gonna be home in time for dinner.”

Xander got home at around quarter to six. It was only just beginning to get dark. He ran up the stairs two steps at a time, knowing that his dinner would be waiting for him in his quiet room at the top. He opened the door and the smell of fried chicken made his mouth water. He sat down next to it and turned on the computer, taking a copy of the Beach News Daily that his mother had left on the keyboard and tossing it to one side.

Taking a sip of his coke from the large cup, he started browsing through his files looking for something to do.

He decided to check out that website that Soul had been talking about.

What was it called?

He took a big bite of gravy-covered chicken breast and licked his fingers, then checked his computer’s chat history, pulling up the conversation he’d had with Soul earlier.

hello Pinkerton.

Oh. Hi soul. How’s life?

Alright. I’ve been looking at something weird online. I discovered some kind of bizarre... thing. I don’t have a password decoder as sophisticated as you do, I thought you might wanna take a look at it.

Sure. What’s the site?

Something called engen.com. Oops. Gtg!

‘got to go’?, why?”

“There,” he said to himself, reading aloud off of the screen. “Engen.com.”

He punched the address into his computer’s web browser. Automatically, odd midi music started to play. A badly done gif animation of what he could only assume was the Engen logo came up onto the screen. It was a blue circle with a spike running through it from side to side, containing the word ‘Engen’. When that was done, the main home page loaded up. It was filled with a bunch of different links going down the side, stuff like music, comic books, novels, the names of a few people he didn’t recognize... all the trademarks of a well-designed and never visited personal web site.

“Welcome to Engen.com,” a muffled voice recording said loudly, forcing Xander to turn down the volume on his control panel. “Your one-stop location for all MP3’s and other music files, comic book updates, and everything else you could have read on the side bar, you illiterate fool.” Then the voice went away and was replaced by a looping midi rendition of Highway to Hell by AC/DC.

Xander wasn’t all too impressed. He was expecting some kind of freaky government place.

“But why would Soul need a decoder for this place?” He frowned, his eyes darting over the information presented. He scrolled down further. The site seemed to go on forever, with links to every torrent and hack he’d ever heard of.

Music by title, music by artist, music by style, music by date, music by era... the list seemed endless. Then he saw a little symbol on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, set apart from the menu. Someone would have to scroll down a long time after the menu had ended to have even noticed it.

“What the hell?” he breathed, straining his eyes to see the minuscule font, which was obviously not meant to be seen. It was three little letters.

GTG

“Soul wasn’t saying ‘got to go’...” he realized suddenly. “He was telling me what to look for.”

He hesitated momentarily, something inside him telling him not to proceed, then clicked on the small acronym. His monitor immediately turned black, and Xander wondered for a second if he had struck the off button. Then he saw it at the top of the screen. The link had opened up a kind of dos prompt within the site, and in very small letters read:PASSWORD PLEASE.

Xander grinned, resizing his browser window so that he could see his desktop, and clicking on a folder labeled family photos. When the folder opened there were no photos inside, just dozens of program icons. Some of them were of keys or padlocks while others had odd smiley faces or letters. One named Devil’s Advocate had a cartoon image of the devil on it, and he right-clicked on it and clicked open. A new program window opened, the devil face in the upper left hand corner. He went back into his browser and copied the link for the password prompt he had gotten, then pasted it into the address bar of Devil’s Advocate and pressed enter.

The hourglass spun for a moment, then three words popped up underneath it and the devil’s face turned to a frown:NO PASSWORD FOUND.

Growling under his breath, he closed out that program and opened up another, repeating the action. This time it was a smiley face that turned into a frown as the same words appeared on the screen.

He opened up a program with a key for an icon that he had created himself. The hourglass animation was replaced by one of a key turning in a lock, then after a moment the key broke.PASSWORD NOT FOUND.

One by one he tried with all his programs to figure out the password, but could not. He gave up, sliding a floppy disk into the drive and copying the site location onto it. Then he took the disk out of the computer and shut his bedroom door. He pulled back his dresser, revealing an old ventilation duct that wasn’t used anymore. It was where he kept all the things he didn’t want anyone else to find. He put the disk in there and pushed the shelf back into place.

He thought he heard a sound behind him, like the metallic clicking sound an old-fashioned clock made. He turned around fast. Pain again erupted from his right side when he was in mid-turn, sending him to the floor.

The pain was unbearable. He ground his teeth together against it, digging his fingernails deep into his carpet.

What the hell is this crap? he thought as he fought back tears. It’s like

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