“Well… most of it. There are still some parts I don’t have access to. I’m currently trying to get access to the mansion’s electricity and lights. It’s all automated.”
His fingers glided across the keyboard, making a strange sound—not so much typing, but more like a whirring, the sound of keys tapped fast enough to buzz like bees. I sat next to him and glanced at the monitor. He typed a set of incomprehensible instructions, but the weird part was that some characters were not in the English alphabet. In fact, they weren’t in any language I recognized. One of them, which repeated several times, matched the rune on the USB stick I had used the day before.
“Are those runes?” I asked.
“Yes.” He nodded, his fingers never pausing their dance. “A lot of their files are encrypted by 256-bit AES keys. I could just try to brute-force through them, but it would take too long.”
“How long?”
“Well…” He glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of the monitor. “It’s now seventeen minutes past nine in the morning. Brute-forcing these encryptions with this computer would take about… enough time for the sun to become a red giant. Humanity would be extinct, and we’d be late for the banquet.”
“Okay. Not brute force, then.”
“No.” He shook his head sharply. “That’s why I use chaos.” He pointed at one of the runes.
I scrutinized the character representing the rune. It seemed to almost pulse on the screen. The letters around it occasionally shimmered, as if just their proximity somehow affected them. I knew I was watching nothing more than pixels on the screen, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that what I witnessed was somehow a form of magic. Not the magic that Kane performed, channeling mystical energy through his body—a different form of magic, infused with technology.
Harutaka laughed his small, strange laugh. “People think chaos is just a mess,” he said. “But it isn’t. There is beauty in chaos. There are magnificent patterns. And there is possibility. When dealing with chaos, there is always a chance to beat the odds. And when you use the right runes, this chance can become almost a certainty.”
The front door opened and Kane strode inside, carrying a tray of three Starbucks cups. Same trench coat, same smile. But there was something behind that smile now, and his eyes slid away from mine. Despite my efforts to avoid complications, it was clear that things between us had changed. “Hey guys. I brought coffee. Lou, here’s your extra strong coffee.”
“Oh, god, you’re a life saver.”
“And Harutaka, you wanted… black coffee with two chai tea bags and a pump of caramel?” Kane gaped at the man with a mixture of horror and fascination.
“Yes! Thank you!”
“The barista asked me to repeat the order three times. She seemed quite shaken.”
“That is the general response I get in Starbucks,” Harutaka admitted. “And they always spell my name wrong on the cup.”
“They mangle everyone’s names,” I said.
“I have a cup collection at home. There’s one where it’s Harutacka with a ck, and one where it’s Harutaha. And of course, Harukata. I even have one where they spelled it Rokaka.”
“You have a complex name for Americans.”
“Rokaka! That’s not even close!”
Kane gave him the cup, and he sipped from it and licked his lips happily. Mine was the same as last time—perfect.
“There,” Harutaka said with satisfaction. “I can turn the lights on and off now.”
“There are more important things,” I pointed out. “What about the guest list?”
“I changed it last night,” he answered. “I added Baroness Fleurette van Dijk to the guest list, as well as her butler and her personal assistant.”
“Fantastic.” That would allow Sinead, Kane and Isabel to enter the mansion’s premises tonight. Harutaka would stay behind, monitoring us through the security cameras. “And the invitation?”
“I found the file with the invitation document, and sent it over to Sinead.”
“Good job.” Sinead would be sure to make a perfect forgery of an invitation for Baroness Fleurette van Dijk.
“I also deleted all the video footage of your little foray last night, overriding it with footage from the middle of the night. Oh! And I checked the guard shifts—our friend Gavin Pollard was supposed to be on shift during the banquet, so I changed it. You won’t run into him.”
“Good thinking. Did you manage to access the vault door?” I asked.
He paused and looked at me. “The vault door is not connected to the main security server. I can’t get to it.”
“Damn it. That means Sinead still needs to get the keycard and the password from Maximillian Fuchs.”
“I don’t like that part of the plan.” Kane frowned.
“That’s not the question,” I said, a bit coldly. “The question is—can you think of a better plan?”
He didn’t answer.
“The advantage is that by that point, if something goes wrong, we can still leave unharmed, and figure out a different way to break into the vault.”
He gave a small nod, conceding the point.
I turned to the hacker. “Harutaka, are there personnel files in the dragon’s servers? Maybe we can find something Sinead can use.”
Harutaka tapped some keys, and a small personnel file opened with the name “Maximillian Fuchs” on top. It had no image of him, only a physical description. Height: six feet; white hair, dark brown eyes. There was scant detail beyond the description. He had been hired seven years ago, and his current title was “security chief.” No CV, or anything else.
“Do we have to enter through the vault’s door?” Kane asked, clearly still bothered by the plan. “How does the dragon enter the vault? He sleeps there. Surely you saw him enter and leave it.”
Harutaka shook his head. “I checked the footage. He doesn’t enter through the door. And there’s no security cameras inside the vault, so I don’t know what entrance he uses.”
“I saw no other entrance in the blueprints.” I frowned. Something else nagged at the back of my mind.
“Dragons are magical beings,” Harutaka said. “Perhaps he shifts into another dimension. Perhaps he shrinks to the size of an atom and flies through the wall. Perhaps he turns into gas.”
“I can try to hypnotize Maximillian if Sinead can’t pull off the seduction trick,” Kane said. “But hypnosis can’t make a man do something he doesn’t want. And I assume he won’t be ecstatic about opening the vault door for us, so—”
“Why does it have his description in the file?” I asked, interrupting him. “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
Harutaka shrugged. “I guess that’s how the dragon likes his employee files.”
“Are there descriptions for the rest of the employees? A photo would be simpler, right? Yesterday, you told me you matched that guard’s face to a photo in his file.”
Harutaka hesitated, then clicked the mouse a few times. Gavin Pollard’s file opened, with an image of his face on top. It had no description. Harutaka opened a few more files. All had images.