Back on the streets of London, Yumi returned to her regular upbeat self. “I booked an Airbnb not far from here. I need to get cracking on figuring out this key.” She patted her backpack. “Let’s go.”
“You really did book an Airbnb?” Aida was incredulous.
Yumi shrugged. “Yeah, this morning. I didn’t want to try finding the key using the hotel network. If we’re going to die, I don’t want it to be because I did something so reckless to lead them to us.”
After setting their phones to misdirect, Yumi led Aida down Oxford toward Soho. They wound through the busy streets until her GPS led them to a little art gallery. The owner had the key and led them upstairs to a cute one-bedroom flat. Yumi immediately set up shop at the dining room table.
“And here we go.”
As she worked, Yumi gave Aida a blow-by-blow, overly technical explanation for how she would do the pattern recognition, which included using some sort of software and writing some code to overlay the patterns in various ways that she could view through the lens.
“This is going to take some time,” she said, wrinkling her brow in frustration.
Aida watched her for a while, then eventually crashed out on the long leather couch for a nap. It seemed she’d barely fallen asleep when a whoop from Yumi awakened her.
“I found it! I found it!”
Aida rushed to her friend’s side. Yumi handed her the lens. The glowing blue meander was, as Vulcan said it might be, a chaotic mess on the screen.
“That was pretty fast,” Aida said, shocked that it was so easy.
“Well, I gave you the Scotty treatment.” Yumi laughed.
Aida stared at her blankly.
“Like inStar Trek. Scotty always told Kirk fixing the ship was impossible or that it would take days to do what was needed. Then he’d fix it in a fraction of the predicted time.”
Aida remembered all the afternoons when she was young, watchingStar Trekwith her father on their gold-colored couch. She rolled her eyes, annoyed at herself for not catching the reference.
“Okay, then, Scotty, now what?” She handed the lens back to Yumi.
“We have to find Pandora. Let me try the IP address again. If we’re lucky, I can get past the firewall and it’ll lead us straight to her this time.”
Minutes passed, each one stretching longer than the last. Yumi’s hopeful expression slowly turned to one of confusion, then concern. “This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “The IP address is bouncing all over the place. London, then Berlin, now it’s showing up in Tokyo. It’s like it’s being deliberately obfuscated.”
“Can’t you narrow it down?” Aida asked, trying to hide the worry in her voice.
Yumi shook her head. “It’s like chasing a ghost. Whenever I think I’m getting close, it jumps to a new location.”
Aida leaned back against the couch, feeling the weight of their task. “So, we have a key with no lock.”
Yumi sighed. “I’ll try it again later. It could be temporary.”
Aida stood. “Let’s get back to the hotel. When we spoof our location, it always makes me nervous that someone from MODA will show up at the location and not find us.”
After another day of trying to ping the IP address, there was still no clear location. Finally, Aida and Yumi linked hands and sent up a prayer to Sophie and Aggie for guidance. At first,there was no answer, but as they strolled along the Thames, Sophie fell in step with them.
She wore a black wool coat that brushed her ankles and a gray scarf wrapped snugly around her neck. The river breeze tugged at the loose ends, but the goddess herself seemed untouched by the chill.
Yumi tensed at the sudden appearance of a stranger, but Aida squeezed her arm in reassurance. “Yumi, this is Sophie.”
Sophie nodded at Yumi, a brief acknowledgment, then turned her attention to the river. “Things are getting worse,” she said, her voice as measured as always.
“What do you mean, worse?” Aida asked, alarmed.
“The balance of happiness and sadness is shifting in a dangerous way. And I can’t quite figure it out.”
“Can you explain?” Yumi pressed.
