PREVIOUSLY ON LET’S GET CRACK’N…

Dahyun waited for Sana to do something. Maybe pull something out from behind her. But it never came. Nothing was happening. Well, aside from Sana making goo-goo eyes at her, nothing was indeed happening. Just Sana standing there, biting her lip and appreciatively looking Dahyun up and down. Just Sana.

Did it mean…

She whipped her head towards Mina. Clearly not thinking it through, probably more affected by the ually suggestive playlist than she realized, Dahyun pointed at Sana and in pure outrage, shrieked, “her?!”

For the first time, Mina was caught off guard. “Wait, what?”

“I have to do her?!”

- - -

“ no!” Mina yelled angrily.

Sana’s face fell and she frowned at Dahyun. “Would that be such a bad thing?” she said with a pout.

Momo shut her eyes and face-palmed. “Idiots. I am surrounded by idiots.”

Mina shot Momo a menacing scowl.

“Except you, Mina. You’re perfect.”

Mina tapped her foot. “Sana, show her the goddamn USB!”

Sana sprang to life then. “Ah! Sorry.” She bowed Mina’s way in apology before digging into her jeans pocket. She bent over and held it out to Dahyun. Leaning in closer then, so that they were cheek to cheek, so that her warm breath tickled Dahyun’s ear, Sana whispered. “I lost focus and it’s all your fault. If you weren’t so cute…”

“Well, excuse me and my ridiculously attractive face,” Dahyun snapped, whispering back. She then grabbed the USB from her and shuddered. This girl was too cray-cray for Dahyun’s life.

The USB in her hand was of smooth silver. No designs except for a discreet light indicator at one end.

“This is Excalibur,” Mina introduced. “Solve the puzzle inside this and you’ll inherit the world,” she said with great exaggeration. Then she shrugged. “Or at least that was what our old hacker told us.”

Dahyun inspected the flash drive. She opened the cap, found nothing out of the ordinary and put it back on. Really nothing special about it on the outside but if these girls weren’t ing about, then perhaps, inside the USB was a monster.

“Tiny thing but it houses 5TB of highly classified information, databases, agency-developed applications, detailed logs and reports of past missions, and most importantly, the highly coveted source codes, software and hacking tools from one of the greatest cyber security specialists of our lifetime. It’s got basically everything you need to hit the ground running once you’re recruited into this espionage business. All handed to you on a silver platter.” Mina gestured to the small bar of metal in Dahyun’s hand.

The tiny thing suddenly felt a lot heavier.

But did all this really warrant an elaborate abduction?

“Why go through all the trouble though?” Dahyun asked. “Tricking me like that?”

Mina smirked. “You would not have agreed if we just invited you over now, would you?”

“Well,” Dahyun started. “If it was a choice between getting kidnapped and gagged or walking quietly…”

“Oh, Miss Kim. You’re no fun at all.”

Kind of peeved at being called ‘Miss Kim’, she twisted to the side. Dahyun sighed and put the USB down onto the table. “I don’t have my hardware and tools. How do you expect me to work on this?”

“With WiFi, anything is possible.” Mina said this with a completely straight face.

Dahyun blew up. “The type of answer is that?”

“Calm down.”

“How can you tell me to calm down when you three asswanks—”

Suddenly, cutting through the warehouse room was the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

“—when you three talented, brilliant, incredible, gaymazing representations of fierce independent women…”

Then came the less threatening sound of a gun being decocked.

“... just put me through enough excitement to last two lifetimes?” she finished weakly.

To Dahyun’s surprise, Mina had put on a pleased little smile. “Now that you’ve reasonably calmed down, enough to suddenly throw up such heartfelt compliments, let’s proceed.”

Dahyun replied with two thumbs up and a fantastically sarcastic smile.

Mina ignored the attitude. “We will provide you with a suitable laptop,” Mina told her. “Momo.”

Momo handed the gun over to Sana before she disappeared into the backroom again. She spun the cylinder playfully. She seemed to be so careless with the weapon that Dahyun wouldn’t be shocked if she dropped it and accidentally shot someone in the face.

Momo returned with a steel suitcase and laid it onto the table. She unfastened the locks and opened it to reveal a laptop inside. Momo took it out and popped the screen up then pressed the power button. Looking at its size and form factor, Dahyun could say that it was a standard ultrabook. If this screening process thing was timed, which it probably was, then Dahyun prayed extra hard that the laptop had an i7 processor and at least 8GB of RAM. And a backlit keyboard would be nice too, if God was being generous.

“That should be enough to get the job done.”

Dahyun opened to protest but Mina read her mind and cut her off immediately.

“Don’t ask for any more tools, hardware, ing bluetooth speakers, or time to go home and pick up your hacking kit or whatever. You are not leaving this warehouse. A hacker as good as you not having her codes and tools on an infinitely encrypted cloud? Don’t play dumb with us, Ms. Kim. Don’t think we don’t know about your methods. Don’t try to get out of this.”

“Those are a lot of don’t’s,” Dahyun observed drily.

“Don’t,” Mina stressed, “—get clever with me.”

Dahyun willed herself to keep shut and not get herself into any deeper but she just had to be a dumb and test the limits of her luck. “What if I don’t want any part of this? What’s going to happen if I just fail on purpose?”

Mina was quiet for a beat. “We’ll have to dispose of you, of course,” she said, dead serious.

Dahyun looked at Mina.

Mina looked back at Dahyun.

Dahyun blinked back at Mina.

Momo walked over, spinning a gun in her hand like this was a ing Western movie.

Dahyun looked at Mina in horror.

Mina wasn’t joking around.

Dahyun puffed out a giant breath. “Well, me.”

A little giggle. It was Sana.

“Gladly.”

- - -

G: SwordN_DStone

:: :: :: ::

WELCOME TO CAMELOT

Pull out the Sword in the Stone and the Lady of the Lake shall bestow upon you the great Excalibur.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it (Dahyun snorted when she read this part) is to safely remove this USB.

Once this USB is inserted, a contact sensor will be activated to trigger an explosion if ever the USB is abruptly moved or stays plugged into the device beyond the time limit. The sensor can only be switched off if the correct password is inputted. Also, it wou