Silent Hacker - Chapter 41：Why?

Alec left shortly after but he wasn’t happy. I think back to what he said earlier about the curse and I find myself at a loss. Why would my Grandfather have a book with that and the box those men took… I’m positive that the box had the same markings.

Why would Gramps have them? Why was he hiding them and why were those men after it? I begin walking back and forth as I try to make sense of it but I quickly find myself hitting wall after wall. I’m clearly missing information… It’s like putting a puzzle together and trying to figure out what the picture is before completing it.

I’m missing pieces… I look back to the windows as the sun begins to set and find myself starving. I sigh and go to the kitchen in search of food. I open the fridge but frown when I only see soda, water, and orange juice.

“Chip, you’re supposed to help remind me to go shopping…” I shut the door and grab the last apple off the counter. “If you, the human who has to eat can’t remember to get food, how do you expect me to remember??” Chip says as he pops up on the fridge.

I swallow a large bite of the apple and cringe when it goes down hard. “You’re an AI!! You’re a supercomputer! How can you not remember!?” I ask with disbelief and I’m rewarded with his little robotic laugh. I find myself grinning as I go back to eating my apple.

“Be ready to go out. This forgetful human needs food..” I say with a grin as I push off the counter and head to the bathroom to get ready. “Okay!” Chip says with excitement as I slip my shoes on and make a quick list.

I decided to take my black Camaro because I’ll have quite a few groceries and I don’t know about you but that doesn’t really work with the beast. I pull out and head to the highway, heading downtown. Chip was taking everything in with fever when I see something in my rearview mirror.

I frown and take in the vehicles following us from a safe distance. “Chip, we have two maybe more, vehicles following us. Find out what you can.” Chip immediately beeps and starts investigating as I act “normal”.

“Maya, the plates on the cars are fake and it’s a total of five cars. All black and all emitting a frequency that makes it impossible for me to hack into the car’s computers. The windows are also so heavily tented that I can’t see those inside. What should we do?”

I grin but it lacks any real humor. They were serious… “Looks like someone want’s to play, it would be rude of us to turn them down right?” I ask as I pull off the highway and make my way back the way we just came. If I kept going into town I’d be putting others in danger so I needed an open highway.

But as I try to make the turn to go back one of the black cars whip out in front of us, cutting us off and forcing me to stay in town. “Chip, these people seem to be asking for more trouble. Reduce the amount of damage as much as possible and keep the innocent humans safe, okay?” Chip beeps and says “Got it!”

I open the center console and smile when I see the familiar gun. Always good to have an emergency back up. I step on the peddle and smile when I hear the engine reeve up in a throaty roar. I put the car into manual so I can have more control as I begin whipping in and out of traffic.

Chip easily changes lights keeping myself and others out of danger but there are still a few close calls when the lights begin changing at higher speeds. I fly through an intersection, passing a cop in the process. “Shit… that’s the last thing we need right now.” Sure enough, the cop turns his lights on but is nearly ran off the road as the pursuing cars rush to pass.