Chapter Twelve An Adventure in the Study
Chancellor Fallow’s study door was locked, not with a bioscan but with an old-fashioned lock. Zada shot a questioning look at Daphne, who fished in her pocket and produced an equally old-fashioned lockpick.
“Piece of cake,” she whispered. “I’ve done this loads of times.
” She stood in the doorway, casting lanky shadows against the fine wood, expertly manipulating the tumblers with a look of uncharacteristic concentration.
Her parted lips were moving ever so slightly, as if whispering sweet nothings that would convince the knob to roll over and surrender.
Finally, a quiet click sounded, and Daphne twisted the door open with a devastating little smile. Zada slipped in after Daphne.
“Lights at half brightness,” Daphne told the house system, barely audible as the darkness resolved into an expansive room lit by intricate glass light fixtures.
The study was something straight out of a historical movie.
The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves, which were filled with real paper books.
The books were thick and important looking, in shades of brown and accented with gold.
“There’s so many,” Zada murmured, staring in awe at the shelves.
“It’s all for show,” Daphne said quietly. “I guarantee you, he’s never read them.”
Zada started forward, intent on the imposing desk taking up the corner of the study.
“Wait!” Daphne threw out an arm. Zada followed Daphne’s gaze to where a series of faint blue lines shimmered a few steps into the room.
“Thank you,” Zada said. Years of dance lessons had gifted Zada with a high, steady step. She easily picked her way around the faintly shining lines and into the study. Daphne hesitated.
“What are you waiting for?” Zada called, careful to keep her voice low. Daphne squared her shoulders, backed up, and took a running leap over the lines. Together, the two of them padded across the floor to the desk.
“He keeps it in here, I think.” Daphne tugged at the highest drawer, which beeped warningly. “Ah, shit.”
Just beside the ornate silver handle was a small metal screen. Here was the bioscan Zada had been expecting.
“We need a full iris scan.” Zada brushed the hair out of her face, her mind racing.
“What if I gave it a try? You know,” said Daphne, “people have always told me that I have my grandfather’s eyes.” She said this last part with a note of bitterness.
“A biometric iris scan is going to pick up on microscopic differences,” said Zada absentmindedly.
“Very well. What if we fake a break-in?” Spinning on her heel, Daphne surveyed the room. “We brute force the lock, toss around some books, maybe smash a window, and pin it on nefarious rogues that attacked in the night.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Zada said, scrutinizing the windows. “Up there. Could that glass be a screen as well? Does it interface with all the house systems?”
“Of course. Only the best for the chancellor.”
“If it’s screen glass, it’ll be connected to the security system,” said Zada slowly. “And if there’s an interface somewhere in this study to adjust the settings on the windows, I can find a backdoor into the security system.”
“Huh.” Daphne shook her head. “You might be able to, but our bioscans are separate from house security. Don’t ask me how I know.” Of course, Daphne would have snooped around her grandfather’s estate before.
“I’m going to assume there are cameras in here,” Zada said. It had been a long time since Zada had hacked anything, and she felt a strange, nervous excitement skittering up her spine as the plan came together in her mind.
“Of course.” Daphne nodded at the upper corner of the room where something glimmered in the shadows. “As far as I know, there aren’t any in the rest of the house, but he has eyes on the study and other sensitive areas of his wing. Again, don’t ask me how I know.”
“Is there a surveillance feed in his room?”
“Of course. He’s the chancellor.” Daphne’s voice took on a mocking tone. “His security is of paramount importance to the security of New Ionia.”
“All right,” Zada said. “I just need to access the security system. If I can aim the camera at Chancellor Fallow’s face when he wakes, then I can route that into the iris scan.
But we only have one chance to pull this off.
The drawer will autolock after ten minutes if it’s anything like the standard models, and it’s unlikely we’ll get a second usable clip of his iris. ”
“Ten minutes, we can work with that.”
“So when does Chancellor Fallow wake up?”
Daphne grimaced. “Grandfather doesn’t set an alarm. He wakes when he wakes.”
“So,” Zada said. “We wait. All night. Until your grandfather wakes up.”
“Which can happen anytime from midnight to the crack of dawn.” Daphne groaned.
“Piece of cake,” said Zada pointedly.
“In my defense, I never specified what kind of cake.”
“Daphne?”
“Hmm?”
They were sitting cross-legged in the cavernous space beneath the desk, in the room’s only blind spot.
Accessing the manor’s security feed had been a simple matter of finding the interface screen built into the desk and navigating through to the surveillance controls.
It felt eerily like the old days, with Zada swiping through cascading menus that glowed softly in the dark while Daphne paced nearby, tense with barely contained energy.
Zada had managed to loop the feed in the study to cover their entrance, but there wasn’t much more she could do without biometric permissions.
Wandering in and out of the study was out of the question. They were stuck for the night.
A camera was currently trained on Chancellor Fallow’s sleeping face. Judging from the footage, he slept like a man with a tremendous weight on him—thin lips pressed together, eyes screwed up tight.
Tearing her gaze away from the visage of the most powerful man in New Ionia, Zada said, “Do you remember, at Dalrymple, the fountain in the central atrium—”
“When we dyed the water?” said Daphne, smiling. “Which time?”
Zada shook her head. “Oh, worse than that. I was thinking about the spring you stole about a pound of, oh, what’s the word I’m thinking of? It’s like a gen-mod seaweed—”
“Ah, yes,” said Daphne, leaning back onto her free elbow. Even in the cramped space, she somehow managed to lounge. “Cold-set agar, it’s called. Did you know they used to get something like it from boiling animal bones?”
“No,” said Zada. Raising livestock mostly wasn’t practical in New Ionia. The thought of boiling bones sounded scandalously occult. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” said Daphne. “Gelatin, they called it. That’s why we call it Jell-O. As in, ‘My gods, Daphne sure was brave and daring during the Great Jell-O Heist.’”
“I was talking about after the heist, though,” Zada pressed. “The deployment. Mixing all that agar into the fountain-water until the whole fountain was shooting out this clear, chunky gel—”
Daphne laughed. “Oh, I’d forgotten that one!”
“Lucky you,” said Zada. “Because the sound of dozens of streams of thick fountain-water Jell-O splurting out of the water feature and glopping into the even thicker fountain-water Jell-O below it will haunt me until the day I die.”
“It didn’t fill you with inspiration for your next triple cello piece?
” asked Daphne, tilting her head to one side.
It was too dark under the desk to see her clearly, but Zada could make out the rough outline of Daphne’s silhouette, hear the soft fabric rustle, imagine that collarbone, still bared because Daphne had opted to go without an ascot.
Zada tapped her fingertips against the ground in 7/4 time. “Sure. Call it ‘The Absolute Worst Noise I’ve Ever Heard in E Minor.’”
“Minor?” Daphne protested. “Not a major key, to celebrate the incredible fruits of our triumph?”
“I shudder to think what kind of fruit that would be,” said Zada. “Do they make an apple that sounds like farts when you bite into it?”
“Don’t give the gen-modders any ideas.” Daphne laughed. “They’d do it just for the challenge.”
“Now I’m thinking about the time in Advanced Editing when you convinced Venetia you’d spliced together the genes to make invisible mice.”
“You still can’t prove I didn’t.”
“Oh, are the invisible mice with us right now?” asked Zada, somehow fully prepared and yet still surprised when Daphne reached over to the nape of Zada’s neck and tapped her fingertips on the sensitive skin there like little scampering feet.
Zada jumped, banging her head on the underside of the desk. She bit off a yelp.
“Are you okay?” said Daphne. “You know, you seem awfully on edge these days. I don’t remember you half so tense back at school.”
How do you remember me? Zada couldn’t ask, but she wanted to, badly.
“I think it’s the other way around,” Zada said instead. “I was always unusually relaxed around you when we were friends. I’ve had a year to wind myself back up.”
“Oh,” Daphne said. She sounded sincerely surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“How would you?” said Zada. “You never saw me when you weren’t there.”
“True. But after five years together at school, I really thought I knew you.” This was said so quietly that Zada had to strain to hear it.
“Daphne, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Daphne gruffly. “It was a year ago. It’s not like you signed a contract with me. It isn’t as if we said”—and here her voice dropped and took on a polished quality—“I take you to be my best friend forever and ever, till death do us part.”
“I thought you would be fine,” Zada said. “You had other friends.”
“I was fine and I do have other friends.”
“Well,” said Zada. “I know I’ve said it before, but I really am sorry. I handled that badly, and that wasn’t fair to you.”
“Oh, don’t tell me all that,” Daphne said, waving a hand. “It’s so much easier to stay angry with the version of you that lives in my head.”