Lonely Thieves

Intermission 4

Trevor tapped away at his keyboard as the data from Megumi came in. The data was thoroughly encrypted with an incredibly complex code, but because he had already spent quite a while exploring the data in both the sapphire and emerald necklaces, Trevor had no trouble unraveling the encryption in record time.

"Done!" Trevor declared triumphantly as he emphatically hit the enter key. "Hayasaka's third key has finally been obtained. Just a few more minutes and I'll be able to put together the entire code."

I'm very thankful to you. Chisato's voice echoed throughout Trevor's mind, with a hint of happiness in her voice. This would never have happened so quickly if it wasn't for you.

"Hey, don't make me blush," Trevor smirked. "As long as you keep paying me, I don't mind working for you even after all this necklace business."

I'll keep that in mind.

Trevor went back to his work. With the data of all three necklaces at his disposal, he now had all three parts of the encryption key Tom Hayasaka was desperate to hide. Supposedly the three parts of code would combine to create a decoder key that would allow the holder to unlock Gen Hayasaka's encrypted will. Trevor didn't know the full story behind why Chisato wanted to get into the Hayasakas' personal business–he always made it a policy not to pry too much into his clients, after all–but he couldn't deny that he was interested in why Tom Hayasaka would hide his father's will like this.

As Trevor continued to put together the separated code, he noticed an alert from his personalized firewall system. Something else had made its way onto his computer aside from the code Megumi had uploaded. At first, Trevor believed that the firewall had just triggered a false flag, and what was caught was a piece of data that was part of what had been sent to him by Megumi. However, caution told him not to make assumptions so easily, and he quickly opened up his firewall program to see what he had caught.

At first, he didn't understand what he was looking at. It was clearly malware of some kind, but it didn't seem to be hacking into his data or anything like that. As he checked its log, he noticed that was actually sending out information to somewhere else. It was a sequence of numbers that seemed to resemble location coordinates.

That realization immediately set off red flags in Trevor's head. His custom terminal was developed to his specific instructions, and one specification he had insisted on was that it did not record his location in any way. In other words, his terminal was completely untrackable, whether it be the government or the Three Great Families. And right now, a virus was making all of that pointless.

Trevor deleted the malware, but he knew that the damage had likely already been done. The same time he did so, he heard his phone ring and picked it up without looking at it."

"You need to get out of there! Right now!"

Trevor winced as Megumi's voice screeched into his ears. He sort of figured that something had happened to the data on Megumi's side, and her reaction seemed to confirm it.

Megumi hung up without waiting for Trevor's reply, but he didn't really need her warning to know what he needed to do. He quickly backed up his terminal to the cloud and got up from his seat.

"Chisato, we need to get out of here. I don't know what, but something went wrong."

Did something happen to Megumi and Daryl?

"They seem fine, but they might not be for long. Can't worry about them right now, though; our location just got sent out by a rogue virus that was tagging along on the data I got."

Oh, dear. That isn't good at all.

"That's an understatement," Trevor remarked as he packed up his things. He couldn't take everything, but he at least wanted to take his essential equipment at the very least. "We need to get out of here as soon as possible."

Of course. I've already sent messages to the staff telling them to evacuate as soon as possible. You should get out of here too.

"I'm already gone. What about you? You have way too much equipment set up here. We can't move them out of the room, but if we took you off the machines, I can't say that you'd last long."

It's fine, Trevor. Leave me here and escape.

Trevor bit his lip as he hovered in front of the entrance. Every bone in his body was pressing him to leave as soon as possible. He didn't know what was going to happen, but he knew that it was a bad idea to stay. Still, even he had problems with leaving an invalid behind just to save his own skin.

What's the matter? Chisato's voice echoed worriedly in his head. Shouldn't you be leaving?

Trevor sighed. "You can't expect me to just leave after saying something like that. Hold on. There are a few portable generators in one of the storage rooms below. If I hook the machines up to one of those, you might be able to make it."

That would take too long. You should escape while you still have time.

"Believe me, you don't have to convince me," Trevor groaned. "Still, I'll feel guilty for the rest of my life if I actually do that. You've done a lot for me, after all."

Trevor, I–

"That's enough," Trevor growled as he headed out of the room. "Don't make me change my mind. It wouldn't take much, if I'm honest."

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The Florencia building was quite a sight that day in the Morning Star district. Those living in the area knew that there were people who worked in the building, but their lives were secretive, to the point where they even lived inside the building to keep away from persistent journalists. But that day, all pretenses of stealth and secrecy were dispelled as a flood of workers poured out onto the streets.

The pedestrians were confused, and the Twilight Police Department were soon on the scene, questioning those that had come out while trying to hush onlookers away. Despite their efforts, the people of the district continued to gawk at the sight before them, as if an urban mystery had just unraveled before them.

On a ledge across the street from the Florencia building sat two men clad in the outfit of the Innocenti Special Soldiers. They kept themselves hidden with the use of optical camouflage, which allowed them to change their appearance to blend in with their surroundings. One soldier watched the crowd with binoculars as he held a lit cigarette in his mouth.

"That's a lot of people. Anyone suspicious in there?"

The other soldier scanned the crowd with a camera, which transferred the visual data to a nearby terminal. The machine quickly detected the faces of each person in the crowd and quickly identified them in a matter of seconds.

"Nobody important," she declared. "Just everyday citizens with normal census profiles. Nobody with cracked IDs or blacked out info."

"So if there's anyone who'd be worth our time, they'd still be inside the building," the other soldier grumbled as he tapped his communicator. "Hey, boss!"

"What is it?"

"Checked out everyone that rushed out. Nobody special. Thinkin' we're gonna have to head in to find what we're looking for here."

"Do what you need to do. Remember, failure is not an option. If you screw up, you have nothing to do with the Innocenti."

"Of course." The soldier hung up the call and turned to his partner. "Call the others. We're storming in less than five."

"Are you sure?" she asked in a worried voice. "There are only ten of us."

"If they had security that could take care of us, they wouldn't have told everyone to evacuate," he responded as he picked up his gear. "They're planning on dumping this location. We're gonna grab 'em before they can get away."

His partner nodded and pressed a button on her watch, emitting a flash of blue light that lasted less than a second. On cue, eight other blue lights flashed from areas surrounding the building, signifying their readiness.

"Alright," the soldier groaned as he stretched his arms. "Guess we're ready to go."