Velvet Rain
Another testy transaction between an enigmatic interloper and the almighty, elusive madame.
He hated it when she decided she wanted rain. Perhaps it was her subtle way of getting at him, given his employment fell short of complete consignment to her every whim. Perhaps it was her way of console, loathsome of her reliance for his services. Regardless, it was undeniably convenient that she demanded a downpour every visit he made, a motion to her as effortless as breath, yet one that always doused his mood.
"Is that all?" A satin voice bristling with burs. His patron sat before him, eclipsed by the spine of the armchair's silhouette. Rain raced down the monolithic window beyond it in streaks. Fat drops gorged themselves on the glass, then plummeted from their gluttony. In their collapse, they compromised the smaller, feebler droplets in the path of their fall. A barren wake. Unsustainable. He shook the detour from his thoughts.
"No." He spoke dryly. Succinctly. He kept his voice and gaze aloof, but ever careful to navigate the straits between concision and contempt. From within his coat he produced the tablet. He set it upon the desk's black glass; a cautious clack paired with retreating fingers. "The personal PDA of Serath's Chief Security Commander."
"And… of what import is that to me?" Her censure flowed thick with apathy. She fixed her interest upon the storm outside, and still she had not even deigned to face him. He cared not. The mist beyond the glass rolled with the gale, offering meager stains of starlight in brief glimpses through the grey. The pause in the room echoed only the squall, a soliloquy spoken in rain.
"Fairly." He straightened himself, his eyes falling onto his offering. It was a simple password lock. Two factor biometric identification based off of a CESCI 3 digital vault, easily fooled. A tangled web of several disjunct keys to unlabeled authenticators, all found in a single folder past the main lock labeled "passwords". Simple. Pathetic, really. One ought to expect more from the head of security.
As the string of tasks replayed in memory, he allowed himself a brief moment of indulgence. Despite her power to bleed planets with a word, to move markets with a single finger, she was powerless in his world, as were all other monuments who believed themselves impregnable. She knew it, and he relished it. And though he lacked the methods to humble her, he spared a rare joy in knowing he could at least inconvenience her. But he had his fun, best not push his luck.
"It supports my conclusions. The Belphemon and your visitors lack any insight about Idol." The patter of rain. Silence. The unwelcomed expectation for him to continue. He rolled his eyes, "Their intentions are with Sanctity. They seek to enter it and use this 'Malfeasance' as some attempt to override the factory's primary function."
"Promising. Did you recover it?"
"Such an endeavor lacked purchase in my contract. You will fail to find it included." His weight shifted as befuddled thoughts bubbled to his voice, "Besides, this 'Malfeasance' lacks any pattern of cohesion. Its nature is… a fragment. Attempts to excise its attributes have yet to succeed.”
"Encryption?"
"No, nonsense. A key whose shape can only be known by its lock."
“Disappointing,” she huffed. "I trust Idol is still recoverable?"
"Based on Naro's autonomous records of Pellucid Night? Yes." Several seconds labored by, before the whimper of leather beneath shifting weight was followed by a click.
"Gausan." A single word spoken into a receiver, unmistakable in the attention it demanded. A second click ended the line. Her commands erred back towards her audience, "You are dismissed."
He pivoted, beginning towards the door and onto the next contract in his queue. Enticement invited him to unravel the tangle of this "Malfeasance" - it had been ages since such a puzzle box had properly aroused him. But a detail from his excursion continued to drone in his head like the buzz of frayed wires. Something suspicious. Something too… coincidental.
"There was something else."
"You test me." He pressed past the threat. Curiosity overwhelmed remission.
"The Heirdocine kid. He was there."
The room uncannily stilled, the conversation finally spiraling into the eye of the storm. Curtained corners darkened. Wind wailed past the glass. Gluttonous beads bled down the window. The armchair groaned, and indigo soaked lips barely veered into view from behind it. Their slender contour framed against the tempest, parted. Her voice was velvet. Violent.
"Who else?"