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[personal profile] lady_mab

Lionel Darcy

I’m nearly completely certain that more than two messages have come in to Kaito since the game officially began. Meeting the hosts was well and good, but it’s been over a week past the deadline. That only means that Kaito has been fielding the missions through Rhys and that runs the risk of reducing our participation points.

I’m alone in the back workroom, fingers pounding furiously away at my keyboard. For once, I don’t have my headphones in -- the clacking keys are cathartic enough. The code at this point is routine and I don’t need to devote much brain power to it.

All my thought process is too busy picking apart the options that my team has for this game if we want to keep participating like a team.

The buzzer in the workroom hums as someone enters the main shop. I don’t even bother looking up. They’ll page if they need anything, and even then one of the sales clerks can work on it. I’m not about to let myself get distracted by a customer asking questions.

The door clicks open and something solid hits the floor on the other side of the room. Ah, so a coworker appeared. Great.

“Why don’t you just type harder, kid? I don’t think you’re about to break the keyboard.”

I jerk upright and swivel my chair around to find Rain staring at me with an arched eyebrow. “Oh. It’s you.” Even before I can turn around, I know that it will be a lost cause. The mindless coding has been interrupted. My fingers itch to search for my headphones. Maybe loud music will help drown out another person’s presence.

Rain doesn’t seem to notice. He moves to stand against my workstation, arms folded across his chest. “What do you think about that program?”

“Pro...gram…?” I glance at the screen in front of me, the blinking cursor doing very little to remind me of what I had actually been working on. That’s part of the problem of working without thinking. “You mean this one?”

“No, dumbass, the one for Meliora. Why would I ask you your thoughts about work?”

“Because we’re at work…?” I deliberately wait to roll my eyes at the same time he does. “I thought we agreed not to talk about this.”

“That was before we had to install an app on our phones.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to change the ‘don’t talk about it’ rule we established.”

“Jesus Christ, what are you, seven?”

I bristle at the jab and snap my laptop shut. “You know what? I need your help with something.”

To my delight, he’s caught by surprise. “With what? I’m not on the clock yet.”

“No, dumbass, I mean for Meliora,” I mock. I hold out my hand and smirk as his surprise turns to frustration. “Give me your phone.”

“What? No way!”

I wiggle my fingers. “I promise I won’t look in your porn folder.”

“I don’t keep porn on my phone.”

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“The problem lies in the fact that you want my phone with no explanation given!”

I push myself out of the chair and Rain moves to block his bag from my line of sight. “I want to see the messages you’ve received from the APM.”

“Look at your own damn Informant’s phone.”

“He’s not here right now and I want to try something before the idea escapes me.” When he doesn’t move, I stick my hand directly below his nose and wiggle my fingers again.

Something resembling disgust curls his lips and he smacks my hand away. “Fuck, Lionel, this is why you don’t have friends.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell.

I make a grab for it, but he jerks it out of the way. He’s tall enough that he can hold it over his head and I can’t reach it without jumping, and I am not about to stoop to that level.

“What’s in it for me?”

Scoffing, I eye the distance between me and the phone and debate if I want to try and punch Rain just because he is frustrating me. “You’re clearly going to do this out of the kindness of your heart.”

He settles his weight onto one hip and crosses his arms over his chest. The phone dangles recklessly between his fingers and he taps it on his forearm. “You’re not on my team. I don’t owe you anything.”

“No, that’s why it’s out of the goodness of your heart. Unless you don’t have one. The jury is still out on that one.” I lunge for the phone and my fingers close around it.

Rain’s grip tightens as I tug, and his frown deepens with each passing second. His over-the-glasses glare is on par with Rhys’, but I’ve perfected the art of not being affected.

However, unlike my older brother, he doesn’t say anything to reprimand me further. He just sighs, relinquishes his grip, and smirks as I stumble back at the sudden lack of resistance. “I’ll start a list of how many favors you owe me.”

My response is a mature, whiny mockery of his voice as I drop back down into my chair.

“Are you at least going to tell me what you plan on achieving?”

I flip my laptop back open and search through the pile of cables on my workspace. “I came up with an idea for a program just now. I want to see if there is a way for me to receive all the same messages as the Informants.”

“I thought you were told that the teams won’t receive the same missions.”

“That’s fine. I just need a sample. I’m sure you can work out the rest.”

He hesitates, then comprehension dawns in his eyes. “A blanket proxy to siphon any messages sent out from that APM account?”

“Bingo.”

“Bingo,” he snorts, then kicks the base of my chair and sends my lower half in a semi-circle. “Hah hah hah you little shit.”

I tug myself back into place with a frown and dismiss the screen I had been working on. The mobile lights up as I access it, and knowing that Rain is watching my every move, I pull up the most recent message from the APM. Something nonsensical about a garden that barely constitutes as a puzzle as opposed to a line from a poem.

Rain’s voice interrupts my progress. “Did you even think that he might change his email or pick a different encryption each time he sends out a message?”

“That would be too much effort.”

“Says the guy who is coding a very simple program that is basically hacker 101.”

I frown without looking away. “It’s a bit more advanced than that, give me some credit. The boss wouldn’t hire just any high school kid.”

He doesn’t follow up for a long moment, but I can still sense him standing at my side, watching. “You lot were selected personally and then sent messages. You don’t think it went through this team’s head that they were inviting at least one computer programmer?”

I hesitate, brain shorting out -- though my fingers continue to code of their own volition. “If that’s the case, then he could have factored in the idea that I would continue this process until a pattern arose. Because there is always a pattern,” I hurry to add before Rain can interrupt me. “Humans are wired to perform on rote behavior, and they program computers in the same way.”

“Random number generators aren’t patterns.”

“They’re not guaranteed to be the ultimate protection, either.”

A soft beep informs me that everything works the way I hope it would as I run the first message through the program. This early in the game, all our moves are already predicted. The APM would have anticipated any programmers to think of the idea of pulling apart his messages, because computer related things that mystify others are a solvable mystery to us.

It never was supposed to be a secret that ALICE is backing Meliora -- I just mistakenly thought it was.

I run a second message, and it provides the same results. Insofar, Rain’s theory of the APM changing the security of his emails is false, although two subjects is hardly a worthy test. I am just not one for patience.

He thankfully remains silent as I code, but he doesn’t move from my space. It’s another five minutes before I’m finished, and I pull the cord from his phone.

Rain doesn’t move to take it right away as I hold it out to him. Instead, he stares down at me with a strange mixture of emotions tugging at the corners of his mouth. Displeasure wins and tugs his lips downward. “No more of this at work.”

“Programming is all we do at work.”

He snatches the phone with one hand and uses the other to smack the side of my head. “Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, Lionel.”

My fingers curl around the arms of my chair, pressing tiny, angry little valleys into the fake leather. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m serious,” he says, and I hate him for that line. “You’re not on my team, and I don’t care for you much as a coworker, so I’m saying this as someone obligated to speak common sense. I have a younger sister -- think of your siblings before you get into something this big without measuring how deep it is.”

“Rhys is on my team--”

Fuck, Lionel, I’m saying think of your siblings.”

“Stop it.” I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to have to be reminded that I made a promise with Rhys and Lia, especially not from someone who only marginally cares.

Anger coats his expression. A second passes, then another, before defeat settles into the line of his shoulders and he slumps. He wears the face of someone who knows when to give up the fight as much as he doesn’t want to. “Take your lunch as soon as I’m on the clock.”

I concentrate on the flutter of frustration, trying to pick it apart and figure it out, as Rain retreats across the room to his work station.

It’s not until I’m punching out for lunch that I finally put a name to that feeling. A part of me wanted him to keep pushing the topic. He backed out before it could even turn into a full on argument, just like Rhys would do.

Think of your siblings.

It’s harder not to than one would think.


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September 2020

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