"What if he's living far away, like in Russia?" Sophia, who wasn't yet convinced asked. "Then we will find out. Sophia relaxes", Jessica gently shook her shoulder.
Sophia closed her laptop and sighed, hoping that fate would be on her side, at least for once.
----------
Maybe it was him, or maybe it was because he has been awake for more than three months or so, but he thought he was seeing things. As he completed his last model trial, it returned with point zero for one error.
It worked! All of the time he had poured on this project, it had finally worked. Thanks to his model, he could now change any storage mediums sizes to whatever he wished, with some quirks though.
He stared at the 3D model with glee, finding it difficult to believe that it had been completed. Although he couldn't sleep, the fact that he had to stay up all day, all night staring at his screen mentally exhausted him.
He uploaded the model to his cloud service and was about to shut down when a new message popped on his screen. It was Sophia. His heart fluttered a little.
"Was she still using that computer?" He asked. However, there was no connection info about her device, so it meant she was using another computer.
She was rich, so affording another PC would not be so difficult. What would be hard would be her documents that were stored there. Again, it wouldn't be hard for her to remove the drive and copy it to another MacBook.
But that was a problem. The flash memory was soldered onto the computer's board, which was a fancy way of saying that she couldn't use it.
This was a headache.
James opened the message and read the contents. As seconds passed, his frown deepened until his face began to hurt.