The Starlight Lancer

Chapter 131: The Three Keys

"The entire personal fortune of the notoriously paranoid trillionaire Dabur Safaul was lost to history when he died. The security services he implemented to protect his wealth were wide-ranging, and the encryption protocol to access anything was known only to him. Even with the help of the third parties who offered external services, no measure was sufficient. Dabur's children thus never saw a penny of their inheritance."

—From the book The Rathogan Aristocracy by Memorist Yliax Raskar

Zaina squeezed through the crevice. By now Kazlo had set up more of his equipment—the cavern was illuminated by lights of every color, whether from screens or flashing monitors. "So, what's the news?"

"Ah, there you are," Kazlo said, waving his hand while keeping his eyes steady on a small chip. In his hand was a tool for placing miniature databoards on the chip's surface, and his instrument was still as stone in his hand. "Give me one second and we can get to the good stuff."

He delicately placed the databoard, set the tool down beside the chip, and rubbed his hands together. "I told you this little guy is special, eh? He wanted to talk to us the whole time, but we didn't have the language to reach him."

Zaina wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he sounded optimistic, which gave her hope. "So you know what's wrong with him?"

Kazlo smiled. "Yes. Absolutely nothing."

She blinked a few times and replied, "I'm sorry, what?"

"What our friend here has been experiencing is a feature—not a bug," Kazlo said. "This little guy has some secrets, doesn't he?"

"Is that what the overflow means?"

"Sort of. See, it seems to me that Gir didn't want Gizmo to be wiped before he came to you. Being that he knew the Order of Riiva intimately, he knew they would. So Gizmo here actually shuffled his internal assets. The Order wiped the databanks it was supposed to, but the wrong code was inside. Hence the malfunctioning, hence you seeking to get him fixed, hence, here we are. It was all a planned circumstance, if you catch my meaning."

Zaina's mind was spinning. "But—he's worked fine for the past few months. How is it possible he's been missing essential functions this entire time?"

"Ah—that's where it gets interesting." Kazlo turned to a monitor displaying several bars in order of longest to shortest. "You see this bottom one, here? That's his data and memory regulation. Looks like those functions took the most serious hit in the wipe. He was able to rewrite some of the code from what he remembered, but imperfectly, which eventually led to a failsafe. I'm guessing the first time you noticed a problem, he initiated a reset ordered by Gir?"

Zaina's eyebrow raised. "How did you know that?"

"I have the log here. But furthermore, it's a protocol Gizmo put in place shortly before the wipe—very shortly, I'm talking, like, less than a week. If a particular threshold of newly written code to replace essential functions was triggered, that in turn triggered a reset which would be credited to Gir specifically."

Still not quite sure what any of this meant, she asked, "Is there a way you can put that in, like, not-genius terms?"

Kazlo nodded. "Basically, it looks like Gizmo was malfunctioning on purpose because he was counting on you wanting to help him at all costs."

She scratched her head. "But—that doesn't make sense. What if he went to some other lancer? What if I didn't want him? What if I got another glyph—Gir even told me to do that!"