Chapter 19 #2
No one spoke while Koios studied them.
Finally, Koios looked at Luke. “Nothing attempted to activate when the drive was connected. I can examine its structure safely, but the stored files are encrypted.”
“What kind of encryption?”
“Several kinds layered together. Whoever prepared this expected the recipient to possess a key.”
“Can you open it without one?”
Koios studied the information on the screen. “Yes, but I’ll work from a copy. If the encryption is designed to damage the files when someone attempts to break it, the original will remain untouched.”
Luke gave one decisive nod. “Do it.”
Koios created the copy, then began dismantling the protections around it.
Numbers and symbols changed across the screens while Koios tested one approach after another. Asterius paced behind them. Tyson remained beside the workstation, watching the information with a concentration nearly equal to Koios’s.
Luke did not move from Connal’s side.
One layer of protection disappeared. Another took its place.
“They did not want this opened by accident,” Tyson said.
“Or by anyone other than the intended recipient,” Luke replied.
Koios worked through the final barrier. The screen went blank for a heartbeat.
Then the files opened.
Koios moved through them quickly, separating the information into groups Connal could not follow.
His hands stopped.
“These files contain some sort of measurements.”
Luke moved closer to the workstation. “Measurements of what?”
“The files don’t say.” Koios selected several entries and displayed them side by side. Dates and columns of numbers appeared beside maps marked with points of light. “Each entry is identified only as an anomaly and includes a location, time, frequency, and measured strength.”
“Anomaly compared to what?” Luke asked.
“There is no baseline included.”
Asterius approached the screens. “Then how do we determine what they measured?”
“We begin with what we can identify.” Koios sorted the entries by frequency, then selected the strongest result and enlarged it across the central screen.
Tyson leaned toward the display. “Wait. I recognize that location.”
Connal studied the map. “Where?”
“The site of the fire,” Tyson said. “You followed a surge of magic there. The fire engine you attacked was parked outside the building.”
Connal remembered the unnatural power gathering around the burning structure. Human firefighters had arrived before the warriors could investigate its source, forcing them to leave with questions they had never answered.
Koios opened the remaining entries and arranged them beside the first. More locations appeared, each marked by a spike of varying strength.
“The frequencies match,” he said. “Whatever produced these records was searching for one specific form of energy.”
Asterius stared at the maps. “Magic.”
“Yes,” Koios said. “Someone built a system that tracks magic.”
For one heartbeat, no one moved.
Then Asterius swore and drove his fist into the concrete wall beside the workstation. A crack spread outward from the point of impact.
“Where is this weapon?”
Koios’s wings drew tight behind him. “The files do not identify the location of the equipment. Whoever prepared this drive included the results and nothing more.”
“Then we find it another way.”
Tyson studied the maps. “What can the results tell us about its capabilities?”
“I can establish its precision. Its range is less certain.”
“What do you know about the range?” Luke asked.
“Nothing here establishes its maximum.”
“How precisely can it locate the magic it detects?”
Koios enlarged the result from the fire until the point of light narrowed around the structure itself. “To a single building.”
Connal did not need to understand the machine to understand what that meant.
His first thought was of King Silenus. The Queen had sent Connal and his brothers across realms to protect him, yet the system could reveal the king’s location whenever he used magic within its reach. It could also find the warriors moving in his defense.
Any portal opened within the system’s reach and any use of their power could tell an unseen enemy exactly where they stood. No one would need to search an entire city for them. Hunters could arrive before Connal and his brothers knew they had been detected.
And because Luke now stood beside him, anyone hunting Connal’s magic could find his mate as well.
The warehouse trap had required someone to know in advance where magical beings would appear. Whoever controlled this system would no longer need that knowledge. The first flare of magic could provide the location.
Connal’s hand closed around the hilt of his sword, though there was nothing within reach for him to fight.
Koios remained before the screens, his hands motionless on the controls.
“Ben treats magical beings every day,” he said quietly. “If his clinic fell within this system’s reach, it could mark the building every time one of them entered. Anyone watching it could find him, his patients, and the families who trusted him to keep them hidden.”
Asterius’s fury had cracked the wall. The cold precision in Koios’s voice carried even more threat.
Luke stood motionless beside Connal, his gaze fixed on the maps.
“Hale sent me to deliver this drive.”
Asterius turned toward him. His fury remained, but Luke was not its target.
“Did Hale know what it contained?” Tyson asked.
“I don’t know. Patrick gave it to me on Hale’s orders.” Luke’s hand tightened around the strap of his backpack.
“So either Hale knew what he was sending, or someone inside his operation gave you the assignment without his knowledge,” Tyson said.
Luke looked at Koios. “Is there anything on the drive capable of doing the tracking?”
“No. The files contain only the measurements we have examined.”
“Then why encrypt the results and send them without the program or equipment that produced them?” Luke asked.
Koios considered the question. “To demonstrate what the system could do without giving the recipient the means to reproduce it.”
Understanding hardened Luke’s expression. “A proof of concept.”
“That would be my conclusion. The intended recipient wanted proof that the system worked before making a deal.”
Luke looked back at the locations pulsing across the screens. “Which means a working version exists somewhere.”
“These results had to be collected by one,” Koios said.
“Do the files identify who built it?”
“No.”
Luke stared at the screens in silence.
Connal studied his mate. Luke did not appear frightened by the threat pulsing across them. He looked furious. His jaw was set, his eyes cold, and Connal knew battle readiness when he saw it.
Luke would fight beside him.
Luke had been sent carrying proof of a weapon that could expose the king, Connal’s brothers, and every magical being living in the human realm. He had known nothing of its purpose or the people prepared to kill for it.
Whether Hale had arranged that knowingly—or someone close enough to control his operation had done so in his name—remained unanswered.
Either way, at nine, Hale expected a report from the same human courier who had left to complete a routine delivery.
Instead, he would speak to the mate of a fae warrior who understood what the drive had been meant to prove—and was ready to fight back.