When Narvy least expected it, he stepped into a puddle. He successfully managed to stop himself from slipping, but he lost grip of the torch doing so. It fell out of his hand and landed in a crevasse below them. Without hesitation, Narvy jumped down and tried to retrieve the torch. “Narvy, please, you don’t know what’s down there,” called Bobby. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” announced Narvy. “Can you help me get up?” he asked. “Sure thing,” replied Bobby. The crevasse wasn’t super deep, but the height of the tunnel above would have been difficult to climb alone. Bobby walked over to the edge and reached his hand down. Narvy grabbed on to it and pulled himself up. “Looks like we have to watch out for puddles,” he stated once he got out of the crevasse. The two of them resumed their walk. Narvy shone the torch in every direction, hoping to find something in the darkness.

Ten minutes later Bobby and Narvy found something very weird in their path. The tunnel appeared to have come to a dead end, enforced by a brick wall. “This can’t be right, there’s got to be some kind of trick here,” stated Narvy. “Were there any doors or gates on our way here?” asked Bobby. “No, we would have explored them if there were,” answered Narvy. He scanned the wall with his torch, hoping to find some kind of hidden entry point. While doing this, he noticed that the wall was missing one brick at the very bottom. Narvy got down and stuck his arm through the hole. Feeling around inside the hole, he felt a button on the other side of the wall. After pressing it, he immediately freed his arm from the hole. At first, it seemed as if pressing the button had done nothing. But that quickly changed, as the entire wall slid to the left, clearing the path. Without any stalling, Bobby and Narvy continued down the tunnel as before, shining the torch across the tunnel so they could see where they were going.

As they walked, they talked about the mission and how confident they were that they would catch the hacker. The journey only lasted for five more minutes, because when they least expected it, they ran into another obstacle. The tunnel ended and they found themselves in a small room. There were five doors, each with the corresponding number painted on them. “They couldn’t come up with a better obstacle than this?” muttered Narvy. “Yeah, but this person knows how to create defence systems. The one with the brick wall was very smart,” commented Bobby. “I know, but a set of mystery doors is the oldest trick in the book,” explained Narvy.

The two of them investigated each of the doors. They decided to open door number 3 first and noticed a strange sound while doing so. They heard a creak and what sounded like a pulley, only to encounter an unwanted surprise. The room appeared to only have some ropes and gears in it, but before they got the chance to enter, a metal dart the size of a paintbrush flew out of the door at lightning speed. Bobby and Narvy were lucky enough to avoid the dart before it pierced the wall. After a brief moment of shock, they regained their confidence and decided to carry on and solve the puzzle. Doors 1 and 5 had nothing but brick walls behind them. When they opened door number 2, they gladly decided to walk through it as there were no bricks or darts barring their way. The problem with this room was that there wasn’t a floor. Because of this, Bobby almost fell down a pit that was who knows how deep. Fortunately, Narvy grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back up. With the process of elimination, Bobby and Narvy came to the conclusion that door number 4 was the one that led to something useful.

When they approached the fourth door and opened it, they were greeted with another black void. With a bit of uncertainty, Bobby and Narvy walked into it, the torch being their only source of light. Unlike last time, the two of them could sense they had entered a room, and a massive one at that. When Narvy shone the torch’s beam across the room he found several objects, such as a computer setup and some file cabinets. Suddenly, a ceiling light illuminated the whole room making the torch obsolete. “There was a light switch near the door,” explained Bobby. “Good spotting,” replied Narvy as he put his torch away.

Now that the room was fully lit, the investigation had become significantly easier. The computer setup was much bigger than Narvy previously thought. Not only that but there were some more file cabinets and even a couple of tables with incomplete pieces of machinery on them. As they were the only people down there they had the perfect opportunity to investigate before the hacker returned. Bobby and Narvy quickly wiped their feet near the entrance and hoped the dirty water would evaporate soon. Curious as to what they were, Bobby decided to approach the tables and the strange contraptions that lay on them. Since he was not an engineer, he had no idea what all the wires and panels were for. Narvy would have recognised them, but he was on the other side of the room raiding the file cabinets. He was not familiar with the documents he found, but they appeared to be of high importance, judging by the presentation and their written content.

“Found anything?” asked Bobby. “We’re definitely in the hacker’s lab. There’s a bunch of papers in here and they all look valuable,” replied Narvy. “What are they about?” asked Bobby. “I don’t know, probably something to do with banking or cyber security,” answered Narvy. “I’m going to look at the computer,” stated Bobby. He approached the setup and tried to figure out how it worked. The computer was not comprised of one monitor, but five. Within a couple of seconds, Bobby found the cord that would activate the monitors, or at least the central one. He made his way over to the power outlet by navigating the maze of cables and wires. Eventually, he found the correct switch and flicked it. Once he did that, the central monitor started up. It ran through some diagnostics and displayed some startup screens. After that, he ran into a problem.

“Of course,” muttered Bobby. The computer was asking him to enter a password. Just then, he noticed that there were a couple of drawers below the setup. He got up from the chair and rummaged through them. “What are you looking for?” asked Narvy. “I’m looking for a password so I can get onto this computer,” explained Bobby. “It’s probably around here somewhere,” replied Narvy. He joined Bobby on the search. Within a couple of minutes, they had looked through every drawer and compartment with no luck. Every time they found a piece of paper with random numbers and letters on it they typed the configuration into the computer and submitted it, but none of them let the user proceed. But that changed when they decided to take another look at the drawers’ setup. The top drawer contained a pair of gloves, some pens, and a magnifying glass. In Bobby’s eyes, none of these items looked useful. But for Narvy, it was a different story.

He drifted from his task of finding the password and took the gloves. They were black and seemed to be tactical. He looked at them with great fascination. “I’ve got an idea,” he announced. “What is it?” asked Bobby. “These must be the gloves the hacker wears,” explained Narvy. “Their fingerprints may not get on the computer keys, but they always get inside the gloves,” he added. “Where are you going with this?” asked Bobby. “I was thinking we could turn the gloves inside out and place them onto some kind of scanning tool,” explained Narvy. “That’s a great idea,” replied Bobby. “But what kind of tool did you have in mind?” he asked. “I didn’t think of anything specific, but I’m sure the police will have something we can use,” answered Narvy. “Do you think they’ll let us borrow their equipment?” asked Bobby. “It’s worth a try,” replied Narvy. “Do you still want to find the password?” he asked. “Nope, your idea sounds great, let’s just do that,” replied Bobby.

Making sure he had the gloves, Narvy pulled the telecoin out of his pocket. “Are you ready to leave?” he asked. Bobby scanned the room with his eyes, making sure there was nothing the two of them hadn’t explored yet. He figured it would be a good idea to turn the light off to avoid any suspicion that someone could have come in. “Yes,” he replied. At that moment, Narvy pressed the button on the telecoin. He watched as both of their bodies appeared in the darkness, shrouded by a luminous glow. A luminous string also appeared to connect the two. After a couple of seconds, Bobby and Narvy disappeared, not leaving any evidence to suggest they had entered the room.