The Labyrinth Keys

Rin pretends to slip a gun back into her satchel—a gun that never existed in the first place. It's a bluff, but an effective one. Maki watches with narrowed eyes before letting out a guttural grunt, rummaging through the chaos of her desk. Papers crumple, metal scrapes against wood, and for a moment, I wonder if she's about to pull out something much worse than what we came for. But then, with a sharp exhale, she slaps a small, yellow chip onto the desk.

I stare at it. It's nearly identical to the one I found at the junkyard.

Maki's expression tightens, and I catch a flicker of something—something raw, vulnerable, buried beneath years of frustration. But she masks it just as quickly, her voice a low growl.

"Look, I don't know why you want that key, but the thing is useless."

I tilt my head. "Now why would you say that?"

Maki's fist slams onto the desk, rattling the clutter. "Because I already looked! You think I didn't try to find out what my father was trying to give me? The first thing I did was plug it into my computer. And guess what? Useless. Nothing but scrambled garbage."

I exchange a glance with Rin. My mind flashes back to the black key, the one Finn cracked—barely. He said the encryption was beyond anything he'd ever seen. If the yellow key is anything like that, no wonder Maki saw nothing but gibberish.

"Maybe not useless," I say carefully. "Have you considered the chip might be encrypted?"

Maki scoffs. "Encrypted? The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means the data's been locked—scrambled in a way that can't be read without the right software and skills to decode it."

Maki's eyes darken. Her fingers drum impatiently against the desk before, suddenly, she slams her hand down again. "Are you telling me I've spent ten goddamn years with this chip, thinking it was nothing, when I could've just—paid someone to crack it?"

Rin shrugs. "Don't beat yourself up over it. This isn't exactly common knowledge."

Maki lets out a slow, frustrated exhale. Ten years of unanswered questions weigh on her posture, the tension in her shoulders, the flicker of regret in her eyes. I don't know her story, but I can imagine it—clutching onto this last piece of her father, hoping it held something, only to be met with a dead end. And now, here we are—two strangers, barging in, holding her at gunpoint (sort of), and telling her she's been looking at it all wrong.

She slumps into her chair, her voice quieter, rougher. "I suppose I'm out of my depth. Are you saying you can crack the code?"

I run a finger along the edge of the chip, feeling its weight—its history. "It's similar to another chip I've seen before. I had a friend of mine decrypt it, but it wasn't easy. Even for him, it was damn near impossible. Frankly, there might not be anyone in Ashfield who could break this kind of encryption."

Rin snorts. "Yeah, see, that's where you're wrong."

I arch a brow. "Oh?"

Rin leans back, arms crossed, wearing that smug grin she knows pisses me off. "You've been out of the loop, Jacky. While you were off playing dead, someone had to pick up the slack. Finn taught me a lot of tech stuff—encryption, coding, breaking into things we probably shouldn't be breaking into."

I frown. "Besides bragging about your rise in the criminal underworld, do you have a point?"

"Yeah," Rin says, stretching lazily. "The point is, we don't have the software we need. Finn's encryption tools aren't some kiddie hacking apps you can download off the net. He builds his own programs, and guess what? He keeps them all on his laptop."