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’sunlikely 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.
