Chapter 403: Chapter 403

Chapter 403

Xander

A few minutes ago, Zane had called out to me through our mate bond link, but although I’d replied within a few seconds, he hadn’t replied. Then he’d gone silent.

That was kind of weird, but I figured maybe he’d had something to tell me that could wait, or else he was busy and would reach out again in a few minutes.

Right now, I had to figure out what in the void was going on with all these missing files.

“Is anything else not where you’d expect it to be?” I asked as I leaned over Jordy’s shoulder to look at his computer monitor. Scrolling lines of green text flowed along a black background. I couldn’t make heads or

tails of it.

“The entire Brightsky system is all tied into our central hub here. It’s backed up regularly, which means that even though I can’t find that list on my hard drive, it should be accessible through one of the backups.”

Jordy’s fingers flew over the keys as he brought up a list of folders and files in multiple hard drives, external drives, and even some from a cloud server.

With every file he opened that didn’t contain the backup he was looking for, he sounded more and more

frustrated when he replied.

“Nothing else is missing. Only the files pertaining to the resident list for Standard. And not all of them are gone, either. Only the ones from the past year.” Jordy muttered a curse and sat back in his chair hard enought

to spin it around.

His brother pulled up a seat and started typing on his own keyboard, but he was having the same issues.

With a frustrated sigh, he also spun around and tossed his hands in the air. “I got nothing.”

“Any other backups you might be forgetting about?” asked them both.

Jordy shook his head. “Me and Franco are the ones who set up this entire system. There isn’t a backup

available that we don’t know about. I’ve even checked the secret servers that nobody else has access to.”

“And the files aren’t there, either? F uck,” I muttered.

“They might’ve been excluded from a backup to that server,” Franco said. “I’d bet my life that nobody could get into them, but they could’ve rewritten the commands to send a backup there. That’s the only thing I can

think of that makes sense.”

“None of it makes sense,” his brother said in a defeated voice. He looked up at me. “Sorry. This is

extremely embarrassing.”

“Could be worse,” Franco said. “The resident list isn’t really that big of a deal. We can probably pull one

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Chapter 403

together in an hour or so from other sources.”

“Yeah. Do that for me, please. And can you get me a list of anyone who might have admin access to these

files?”

“It’s a short list,” Franco said. “You’re looking at two of the people on it. The other one is Malachi, and the

leadership council has a temporary access code they can use with permission.”

It wasn’t about the resident list but the fact that someone in Brightsky had thought that it was important enough to destroy…and that they’d done it long enough in advance that it definitely seemed deliberate.

“Xander!”

Zane’s voice filtered into my mind through the link again, and I paused to answer him.

“I’m in the middle of something,” I thought to him.

I knew I sounded a little irritated, but I didn’t want him to keep calling for me without being there when I

answered.

His voice was sharp. “I know, but this is important.

Are you with Mason? He’s not answering me.”

“I’m here,” Mason thought to us both in the next second. “Sorry, I’m caught up in something, too. What do

you need, Zane?”

“Hold on for a second,” I thought to them both and turned back to the tech twins. “I’ve got my Beta trying

to connect with me. I’ll be right back.”

The twin in red kept furiously typing away. His brother was doing the same at his own terminal. I took a

few steps away and turned my back so I could concentrate better on what my Beta was saying.

“Whatever’s going on, put a hold on it for later. You both need to come home right now. I’ve already connected with Lanie, and she’s on her way, “Zane thought. “For some reason, she wasn’t hearing me through

our bond.”

That probably explained why he’d called out for me but then went silent.

Mason’s voice rose through our link. “I’ll finish up and be there as soon as I can. Xander, meet me by the

elevators?”

“Yeah. Be there in five,” I thought.

Zane’s voice reached us both again. “If either one of you can get in touch with Gabriela…she should be

here, too.”

“I’m going to have to come back,” I said to the twins,

“But you have my number. Call me or text as soon as you get those lists together.”

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Chapter 403

I dialed my mother’s number as I left for the elevator to meet Mason, but my call went right to voicemail. I. called again, thinking she might notice a second ring, but she didn’t pick up this time, cither. I sent her a text, but a small red exclamation mark showed up to let me know my message didn’t get through.

“And you should know,” Zane thought to us both.

“Stella is going to surprise you.”

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