ShyHand71: You’re on the dark web, dude. You already know about finding things most people can’t. Why do you need me for that?
gu@rdi@n104: Because I want to know if I’m right about you. And I like making friends with people who know how to think. Most people don’t.
ShyHand71: You might be flattering yourself, but I’m not buying it. What do you want me to find?
gu@rdi@n104: Are we making an official agreement now?
“Jeez, this guy likes to run around in circles.” Cheyenne shook her head and typed.
ShyHand71: Not yet. I can’t decide if I want to do this until you give me something to go on. Specifically, what you want me to find.
gu@rdi@n104: Hey, take a breath, huh? Incoming data file headed your way. It’s encrypted, fyi. Take your time and get back to me if this is something you think you can handle.
ShyHand71: Sure. Is there a deadline for this offer?
gu@rdi@n104: No. Reply to my comment on your thread when you figure out what you want. Happy hunting.
“Oh, yeah. Great. Thanks.” Cheyenne waited for the file to come through on the private message, and when it finally did, she snorted. “Favor for a Friend. Nice filename. Looking for people who know how to think, but the guy can’t come up with something creative.”
Before opening anything from someone she didn’t know—and probably didn’t want to—the halfling powered up the multiple layers of a program she’d built years ago and used once. As it turned out that one time, she hadn’t needed what she’d named “the Bunker.” “Better safe than taken over by some giant Trojan that would rip my VPN and all my firewalls to shreds. Always use protection, right?”
The Bunker took another two minutes to fully load, and then Cheyenne was ready to take that little Favor for a Friend file and slip it right into her program. It took another minute to open the stupid thing, and when the file finally finished uploading to her program and shed its outer layer, the halfling’s jaw dropped open.
“No kidding, it’s encrypted. I can’t read any of this.”
The layers of coded text didn’t make any sense, and they scrolled across the minimized view screen the Bunker provided faster than she could pick out anything she recognized.
Cheyenne sat back in her computer chair. It rolled away from the desk a little, but she didn’t bother to bring herself back again. “The guy said to take my time. Guess I better start mapping out a plan of attack now. This is gonna take a lot longer than one night.”
And that was the beginning. Once she figured out how to decrypt the entire file from gu@rdi@n104, she still had to figure out whether finding what he wanted was actually worth the potential information he’d claimed he had about Durg. But that was a chance she was willing to take.
“Ember’s awake. She knows what’s going on, and she knows that I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to make sure Durg gets what’s coming to him. Then I can let this one go. Until then, Guardian104, I guess I’m gonna have to play your little game. Trust me, I’ll win.”
With a sigh, she got up from her chair and headed toward the kitchen.
“Okay, there’s one pro to being unconscious and chained to a FRoE bed for five days. I still have beer in the—”
A light flashed in her backpack, which she’d deposited in its usual place on the floor against the kitchen counter. Frowning, Cheyenne squatted in front of the bag and zipped open the front pocket, thinking the light came from one of her phones. The FRoE burner phone didn’t have any missed calls, and she double-checked that the ringer was on and the volume was all the way up. A quick glance at her personal phone showed no new texts, calls, or notifications. “Okay.”
The light flashed again in her backpack, and not from the front pocket. The drow halfling set both phones aside and unzipped the main pocket. “There better not be something wrong with my laptop.”
She took that out of her bag too and pulled the laptop out of its sleeve. It was definitely turned off and not in sleep mode.
Another light flashed at the bottom of her backpack, accompanied by a light buzz this time. Cheyenne swallowed, set her laptop down, and reached into her backpack one more time. The only other things in there were folders for her classes, and all the way at the bottom, the copper puzzle box she’d taken off her mom’s desk before calling it a night and heading home.
“That’s not possible.”
The box felt a little warmer than the last time she’d held it, before trying to explain to her mom what Mattie had told her about the drow artifact and what it meant to Cheyenne. Before Bianca Summerlin had shot her daughter down in the blink of an eye. Before Sir had interrupted the whole thing by calling the goddamn private landline.
Cheyenne sat on the floor and leaned back against the half-wall that served as part of her kitchen counter. The drow runes etched all over the copper box looked different somehow.
In twenty-one years, I haven’t gotten a single piece of this stupid thing to budge.
She frowned, turning the box over and trying to pin down what had changed. A bright flash of gold light flared from the etched runes on all six sides, and the puzzle box vibrated in her hands with sudden, intense heat.
Cheyenne reacted the way any normal person would—she tossed the puzzle box out of her hand with a yelp of surprise and pain. The box spun through the air and bounced once on the old, stained carpet of her apartment before the pieces sectioned off like a Rubik’s Cube and started to spin in every direction on their own. The golden light from the etched runes glowed brighter until Cheyenne had to squint against the glare.
Two seconds later, the box stopped spinning,
