“Let's hope Tetsu can crack this thing open quickly,” Devin remarks while nervously fidgeting in his seat. “Every minute we hold onto it is an extra minute they have to find us. The dude who shot himself in the head is almost certainly not the only one roaming around. Fuck, I don't like the idea of looking over my shoulder for the rest of this ordeal.”
Atreus quietly agrees with his friend's sentiments, hoping for a swift end to this investigation once the USB drive is cracked and the police have hopefully traced the other two unknown numbers on the assassin's phone back to their owners. Until then, however, the sensation of a threat looming over them will continue to pervade their conscience.
Their ride to Tetsuya's apartment building soon concludes, and they walk with a brisk pace into the complex, cutting straight through the lobby and into an elevator that arrived in time to release another tenant. On the fourth floor, they hurry down the clean, well-kept corridor of tigerwood floors with a dark crimson carpet down the center – a stark contrast compared to the poorly maintained and horribly aged building they had left earlier. They reach the door bearing the number '421' at eye level, and hit the doorbell. A few seconds later, the telltale series of audible clacks unlocks the multiple security measures on the door, which opens itself by a few inches.
“Hey, Tetsu, let's get this shit over with, man,” Devin loudly announces as he and Atreus enter and approach Tetsuya, who is already seated in front of his computer. “We gotta get this shit open as soon as possible.”
“Here,” Atreus takes out the low profile USB drive and hands it to the hacker.
“Well, shit, good evening to you guys too,” Tetsuya facetiously responds as he takes the device from Atreus's palm. “Can I at least get a little bit of context before I put this thing into my computer? How am I supposed to trust that it doesn't have malware or a keylogger or some shit? I didn't get as far as I have by just picking up any stray device and shoving it up my rig's ass.”
“We have good reason to believe it contains crucial documents relating to some shady project by Zephir Industries with the cooperation of the Kobashi-kai, another yakuza clan and Sanada-gumi rival,” Atreus immediately spouts a succinct summary. “It's bit of a long story, but that's the gist of it,” he punctuates with a shrug.
“So far, five people have died over this fucking thing, so it might have some really fucked up plans that they couldn't allow to see the light of day,” Devin adds to emphasize the urgency.
“Hold up, hold up,” Tetsu faces his palms forward in a stopping gesture. “Zephir Industries? Are you fucking serious? You brought me a USB drive containing confidential files belonging to one of the biggest pharma corporations on the planet?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Fuck no, it's not a bad thing!” the hacker lights up with unabashed glee. “I've always wanted to dig into their dirty laundry and see what I could find. They're the shadiest pieces of shit in an industry full of shady pieces of shit,” he lambastes the company as he happily plugs the storage device into his computer. “Alright, let's see what we got, depending on the encryption method, I might be able to give a timeframe on how long it'll take me to crack this bitch open.”
Tetsuya opens a program with a very minimal but clean and succinct interface and uses to it to analyze the singular encrypted file present on the USB drive. A results screen soon shows up, displaying the nature of the encryption, how large the decrypted file will be, and other crucial information that seem like another language to everyone but Tetsuya himself.
“Alright,” the hacker claps his hands together. “Right off the bat, I got good news and I got bad news. Bad news: this thing uses triple data encryption, which encrypts blocks of data three times over. Thankfully, the block sizes are small, but that still means it could takes weeks, maybe even months to brute force.”
“Not really starting off strong here...” Devin utters.
“But before I get into the good news, lemme ask you a quick question: how many times has this USB drive changed hands? And to who?”
“Well, it started with a man from Zephir, obviously,” Atreus begins recounting the device's history, “then it went to Camlin, who gave it to Takiyama, who gave it to us.”
“Is Takiyama a programmer?”
“No. If anything, he's supposedly somewhat inept at technology. It turns out Camlin was the one who installed Minerva on his burner phone. Since he's the head of network security for Atmos, it should probably come as no surprise.”
“Damn, that does make a ton of sense,” Tetsuya remarks with a rub of his chin. “Okay, so Camlin's the programmer man and Takiyama is the layman here, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, that explains my good news, which is: the encrypted data on this drive is tethered to a very simple password-protected decryption tool. Basically, instead of trying to bust through the encryption directly, I can simply brute force the password, which, according to my own encrypted file examination tool, should only be about six to eight characters in length, presumably for the original purpose of allowing Takiyama to access it easily.”
“Damn. I guess Camlin died before he could even give the password to Ed,” Devin surmises.
“How long will it take to brute force a password of that length?” Atreus asks.
“Only a couple hours,” Tetsuya quickly responds. “You guys can kick it here in the meantime, if you'd like.”
“Sweet, so we'll have this done tonight? Thank Christ,” Devin rejoices at the news and sits down on Tetsuya's sofa. “Fuck it, man. I say we stick around, order some food.”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Atreus, conceding that there's little to do except wait, sits next to Devin.
Now that the two men are finally allowed a chance to breathe since the violent encounter with the unnamed assassin no more than half an hour ago, conflicted emotions finally begin to catch up with them. As Tetsuya's computer begins to automatically try to brute force the password protecting the USB drive, the Sanada-gumi members slowly lose themselves to a morose atmosphere, remembering that two men just died in front of them, one of them being a fellow clan member.
“So, uh, how did that meeting with Takiyama go?” Tetsuya asks a question, without prying his eyes from his monitor, to break up the sullen silence, but little does he know it's the one question they'd like to avoid at the moment.
“Terribly,” Atreus answers bluntly just as Devin opens his mouth with the intent to try and give a vague response. “He's dead.”
“What?” the hacker exclaims, turning around in his seat.
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“Our party was crashed by a Kobashi-kai assassin – the same one who killed Camlin, most likely. He killed himself, too,” the augmented man continues to give candid details of the altercation without paying any heed to the fact that Tetsuya is a normal civilian.
“You guys aren't going to lead to cops here, are you? Not that I have anything here that could get me arrested or whatever, but I've had to deal with the cops before, and I'd rather not put with that kinda shit again. One look around my apartment and they'll totally convince themselves I'm a black hat or something and confiscate my rig. It'll be a bitch to get back.”
“No cop is gonna kick your door down and take your shit,” Devin interjects to calm his friend down. “In fact, we're sorta cooperating with one right now. He let us bring the USB drive to you in exchange for letting him keep the Kobashi-kai pin and phone we found on the killer.”
“Well, alright, I'll take your word for it. But still, doesn't this mean you guys, like... saw a couple dudes get killed under an hour ago? Are you two feeling okay?”
Neither clan member answers Tetsuya's considerate question immediately. Instead, they both heave exasperated, crestfallen sighs first.
“It was my first time even seeing a gun being fired with the intent to kill another human being,” Devin eventually answers. “It's... really different from just watching people get roughed up, or even roughing people up, myself. They eventually get up and walk away. I hadn't seen a person not get up before.”
“It wasn't my first rodeo,” Atreus comments, referring to the incident that saw the destruction and removal of his natural arms. “But... I feel like this was worse in a way.” He frowns subtly as he gazes downward at the floor. “I tried to reassure Edward he'd be okay. He... seemed so paranoid about being caught up in all this shit, which he didn't deserve, but he jumped into it anyway just to help a friend. And now... Now he's just dead, because I wasn't careful enough.”
“Hey, listen, man... Don't be so hard on yourself,” Devin tries to console his longtime friend. “It was a mistake, but not everyone would've been able to sniff out that stupid little tracking device, especially not someone who was doing this sort of investigation for the first time. Plus, you had to put the gun somewhere. You were still right when you said we couldn't keep a hot gun in the office.”
“Yeah, but Colter was right when he said I should've just fucking told him about it. I didn't need to keep it a secret, because I would've likely met up with Ed regardless. Keeping the gun ended up being totally pointless for us.”
“Either way, I think it's a mistake anyone in your position could've made. It was unfortunate, yeah, but you weren't the one who pulled the trigger. I saw you try and fight that asshole off, and you were close to stopping him. As for me, I shouldn't have fucking sat there like an idiot and let you do all the work. I should've helped you, because if I had, then maybe that would've saved Edward, too. We both fucked up, but we don't have a time machine. The best we can do right now is crack that USB drive open and get its contents over to Okada, and finally finish all this shit.”
Atreus still feels guilty for his disastrous mistake, but the words of his best friend don't fall on deaf ears. It's true that their approach to multiple things were very imperfect, no doubt perpetuated by an obvious lack of experience with investigative tasks, but they're so close to their goal, that if they let their guilt stop them now, it'd only be a waste of their effort so far, and a spit in the face to the loss of Edward.
“Yeah. You're right,” Atreus nods lightly, accepting his friend's consolation. “Once this is done, then hopefully our part in this investigation is finished, and Colter can take care of the rest by finding other Kobashi-kai members. The clan's next priority after this is going to be preventing another gang war.”
“Now that is something I'm afraid of. If the last one was so bad that the older members don't like talking about it, it must've been insanely fucked up.”
Once the two Sanada-gumi members finish airing and discussing their doubts, they eventually order a meal like they said they would – chicken-based dishes such as teriyaki, katsu, and fried rice. With nothing much to do other than eat and wait, they took their time filling their stomachs while listlessly watching whatever network they could watch on Tetsuya's seemingly little-used television. The mood stayed sullen for the duration of their meal, and after they finished, they slowly began to doze off to the background noise of the movie they were barely paying attention to and the nearly rhythmic clacks and taps of Tetsuya occasionally typing on his mechanical keyboard for something unrelated to the password cracking process, which was automatic anyway.
Before they know it, Atreus and Devin drift into a light sleep while still sitting on Tetsuya's sofa, having been weighed down and exhausted – more so mentally than physically – by the night's hectic events. After what they perceive to be an only momentary snooze, practically a blink of an eye, their attention is perked up by a familiar sound.
“Hey, wake up, you guys,” the hacker's voice beckons them awake. “The password cracking is done. You two need to see this. It's... it's really important.” The occasional short break between every few words makes him sound somewhat nervous.
“What's up?” Devin asks as he arches his back and shakes his head to dispose of his lingering lethargy; Atreus does the same. “Did you open the files and see what the documents are about?”
“Yeah, I did; I gave them a bit of a skim, and... Well, I'm no medical chemist, and there's a lot of scientific jargon in here that I don't get, but from what I could get, this shit is... It's not good.”
“What are you talking about?” Atreus asks as he dazedly pushes himself off the sofa to approach Tetsuya's monitors with Devin following.
“Well, I found out what this super secret project is supposed to be, and, uh... It's a lot different than what I expected. Granted, I don't rightly know what I expected, but it's certainly not this,” Tetsuya rambles nervously.
“Just talk straight and tell us what you could get from it.”
“Okay,” the hacker takes a deep breath. “This is gonna sound insane, but...” he contorts his face into an expression of sheer apprehension. “It seems that Zephir is trying to make a nonlethal biological weapon of some sort.”
“...What?” Atreus asks, dumbstruck at the series of words he just heard. “A... biological weapon? Zephir? Seriously?”
“Like I said, it sounds fucking nuts, but look,” Tetsuya scrolls down to a specific page. “This little passage right here mentions that the 'chemical' they're making will significantly enhance the body's 'immunoresponse pertaining to synthetic bodily augmentations and prosthetics'. Basically, it's a substance that makes it harder for the human body to accept man-made parts, like your arms.”
“What the fuck?” Devin reels back, overwhelmed by confusion. “Why would Zephir make such a weird thing? What's the point of it?”
“Well, because they can money off it.”
“What, by selling it?”
“No, you dumbass,” Tetsuya harshly answers. “Zephir manufactures Aperibrum, remember? The medicine people need to take in order to suppress their immune system enough for their brain stem to accept the interface attached to it. If they release a chemical like this, which accelerates that response, it'll be much more difficult to merge your brain with your prosthetics, meaning significantly more Aperibrum will be needed.”
“...You've got to be kidding,” Atreus wipes his palm downward across his face while shaking his head. He's in total disbelief, but for multiple reasons; first, because of the fact Zephir would even make such a thing, second, that multiple people died for such an insane and greedy plan, and third, because it seems like the most unnecessarily complicated and potentially dangerous way imaginable to make more money, in spite of the drug supposedly being non-lethal.
“They're making a fucking chemical weapon just so they make quick cash?” Devin starts to rant angrily.
“It's not just quick cash,” Tetsuya adds. “This shit even says they've already begun human testing – illegal human testing, I'm sure – and at the moment the effects are only temporary, but they're trying to make it permanent. They want it so that if an augmented person takes one fucking whiff of this stuff, they'll need Aperibrum multiple times a day, everyday, for the rest of their fucking life. It'll increase their revenue from the drug by like twenty to thirty times, and that's if they keep the price the same, which they almost certainly won't. They'll gouge that bitch as much as they legally can. They'll start raking in hundreds of billions of dollars a year from this one drug.”
“If the Kobashi-kai is truly part of Zephir's investors, they'll surpass the value of all of Sanada-gumi's assets within several months to a few years, depending on how big of a cut they're taking,” Atreus adds, growing quickly dejected. It's bad enough that such a horrific tool is being made to benefit the enemies of Sanada-gumi, but it's something that affects him on a more personal level too, as a person with prosthetic limbs.