"That’s..."
The Doctor arched a single eyebrow with practiced ease. A shiver-inducing mix of curiosity and suspicion bled through that sharp angle.
"Good guess. This is the real deal—the very chip you’ve been dying to get your hands on."
I pinched the thin flake between my thumb and index finger, twirling it around. It reminded me of a game I used to play with scraps of cardboard when I was a kid. It was always fun to set them spinning on a desk and see how much faster they’d go if you blew on them.
...Not that I was actually going to do that now.
"...You didn't deliver it to Cordeaux?"
The Doctor’s voice was laced with a hint of a sting. It was a strange tone, caught somewhere between bewilderment and distrust.
Well, that was to be expected. Normally, no one would ever imagine that two identical items could exist at the same time. But my "repairs" were a different breed of business.
As long as I had the broken original, I could gather the necessary materials and restore it. So, what happens if I take one item and break it into two pieces?
The answer: I end up with two identical items.
Infinite multiplication. In gaming terms, it was a duping glitch. In reality, it was a terrifying power to possess.
I didn't answer the Doctor’s question. I simply let the corner of my mouth curl upward and tossed the chip I’d been playing with toward him.
"Whoa! Watch it!"
The Doctor scrambled to catch the tiny thing in his small hands.
On the outside, he feigned outrage, but his mind was already racing through the variables. There’s no way he didn't fulfill the contract with Cordeaux. So where did this one come from? A different source? No, the timing is too perfect...
Seriously, guys like him are an open book. Even when they’re putting on an exaggerated performance with their expressions, their brains are crunching numbers with cold precision.
"Look, it doesn’t matter where it came from," I said, shrugging with a light laugh. "The delivery to Cordeaux was handled properly. No one’s going to come after you for having that one."
"...Hmph."
The Doctor let out a low grunt and began studying the chip between his fingers. For a fleeting second, a look of mingled suspicion and madness flickered in his eyes before he finally fell silent, seemingly satisfied for the time being.
"Fine... actually, it’s far from fine." The Doctor shrugged, though a smirk was tugging at his lips. "Regardless, as long as I can pull the data, that’s plenty for me. Now, what do you want? You said you came for a 'consultation,' didn't you? There’s no profit in your pocket even if I do dig into this thing."
He’ll probably try to use the contents for blackmail, or maybe sell it to an Information Broker for a hefty sum... No, this guy doesn't care for that kind of roundabout bullshit.
As usual, he had a solid read on my personality. He was right; I hated dealing with complicated messes. However, it was a different story when the mess came looking for me.
"Lately," I began, leaning my shoulder against the wall and crossing my arms, "specifically since I took the job for this chip from Cordeaux, the number of pests loitering around me has spiked."
"...There are always countless people trying to get a read on you."
"True. There’s always been some background noise." I shook my head and paused for effect. "But this time feels different. The 'scent' is too refined. They aren't Lower District thugs. They smell like the big shots in suits from the Upper District."
I let out a soft chuckle.
"When people are that bad at tailing you, you can't help but notice. At first, I was going to ignore them. But if they’re going to get this involved... I figured I might as well be the one to pay them a visit."
My mouth twisted into a dark grin, and the Doctor matched it with a smirk of his own.
"Oh, scary, scary. It’s game over for anyone who catches your eye."
How rude. I like to think of myself as a fundamentally gentle person.
...Not that I expected him to believe me.
"Fine. Let's take a look inside then."
The Doctor spun on his heel, and I followed.
We returned to his private room, where he clattered around, clearing junk off his desk before pulling a heavy-duty, old-fashioned terminal from beneath a rack. He connected it to a monitor, and the machine roared to life with a low hum.
"This unit is stand-alone. No connection to the outside world. Whatever happens here, the data stays here."
As he spoke, he slotted the chip I’d given him into the machine.
A moment later, the monitor was flooded with a torrential downpour of text. Tens of thousands of lines of code rained down, making my vision swim. Then, a window suddenly burst open.
It was a password prompt. Below it, a cold, inorganic countdown began.
Thirty seconds.
"Oops... they’re using a bit of a retro safeguard."
The Doctor didn't even blink. He yanked open a desk drawer filled with neatly organized, anti-static chip cases. He traced his fingers over them until he found the one he wanted, then slotted it into a secondary port on the terminal.
Ten seconds left.
A new window popped up, and the cipher the Doctor had entered began auto-filling the password screen.
Five seconds.
The numbers were punched in one by one—beep, beep, beep.
My pulse quickened in sync with the timer.
Three. Two. One.
The moment it hit zero, plain white text flashed on the screen.
[ACCESS GRANTED]
"Phew... that was tighter than I expected."
The Doctor poked his tongue out playfully, but his gaze never softened. His eyes remained locked on the monitor, as sharp and focused as a predator closing in on its prey.
"...A password? Isn't that a bit primitive for this day and age?" I asked. "You’d think they’d use bio-metrics."
The Doctor shrugged. "Bio-metrics are all the rage lately, which means breaking them is also all the rage. Fingerprints and retinas can be forged a dozen different ways. Sometimes, these anachronistic locks are actually harder to crack. Well—unless you’re me."
He flashed a boastful grin.
"Now then. Let’s see what we’ve got."
The monitor displayed a sequence of gibberish. To me, it was just a garbled mess, but it was different for the Doctor. The electronic circuits in his eyes flickered like lightning as he processed the code. His body went still, as if his consciousness had merged with the machine. Only his fingertips moved, scrolling through the data in tiny increments.
...This was boring. And I was hungry.
Leaving the silent Doctor to his work, I wandered over to the large storage box in the corner of the room. It was a high-tech version of a refrigerator that suppressed chemical reactions to keep expiration dates at bay for an absurdly long time.
I popped the door open. Rows of fresh food blocks were lined up inside, along with a few half-finished packages. My eyes caught on a wrapper I hadn't seen before.
"...Oh, something new?"
I pulled out a stick with a large pizza logo printed on it and peeled back the foil. Inside were six square, stick-shaped bars. I took one and bit into it. It had a tomato base, but the flavor profile was way off. A miss.
As I sat there munching, the Doctor suddenly turned around.
"...Hey, don't just eat my stuff without asking."
He sounded annoyed, but I couldn't see any real anger in his face.
"My bad. I was feeling peckish."
As I shrugged, the Doctor let out a sigh and continued.
"Anyway—I've cracked the gist of it."
I walked over to the monitor, which was still a blizzard of text. It meant nothing to me, but the Doctor was seeing something else entirely.
"They used multiple layers of text-based conversion to hide the data. It was a time-sink... even if someone bypassed the password, very few people could actually pull anything useful out of this mess."
He paused, his voice dropping an octave.
"But I got what you wanted."
I jerked my chin, prompting him to continue.
"The developer is Vira Corp. Based on the logs, the original client was the Police Organization. However, the command structure was overwritten at some point. The developer re-registered himself as the primary user, and the entire program has been warped around that."
Vira Corp. The name had come up in Cecily’s case and with Cordeaux as well.
"I can't be sure about the chip’s exact purpose yet. It looks like it’s programmed for some kind of deep interference with both the mind and the body."
As he spoke, he snatched the Pizza Bar out of my hand and took a bite. Hey, that was mine... wait, it was his to begin with. Whatever.
"They’re likely running prototypes and human experiments," the Doctor continued while chewing. "But why they’d use a 'young lady from a good family' as a test subject is a mystery. That’s a high-profile target. They could have snatched a thousand people from the Lower District without anyone blinking an eye..."
As the Doctor trailed off into thought, I cut in.
"Bottom line: I just need to ask the developer, right? Did you get his personal data?"
"More or less," the Doctor muttered, his eyes glued to the screen. "Only the name and title were left in the logs—Olaf Karvel. Director of the Second Technical Bureau at Vira Corp."
I see. So he’s the one behind all this.
I licked a stray crumb of the Pizza Bar from the corner of my mouth and smirked.