This wasn't exactly my idea of an elite infiltration team, nobody here really screaming 'SNEAKY', even in a hushed whisper.

I was hissing along with my missing leg bothering me and an exoframe which I clanged against the stone floors way too loud on account of still not being accustomed to walking on it. Karu was wearing shiny white and glowing red, and her boots clicked across the ground in a way that seemed to echo forever. At least Lia was properly outfitted and moving carefully, the grey of her slipskin seeming to meld into whatever shadows she slipped into…

...which would seem ideal for stealthery, except that she was my excitable kid sister, and more than once, we'd had to pull her out of the sneak-queen persona as she seemed pointlessly attracted to delving into the darkest corners and rolling across open hallways, regardless of whatever direction we actually needed to be heading. More than once I heard her humming a piece of her own theme song as she crept.

So it was probably just as well that Karu had already cleared our visit with her personal access and had disabled the manor's automated nighttime security, so we essentially had free run of the place, assuming we avoided Idris and whoever else might still be on-hand.

I peeked around a corner, seemingly the same as every other corner thus far. A cavernous hall, stretching into blackness. Something bumped into me from behind, and my exoframe compensated for my lack of balance by helpfully making me step forward right into the hall.

I turned back and sighed at Lia, who was finishing the roll she'd made and was slinking behind a pillar as I watched.

"Dude," I told her.

"Shhhh."

"Dude, you're just banging into me. Can you stop your cartwheeling for like, five minutes until we're done?"

"I'm sneaking, okay?" Her voice sounded a little different than usual from behind her mask...different even from usual through the synthesizer.

"Is your voice lower?" I asked her.

"It is a standard voice filter," Karu mentioned, entering the conversation even as she walked into view, her visor burning in the darkness even brighter than her armor. "It modulates the voice to wavelengths less likely to carry. Although, your mask does appear a different model. Have you upgraded recently?"

"It's all new," Lia shrugged, and now that I knew what I was listening for, yeah, it was kind of in an obnoxiously hard-to-hear register. Like she was mumble-growling her words. "All of my old gear was taken away when I was captured and put in New Eden."

"I thought you were struggling for money?" I asked. Things hadn't been great for Black Shark ever since she'd imploded a black market site in an attempt on Dragon. She'd been hanging in there for a while, but the whole weeks without 'net in XPCA control had done a real number on her -- Lia said some people were even claiming she'd died. She also said there'd be a way to turn that to her advantage, but apparently that hadn't happened yet, which wasn't a surprise given how we'd just been running around.

"Well I was...and then I bought all this, so now I really am. Some of it, I really couldn't cover, Taglock got it for me as a going-away present."

"Oh, he's going away? That's so sad."

"Yeah, you really sound like your heart's breaking," she glared at me. "And he's going nowhere, I am. Can't afford his services anymore for the time being."

"So sad."

"Stop being such a dung beetle--"

Karu hissed at both of us to be quiet, and I bit my tongue, remembering our surroundings. Ever the bigger person, Karu didn't even need to tell us the words plainly written on her face: Stop being such children, before slinking off again for us to follow.

"For the record, he saved all of our lives a few times, okay?" Lia whispered before following. I just shook my head and tried to keep my clunking footsteps light.

There were a few security, more stationed in key places than on patrol, and we once had to duck behind a large and ugly work of art while a servant came rushing past us with a busted cleaning drone in one hand and a towel dripping suds in the other, but otherwise, it was fairly trivial to infiltrate right up through the manor to the uppermost levels where Idris spent his personal time.

"His bedroom is there," Karu whispered, pointing down the hall. "His office is our target, and will be in the hall past it. For all of God's love, be stealthy this one time, if no other."

I tried my absolute best to clank down the hall as silent as possible, gingerly lowering my feet towards the ground with every step. It mostly worked, but every time I misjudged the distance and heard an echoing clack of metal on stone, I froze entirely, my heart pounding in my throat as I waited for the sound to dissipate, hoping the end of it didn't catch Idris' ear through the door.

I'd have to talk to Whitney about calibrating the frame for a stealth mode. Something like, on the downstep, limit the descent speed sharply, or maybe assume relatively level footing and arrest the leg's motion right before it expected the ground.

Or heck, I thought, maybe just put some foam shit on the bottom of the feet. That was a whole can of worms I knew, adding more variables to the frame's ability to stand balanced, and introducing a wrinkle of varying foot-depth, especially if the foam ever came off mid-use, but we could figure it out. Anything was better than this.

Fortunately Idris did not wake up, and all my stressed nerves and careful steps were not in vain. The three of us crowded around our final goal, which Karu fiddled with over a frown.

"What kind of lock is it?" AEGIS asked over comms.

"Not the kind simple to bypass," Karu replied. "Biometrics it would take time to gather, and a password which would take time to crack."

"Well...we've got time, probably," AEGIS replied, sounding a little annoyed at Karu's lack of offered information.

There was a slight cracking sound as Karu leaned against the door and pulled free the pin of the hinge. She worked her blade into the other, and another minute later, with another crack, it also pulled free.

"Stand back," she said, and we all danced a few steps back as she pulled and wiggled the door in her grasp, and then suddenly it, too, pulled free, the whole thing loose in her arms. Crablike, she shuffled a pace to the side and leaned it carefully against the wall.

"I guess that is easier than getting the password," I mused. I thought AEGIS made a huffing noise, but I couldn't be sure. The three of us filed in, into yet another room of identical stone, wood, and darkness.

"What are we looking for?" Lia asked. She and Karu were sweeping the room through their optics, leaving me standing in the doorway like a lump.

"This," Karu said, sitting at the computer and bringing it to life with a wave. She stared and frowned as it prompted us for a password.

"Just pull the hinges off," AEGIS muttered.

"Not helping, AI," Karu said, typing in a couple of guesses to no avail. "Though should you choose to be less impish, your expertise could be invaluable at the moment."

"Where's the box?" Lia asked, already midway crawling under Karu's legs to poke around the rest of the desk.

"I presume in a secure room somewhere," Karu answered.

"This is a secure room somewhere," I said.

"If we have physical access I can bypass the front-end easily. Without it, I can't do much more than brute force and get us locked out," AEGIS complained.

"Yes, I could do that on my own," Karu agreed. "I am not picking up heat signatures of a computer physically operating in this room. It must be elsewhere."

"Great," I sighed. "And we don't know where? He doesn't have a server room or something?"

"It might be in the Pentagon," Lia mused. "They've got a huge secure cluster there, and as a senator, he should have some access if he wants it. Although, if half his stuff is as off-the-books as you like to imply, maybe having all his proof of corruption in their hands is just asking to get exposed."

"Or that kind of thing is so common, you're just hiding a weed in the weeds," AEGIS said.

"My apologies," Karu said, scratching her head. "I had not anticipated being stymied by something so simple as a personal login."

"It's right there," Lia said, crossing her arms at the terminal, pouting like if she was pitiable enough the computer might just let her in. "Right there!"

"I'm gonna turn on some light," I said, and the others nodded, their glowing optics the only thing visible in the dark. I made a couple swords and floated them near the ceiling, basking the room in dim light.

Old, dark wood, richly stained, and thick carpets. Hundreds of books and photos and trinkets on shelves built into the walls all around the room, and a bay window which overlooked the lights of the yard. It was like a dang museum in here, with all the walls and tables covered in memorabilia and shit, and I had to wonder how Idris ever focused enough to get anything done with all the thousands of distractions sitting right next to his desk.

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Of course, nowhere was there a yellow sticky note with a password written on it or anything, but I could hope. I began to circumnavigate the room, looking for anything that might give me a hint, while Lia began throwing suggestions at AEGIS.

"We can't like, plug you in here and have you hijack it remotely?"

"No, I'd be like, three steps removed by then."

"And that's an issue?"

"Yes, generally speaking." I could veritably hear AEGIS pushing her glasses up her nose through comms. "The greatest part of breaking info security is doing what they aren't expecting -- everything from physically replacing hardware to a basic code injection attack, it all boils down to coming in a way they weren't anticipating. The problem with moving through these layers is that each one of them is translating your efforts essentially, but through the languages they're designed for...the languages they're expecting, in other words."

"Yeah I don't get it," Lia said, pulling open drawers.

"Imagine you have a hilarious but devastating pun. A real zinger. Like, works on three or four different levels, and the universe itself conspired to open an opportunity for you to throw it. Except the guy you are with only speaks French, and your translator is a thousand-year-old language app on your mobile. The intermediary step takes away your ability to do anything clever or surprising, because it's trying to convey meaning, not intention."

Lia still didn't get it, but I think she was also done with the explanations. I was just sorta floored at how many different people Idris had pictures of himself with, many of whom I actually recognized, in an…isn't that the president? kind of way.

I'd worked my way halfway around the room by now and realized something. With that in mind, I hurried my pace a bit, just glancing at the photos to confirm my suspicion. I frowned as I completed my circuit.

"A thought, Ashton?" Karu asked, watching me go.

"Oh. Yeah. Well." I shrugged at her. It wasn't a useful thought really, but she cocked her head and was waiting for me so I felt I had to continue. "Uh, I was just noticing there's a lot of photos in here, all of Idris."

"He is his own largest fan."

"Plenty of him and his wife it looks like. But not a single one with you in it."

"Is...that so?" she said, stopping to take a look around. "Well, I suppose that only confirms what I already knew. The man loves nobody but himself."

"I'm sure he loves you, Karu. In his own way."

"Deep down inside?" she scoffed. "And you expect that someday he will turn gentle on me? He will wake up one day and realize what he has been missing, all these years of having most anything he can desire, and that it is me? Perhaps we can sing together whilst he braids my hair."

"He seemed to love your mother," I said, taking another look around. "Maybe he sees part of her in you? Or you're her legacy or--"

"Fond though I am of you pointlessly speculating at my intrinsic worth in the eyes of a man I care nothing about, I believe you have no leg to stand on…" she looked down at me, and winced slightly "...erm, no pun intended. But even if you had, you would remain an ignorant hypocrite, as is your norm. You need look no further than your own parental relationship before giving me any amount of sass, as it were."

"That's different," I told her. "Your dad already had his waking up moment, he told us. He wants to reconnect with you--"

"And your father merely wanted to protect your sister in the ways he thought best."

"Best?" I hissed at her. "In what world was that best for anyone?"

"I concur that his notions were as ill-conceived as they were destructive. As are my father's, yet you seem to put merit on intentions, and therefore must consider--"

"What intentions could possibly account for hitting her? Or my mom?"

"I repeat, I am not defending your father's actions. I am drawing an analogy between yours and mine. Mine is amoral to the core, and yours became a victim of mental estrangement--"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I found myself yelling. "A victim? He sicked Brick on her. He raised his hand to his own family. He wasn't protecting them! He--"

There was a crash as Lia dropped something and went under the desk to get it. I realized Karu was shushing me as both of us waited, seemingly far too long for Lia to return. When she came up, her mask was askew.

This was really not the time or place for this. I swallowed hard, feeling guilt wash over me that I'd let my emotions get the better of me, and whatever I wanted to say, I bit it back. Karu seemed to do likewise, and we both continued our search in painful, awkward silence. Burning thought after thought passed through my mind, and I wanted so badly to scream each one of them at Karu. But somehow, I didn't.

"Wow this is awkward," AEGIS chimed.

"Shut up," both of us replied. She laughed.

Karu suddenly sat bolt upright, weapons raised at the door. A moment later, I saw a light flicker, and then I turned and saw its source, a flashlight in the hands of a servant at the door. I squinted through the blinding light. It was a woman...was she preparing to run? I didn't want to turn this into a chase in the middle of the night just a hall away from Idris' room, but we couldn't just let her go.

"Well fancy seein' you here, Miss K," a familiar voice drawled at us.

"Eryn! thank God," Karu let out a long breath, and met the servant halfway across the room for a brief hug. She was wearing satiny-shiny pajamas that showed off her shoulders and legs, which I realized only now were both very dark and very long. Karu continued, "I had thought Athan's shouting had woken the whole house. You are a fortunate one, I very nearly shot you."

Eryn offered a short curtsey to each of us in turn. In her other hand was what looked like a short baseball bat.

"I'm not the lucky one, Miss K, you almost tasted my intruder-whackin' stick."

"Yes, terrifying," Karu said with a smile. "I apologize for the interruption. We are merely going through my father's personal effects with hope to find information useful to us."

"Oh well by all means then," Eryn said with another curtsey. "Guess the password already?" she circled the desk and frowned at the locked screen. "Oh you're not half as competent as I'd credited you, Miss K. I thought you were a mighty unstoppable huntress, and here you are starin' at a blank screen."

"Please cut back the sass and let us through," Karu sighed. Eryn cackled as she did exactly that.

"I believe Father would go into conniptions if he were aware that his servants knew his private passcodes," Karu mused as she began to click through the computer.

"Well you know me. It's imperative I have full access to the place, so I can dust everywhere." She winked at me. "Some of the darker corners get awful filthy."

Karu shook her head, and AEGIS began chiming in with some suggestions; she'd found a private stock report on her own which is the kind of thing Idris would probably also have, and by searching the computer for that file, we found all the others in the adjoining folder, helpfully named IkaCo_2253_p_06. A little more snooping right around there led us straight to the cache of the rest of his IkaCo data.

All four of us crowded around the screen now, as Karu went from boring file to boring file, trying to find something written in plain English, and more useful to us than sheets of numbers.

She clicked open one file and we all paused to read. Personal correspondence between Ikeda-san himself and Idris. I felt my mouth going dry as I read.

"Trust me when I say I share your beliefs on failed children," Lia read aloud. "The hell?"

"This is recent," AEGIS said, apparently reading along with us, probably through Lia's eyes. "The date is...this puts it at the time Moon was staying with us. This was when Ichiro was sending his goons and drones to try to snatch her."

"Fun times," I commented. The tone of the message really put me off, it was like a completely different person was writing it than the Idris I'd ever met. He was bawdy, tawdry, almost crass. I had to wonder if he drunk-messaged Ichiro for fun, sometimes. I'd assumed they were just business partners, but the conversational tone, and the topics they covered seemed to indicate a lot more.

"Here," Karu highlighted a passage with a drag of her finger. "An older message, Ikeda says: Though it is a personal matter, I request your help in dealing with my wayward daughter. She has refused my orders to return home in my time of need, and has even gone so far as to send inflammatory responses and dismissed my men. I will next act to have her taken by force...would you be able to recommend a service?"

"What the hell?" Lia spat.

"He goes on, asking Father for political intervention in the event things go wrong. The two of them sound like old war buddies," Karu said, her voice boiling.

"Jesus, it just gets worse and worse," I commented. "This bit, I assume you don't care if she's banged up a bit, so long as she makes it there in one piece? What the hell kinds of men was Idris sending to capture Moon? Why the hell was he tied up in this at all?"

"And why does your dad have those kinds of men on call to begin with," Lia said, frowning as she tugged at her hair.

"It is far from a surprise to learn that my father is a patron of unsavory muscle, as it were," Karu crossed her arms. "Nor to have it spelled out that, despite his position of esteem, he would bend over backwards for IkaCo, as I believe they are very many millions of credits deep in his pockets. I am unsure why Ikeda would trust this task or information with Father, however."

A light on the desk turned green, causing Eryn to jump. Lia and I stared at it in unease while Karu's face hardened in a way I was now getting familiar seeing. It was the face she wore around her dad.

"Because," the desk spoke, and I realized there was an intercom in there somewhere. "as capable as Ichiro is, he knows that America is my turf. Anything he needs done here, I do, without question, without failure."

"M-master Irenside," Eryn exclaimed. "What are you doing up, sir?"

"No worse than you are, I expect," came the terse reply. "We shall have to have a discussion about your future employment and termination, Eryn,"

"She is in no way responsible," Karu barked. "Leave her out of this."

Karu tensed and spun, and I realized that there was movement in the hall, visible to her optics. She raised her guns as men crowded the doorway. The security we'd been bypassing on our way here greeting her with raised guns of their own, their faces tense under their black ball caps.

"I've done a terrible job in raising you," Idris scowled through the intercom. "What do you know of responsibility? You turned your back on your family, on your country, on humanity. And you think to tell me what my own servant is responsible for?"

More security crowded in the door, those in the front stepping into the room now as the hall behind them bustled with activity. Lights began to turn on, and sirens began to wail in the distance as what I hoped were police began to arrive.

"Master, you know me," Eryn plead to the desk. "Please, there's no need for guns and guards, you know I'm as loyal to the Irensides as any have ever been."

"You are in my office, in my files, in the dead of night like a thief, girl."

"I'm with your daughter, and she's an Irenside too. I just want all of you to be together again. I don't want secrecy or lies or family troubles. I spend my everyday caring for you, and I care for her too on the occasion she's home. Please master, listen to your daughter, I know we can all reunite. Don't you want your little girl back?"

Idris paused, and so did Karu. As the silence between them grew, I thought, maybe Eryn was the key to everything, uniquely situated right between Karu and her dad, shameless enough to put aside her pride and say what needs to be said, but invested enough to begin mending these two.

"Eryn, step outside if you would," Idris' voice said at last. She gave a fierce nod and approached the guards, who parted to let her pass. Through the separating ranks, I could see the senator himself out there, his lips moving as he spoke to Eryn, inaudible to us from the distance.

But then something I did hear. A single gunshot and a woman's scream, cut short by another shot.

"I have no need of reconciliation," his voice came through the comms again. "I have no daughter. Disable the terminal and dispose of her."