Chapter 4: We're Not Amateurs

It was around 7pm by the time the three members of Recon Inc. finished their write-up and debriefing of West Hermiha Bank's security analysis. Debriefs were tedious affairs, but this one had been worse than usual. The pompous client was predictably displeased that the security of their vault had been breached, especially upon finding out about the four guards who would undoubtedly threaten to sue their employer when they woke up from their unwilling naps: one tied to a women's bathroom stall, one stuck in a large trash bin, and two stuffed in storage closets, courtesy of Mikasa.

Eren guessed that the client's clever plan had been for certified amateur penetration testers to fail the job so they could use the favorable results as advertising. They obviously had not expected kids in their early twenties to successfully shut down the multi-million dollar vault system and make it out without getting caught. Now there was an officially filed report of the vault's subpar rating.

That's what you get for trying to cheat the system, you dumb fuck.

The sun had already set when Eren pulled his car into the casino parking garage. The three were met by bright spotlights shining down on the hole in the side of the casino building and two guards with guns standing vigilant until the vault could be re-sealed. It looked like the police investigators had already finished their business and cleared out.

From one glance at the destruction of merely the wall, it finally hit Eren that these vault breakers were in a very different business. While Recon Inc. breached vaults for constructive purposes with diligence and care, these criminals cared nothing for the vaults, only about taking what they wanted and stomping on masterpieces like inconsequential ants.

Levi, who had been waiting next to the roped off area of the wall, said nothing at Eren's stunned expression. The boy barely acknowledged him as he held up the rope for the three young adults to duck under, already fully engrossed in solving how the demolition was carried out.

Levi handed over three pairs of gloves. "Stick together. I'll follow behind." The somber mood of the nearly deserted crime scene kept him from making his usual crass remarks.

Eren and Mikasa, both holding tablets and carrying dark gray backpacks, stepped up to the rubble while Armin remained beside Levi. "This is their expertise. I handle the digital components," the blond clarified when he saw the questioning arch of the older man's eyebrow.

Mikasa bent down to study the chunks of concrete lying on the outside pavement. She used several fingers to dust the surfaces of various pieces and lifted each finger to her nose to sniff lightly. She turned to the detective, her blank face giving away none of her thoughts. "These don't look or smell like the typical explosives residue. Detective, we will collect samples from the site." She was met with an equally blank face and a nod.

The two siblings picked through the hole diligently, sealing samples and snapping pictures. Once inside the casino, they followed police markings down the hall to the next crumbled wall and descended two flights of stairs to the sublevels.

Eren's insides squirmed when he saw the outline indicating where the first body had lain. He wasn't sure if it was for his or his sister's benefit when he quietly called out to Mikasa, whose brow was pinched as her dull eyes fell upon the white lines, "Mikasa, let's go." She turned quickly to follow the reassuring sound of her brother's voice, and both of them staunchly ignored the rest of the outlines as they marched through the corridors.

Eren could tell they were nearing the vault as he noted the inactive security measures along the way, all of them unnaturally still, as if life had been sucked out of the machinery. The physical security obstacles didn't seem too difficult to evade. There were a few tricky points, but nothing a professional couldn't overcome with careful planning and a nimble body. Security for the vault itself, however, was imposing. The busted keypad was not simply a numerical pad but one combined with 9 random letters of the English alphabet, increasing the number of permutations exponentially. The thick metal door was made up of several layers, and accessing its electrical components would have been problematic if the perpetrators hadn't already blasted the covering.

Eren stepped up to the door eagerly, curious to see what type of setup had been used for the mechanics. He was disappointed to see that half of the electronics had been ripped apart. Ire at the destruction of something so beautiful bubbled within him. Call him a machine junkie, but engineering was his passion, especially now that he could build his own James Bond-esque equipment.

Peering inside the hardware compartment, what he could see of the remaining circuitry was skillfully crafted. Eren set his backpack on the ground and rifled through it for a slim toolkit. He detached torn wires and carefully unscrewed the broken circuit board embedded deep inside. Using pliers, he extracted the board and set it on his toolkit case. He then hummed in surprise and reached in again to unscrew and extract a smaller board which he had almost overlooked hidden deep in the corner. He brought the second board close to his face, examining every inch of both sides, noting how it was undamaged.

"Armin," Eren turned to his friend and handed him the board with a smirk. "This might be a Garrison design. If I'm right, you're going to have fun." Accepting the piece of hardware with almost reverent fingers, Armin's eyes suddenly gleamed. Garrison designs were fascinating and challenging to crack, and the controls were so well protected that they rarely got to dissect them. "Let's head to the surveillance room to take a look at the program."

"What's a Garrison design?" Levi asked, causing Eren to jump; the detective had been so quiet that he had forgotten his presence. The man had a complicated expression on his face that made him seem even more irritable, as if he was holding himself back from speaking.

"Garrison Safe Company is a manufacturer security equipment, including vaults. They specialize in cybersecurity rather than physical security measures," Eren said thoughtfully. "If we check the security equipment and alarms, I bet they have failsafe mechanisms, just like the vault's second circuit board. Our thieves probably had to blast their way out because they didn't know Garrison usually has a secondary cybersecurity layer that kicks in when the first one goes down."

Levi furrowed his brow. "Then why was the vault shut down if the second layer should have taken its place?"

"We can't answer that until we see the program." It was Mikasa who answered as she walked out of the vault. She was zipping her backpack shut and swinging it onto her back. "It looks like they just walked in and walked out. I lifted footprints, though."

"How do you know they're the culprit's?"

"This person took unusual steps, as if they were searching for something."

Eren saw Levi scowl and thought he heard the man mutter darkly, "those incompetent fools." but he ignored the comment, as it was obviously not directed at Mikasa.

"So… surveillance room?" Eren looked at Levi expectantly.

They walked through the empty and nearly silent corridors, the only sound being the rustle of their clothes and clicks of Levi's shoes on the glossy linoleum flooring – only one set of footsteps. Eren indulged in a slight feeling of pride at his own team's stealth; they wore custom shoes he and Mikasa designed a year ago to eliminate noise while sneaking around. His pride grew when it seemed Levi noticed the lack of sound in their movements as well, evident by the momentary falter in the clicking steps before the detective continued with no change to his gait. Is he confident or arrogant? Eren wondered.

Once inside the surveillance room, Armin immediately headed toward the workstation without the white, human-shaped outline while Eren and Mikasa stared at the spot with identical grimaces. The outline of the outstretched arm seemed to reach out to them as if it was trying to latch onto their ankles and drag them toward the dried bloodstain on the carpet. Eren averted his eyes hastily, shoved fisted hands into his jean pockets, and followed Armin who was extracting taking out a tablet and flash drive from his own backpack.

Armin swiveled around in the chair to address Levi. "Detective, I'll try to recover as much data as possible, but is there anything specific you're looking for?"

"Any information you can get on safety deposit box F137. We only know it belongs to initials D.S."

The boy got to work, crawling under the workstation with the tablet to fiddle with the computer tower sitting underneath the desk. After connecting the tablet, he crawled back out to sit in the chair and began typing precisely on the keyboard.

Minutes later, Armin gasped, eyes wide and almost sparkling, "It's beautiful." His typing became frantic. "This is definitely by Garrison. It's written in Siloscript – that's their 'secret' programming language. Only a handful of people know it, which is partly why their cybersecurity so hard to hack. I only figured it out because we've come across it during our jobs. Wow… this must be a newer release. The dynamic type system looks like it now supports…," the genius continued to ramble, slowly zoning out the rest of the room as his partners zoned him out as well.

Eren chuckled and grabbed Mikasa's hand to pull her to the other side of the room, as far from the bloodstain as possible. Mikasa started scanning documents pinned haphazardly on the bulletin board while Eren examined the card scanner at the door, both listening to their best friend's childish delight with faint smiles.

Levi, eyeing the blond skeptically, followed to lean against the wall near the siblings, close enough to watch but far enough to not get in the way. "Don't you need to…" he gestured at the boy who was quietly exclaiming programming jargon over what looked like gibberish on the monitors.

Eren shrugged; it was nothing new. "Nah, Armin's just having a codegasm and neither of us understand enough to be any help. He'll calm down in a few." The brunette returned his attention to the card reader, leaving Levi to muse on the sidelines.

_..._

The room had soon quieted to shuffling of papers and tapping of keys. The mumblings from the blond hacker had ceased a while ago after the boy suddenly let out a triumphant "oh!". Levi watched the three work in silence, only stepping out of the room once to update Erwin. Their concentration hadn't wavered as they made their way through the room like a professional forensics team, so in sync that they could communicate without exchanging words.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that 30 minutes had inched past while he contemplated the three young adults he had recruited on a whim. By now, Levi had seen enough to admit these kids weren't sham amateurs; they were capable of everything they boasted, and he was sure they hadn't revealed all their skills. Yet.

"Armin?"

Levi jerked his head toward the first word spoken in 25 minutes and saw Eren walking to the workstation while studying the clipboard in his hands.

"How are you with the repairs?"

"Hmm, around 40%," the boy in question answered hazily, still focused on the scripts running across the screen. "I don't think I can recover much more. They did quite a number on this system. What do you need, Eren?"

"Can you pull up the card scanner log and the login history for the workstation you're sitting at?" The brunette flipped a page, and another, and then flipped back.

Levi found himself peering around the boy's arm to take a look.

Eren handed over the clipboard, allowing Levi to flip through rows of handwritten names, dates, and signatures. "It looks like surveillance officers are also required to clock in and out on paper. Detective, you said there was only one body in here, right? Based on the rotation schedule, there should be two on duty at all times. James Marley was the second guy for last night's shift, but only one person clocked in according to this paper log."

Levi caught on immediately. "So you want to see if an imposter took his shift."

"I got it!" Armin called over his shoulder. A window with rows of names and timestamps was open on one of the screens. "John Klein, the dead officer, swiped into the room at 10:52pm for the graveyard shift. The evening shift swiped out at 11:01pm and 11:02pm." He leaned forward for a better view.

"Marley didn't swipe in until 11:08pm." Armin turned to another screen. "The history for this workstation shows that he didn't log in last night, which means he used Klein's station after killing him. The card reader wasn't used again."

"Do you have footage of these halls at the time 'Marley' swiped in?" Mikasa asked as she stepped up to Eren's side.

"We're in luck. This data survived the hack." Armin took a minute to locate and open a video. He fast-forwarded until the timestamp showed 23:07:04. "Okay, Marley's swipe should happen in around a minute." The four watched in tense silence as the white digits grew closer to 11:08. Levi didn't notice he was holding his breath until a man in a security uniform stepped into the video. All eyes were trained on the tall figure as he stood in front of the surveillance room door, glanced around himself, swiped a white card, and slipped into the room with more stealth than an average guard.

Armin rewound the video until they had a clear shot of the man's face and then pulled up Marley's profile picture on another window.

"That's definitely not Marley," Eren murmured as he compared the two pictures.

No one spoke as Armin flipped between security videos to trace the man's movements back to when he entered the building's underground loading dock, after which he disappeared from all footage.

"That's a disguise. Fake skin over the face. That's what I would do." Eren squinted at the culprit in the frozen video. "We don't know what he looks like, but at least we know his physique."

They stared at the screen in silence, each lost in their thoughts.

Levi snapped himself out of his speculations. Nothing would be gained from guessing if he didn't have the information to base them on. "Arlert, anything on D.S.?" He asked.

Rapid tapping on the keyboard resumed. "Mmm, I've recovered all the fingerprints but I'm still running account details. The main problem is matching everything up correctly. Garrison designed this so each piece of information is siloed so the hacker won't know which account matches to which safe. Hence the name Siloscript.

"But it looks our thieving friends managed to hack it before the program disconnected everything. The hacker did a sloppy job, though, so I can assume he's not an expert. I'll see what I can do…" Armin trailed off back into his world of code.

Another 10 minutes passed before the boy's excited shout of "aha!" brought them back. Armin swiveled around in his chair with a satisfied grin. "D.S. are initials for Darius Sanders or Djel Sanes or Dominique Serre. The National Identification Number bank is corrupted, but the names should get you started, detective."

_..._

The three from Recon and the detective stood awkwardly in the parking garage next to their respective cars. They had gleaned all they could, and the evidence had been handed over to Levi. With permission, Mikasa kept several samples to run tests in her own lab at Recon HQ. It seemed he had little faith in his own forensics team, so he and Mikasa had agreed that it would be prudent to have a second set of eyes. (It was one of the most stilted conversations Eren had ever observed.)

The artificial light from the ceiling cast shadows on their faces, making Levi's bored expression look like a threatening glare. Eren pushed down his instinctive response to glare back, reminding himself about Armin's lectures on not picking fights with clients. "So… I guess we're done here. Give us a call if you need anything tomorrow." When he received no reply, he rolled his eyes and turned toward his car.

"Crypto-Labyrinth."

Eren froze mid-turn at Levi's sudden statement. The two words were spoken quietly, but it might as well have been shouted the way it echoed in his ear. His eyes flickered to Armin. Cursing internally and knowing denial and evasion wouldn't work on the perceptive man, he spoke without turning back. "How do you know that name?"

Levi snorted condescendingly. "You thought we wouldn't run a check on Arlert? Age 23, Mitras U graduate, no family, no criminal background, registered owner of Crypto-Labyrinth. We found the pretty website, but there's barely any information on it."

The brunette forced his shoulders to relax and faced the detective. They had nothing to hide. Their second company was authentic and completely legal. Eren had only withheld the information for personal anonymity's sake; they didn't need the police digging any further into their lives, especially their past. "Crypto-Labyrinth is our other business. We design and manufacture safes and vaults, just like MP Security and Garrison. Simple as that."

"Why didn't you tell us this earlier?"

"It wasn't important." Eren shrugged. "You don't have to get all pissy about it." He could see Levi's jaw clench slightly.

"Did it not cross your underdeveloped mind that this could affect how you'll work for us?"

Eren had to press a hand to Mikasa's wrist to calm her when she took an indignant step forward. "Why would it? It doesn't change our expertise, and we're not building a vault for you. And by the way, we charge extra for that, and there's no way your broke ass police department can afford it."

"You- …Tch, fuck this." Levi's voice became frighteningly chilling, and Eren had to stop himself from taking a step back when he suddenly felt like prey again, much like he had back in the gym. "Tomorrow. Tomorrow you spill. And you will not leave any fucking thing out." The detective had one of the most terrifying expressions he had ever seen on a person, and Eren knew he had pushed too far.

"Y-yes, sir."

"Repeat. What will you do tomorrow?"

"T-tell you everything, sir."

With a final menacing glare that promised pain if they dared to disobey, the man got in his car with a slam and drove off, tires screeching, leaving three vault experts wondering if they would survive the week.

_..._

Late that night, Levi was again woken by the incessant ringing of his phone. He had gone to bed only several hours earlier after dropping the samples and evidence off with the station's shitty forensics department. His hand shot out to cut off the sound; there was no way he would let Eyebrows ruin his sleep two consecutive nights. Yet seconds later it rang once more, only to be silenced again. But finally on the fifth call, he groaned and answered, "What now?!"

"Levi! You finally picked up!" Grimacing, he held the phone at arm's length to protect his ear from the enthusiastic shout. "How could you ignore meeee? Aren't we best friends?" He could vividly imagine the maniacal grin behind the forensics specialist's tone.

"Hanji, it's," Levi glanced at the screen, "…3am. What do you want?" He snarled.

"Oh, is it that late already? Time is a fickle pickle when you're having fun," Hanji said unapologetically in a sing-song voice.

"If you're not going to say anything useful, I'm hanging up."

"Awww, so cute. Don't try to deny your love. Erwin told me you were practically begging on your knees to work with me."

Levi smothered his face in the pillow and didn't bother correcting her. "Both of you need to jump off a cliff," Levi muttered darkly to himself, but apparently Hanji heard.

"Oh ho, are you sure? You wouldn't know what to do without-"

"Goddammit, Hanji!"

The line went quiet. Instantly, Levi was wide-awake. Hanji was never quiet. Her tone was uncharacteristically subdued when she finally spoke.

"I've identified the weapon."

_..._

A/N: The story will pick up after this chapter!

November 28, 2015