7
Lyra
The mission was off to a nightmare start. Dorian discovered a bloody lump of meat in the woods and was certain it was Charles, our poor pilot. We weren’t sure what exactly had killed him, but it seemed clear that we couldn’t split up again, no matter what.
Bryce shook his head mournfully, but there was nothing we could do. Fortunately, he had pilot training and would be able to fly us out when we needed to leave. He called in on a patchy connection to the Bureau office to report Charles’s death while we continued with our mission. The fluctuations for our technology seemed to be getting worse. With death casting a shadow over our mission, I was so numb that I had to focus on moving forward at all costs.
To add to our trouble, we couldn't find the trail from the previous night, but we had to adapt. That was all we could do. Bryce informed me that consulting involved wearing several hats at once, and this investigation was certainly giving us plenty of opportunity for that.
Cam and Sike sat huddled together over the laptop. It was password protected, as all Bureau laptops were, and we’d tried a few different standard passwords just in case the laptop’s owner had changed it to something generic. I was expecting them to fail, since Black Rock was far more secretive than the standard Bureau fare. If the laptop belonged to a researcher, he’d probably stuck with secure passwords. Cam and Sike hadn’t had any luck with their efforts so far. It was frustrating. They would've been able to manually override it with the proper tools, but Bryce and I hadn't thought to bring computer hacking equipment on the mission.
"He took great care to keep this computer clean, even in this mess," Cam said as he stared at the password screen. "He was disconnected from the internet, though, since there aren’t any nearby hotspots, so there’s no cloud data to look at even if we had access to the Bureau’s storage." Cam looked incredibly serious, perched on the edge of a crate as he worked furiously. Bryce cast his nephew an appreciative glance that Cam couldn't see, lest Bryce’s tough-love approach go up in smoke.
"Well, he's alone in a forest with monsters," Sike pointed out with a half grin. "I mean, wouldn't you go kind of crazy?"
"Not crazy enough to keep using my computer every day. I bet he was doing research," Cam pointed out.
"He’s been here for months, from the looks of his trash pile. Whoever was left behind, a researcher perhaps, from what we saw yesterday—" I cut off, hesitating to add my morbid speculation that he was already dead. Whoever this person was, he’d had a weapon, but either the beast was too fierce or he was unskilled with fighting monsters, which led to all that blood yesterday. "He knew what he had to do to survive. And he kept doing his work or research, that’s for sure.” I wanted to shout into the forest after him, but that would do nothing but scare the wildlife. Or worse, enrage the monsters enough to fight.
Frustrated by the turn of events, I turned to look at the trees as Sike and Cam worked at the computer.
“Don't worry, Cam, we'll get it," Sike said hopefully. "Don't you think we should try going through the survivor’s effects to look for clues, or maybe try something funny? Is there a password that all humans like?"
"Yes," Bryce piped up. "It's password."
"I already tried that," Sike admitted. "Louise told me about that trick. She said only old people used it."
“Hey, now!” Bryce said, laughing.
We called in to the highest Bureau person we could get. He informed us that we could continue to try different passwords, since the computers at the Black Rock office weren’t programmed to perform a hard drive wipe after too many failed passwords. Unfortunately, the number of password attempts was limited to three tries every few hours. He couldn’t help us any further unless we brought it in to Bureau techs, which we didn’t have time for.
Cam watched Bryce and Sike’s exchange, his stony expression growing more unreadable by the second. He was like a sixty-year-old librarian trapped in a man's body. Well, if anyone could get him to open up, it was Sike, who was currently elbowing Cam. It was sweet of Sike to mention Louise. I wondered how she was doing at her new workplace. We hadn’t heard from her since she’d left the Bureau, but Sike had originally learned about computers from her.
"Have you tried pizza?" Sike asked. "I heard humans love pizza."
My momentary disappointment was derailed by their hilarious exchange. Cam shook his head ruefully. It made me miss Gina, who was actually a pizza fiend. She had taken time off from work on bereavement but had toyed with the idea of joining Callanish later on. I was secretly glad she didn’t come with us after the way this mission started.
"We'll have to try again in three hours. That was our third try and it's locked us out. We can try again later." Cam closed the laptop with a frown, but he immediately stood up. "Are we going to investigate the forest?"
He was eager. I liked eagerness.
"We are," I said, and glanced at Bryce, since we needed to make decisions together. "Shall we head outside?" I was itching to get started on our search.
"Aye," Bryce agreed. We put our things away to head back to the office. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, inspired by Sike's suggestions.
"Let’s look through the survivor’s personal effects again," I said. "Sike might be on the money. If we can find something that he kept with him, then we might be able to figure out his password."
Bryce twisted his lips as we came up to the building. The sound of the swaying trees accompanied us everywhere, like they wanted to remind us that they
