The guards at the front entrance cheerfully waved Mokuba through. Other than them, he encountered no one until he reached the computer lab. One of his erstwhile fellow students was finishing up his homework as he entered; they exchanged a couple words' greetings, and he was gone by the time Mokuba had logged in.

Optimal; the fewer who witnessed him in person, the better. Even so, the system administrators would be on their guard; he didn't give them more than two hours to figure it out, and that probably was overestimating their incompetency. Worst case scenario, they had traced yesterday's access to the lab and had it under surveillance now, ready to grab him the moment he made a move. But logging onto any other terminal would put up a red flag. No, he had to trust that he had effectively covered his tracks, and that grade school students weren't seriously considered when analyzing potential security breaches.

Still, Mokuba's mouth was dry as he logged on, slipped the USB drive into the slot and started up a terminal shell to get to work in earnest. He had left a backdoor for himself in the administrator's module yesterday--two, actually; the obvious one they would have caught, and hopefully they hadn't looked in the right place for his other worm. They hadn't deleted it, at any rate, and it didn't take him long to slip into the system.

His brother had once asked him if the computer jobs were his favorite part of their work. Mokuba had told him no. Because it was true--really, he didn't have a favorite job; he liked all of his vice-president duties, enjoyed that level of trust granted to him, and the satisfaction of accomplishment in whatever he did. And also because if his brother thought that Mokuba would prefer it, he would put Mokuba in charge of all of Kaiba Corp's electronic security issues. Which he might not be good enough to handle yet, and besides, his brother enjoyed hacking as much as he did; it would hardly be fair for Mokuba to have all the fun.

But he loved the challenges of the cyber work, he couldn't deny that. And right now, he was the best man for the job--the only man for it, even if his brother hadn't been arrested.

He tried not to think about the celphone in his pocket. They had been apart for the last few weeks, but he had always known Seto was only a call away. The distance between them was so much greater now, even if the police jail was no farther from here than the KC Tower. But it wasn't doing his brother any good to waste time thinking about that.

MainBrain's network security team had left electronic ambushes for him, naturally, booby-trapped false data labeled as the files he had pulled before, but it had been a rush job. Just skimming the modified directory lists he noted the discrepancies in files sizes and numbers. The real data had been renamed but not actually deleted from the disk. Clumsy, but then they had had less than twenty-four hours. He quickly located the needed information and started a back-up protocol, downloading the copy directly to his drive, currently renamed as a server proxy, an obvious but effective disguise.

Not everything Mokuba knew about hacking had been learned from his brother. Seto had taught him a lot, but Mokuba had started fooling around with computers on his own years ago, one of the ways he had entertained himself during the long hours after school, when his brother was still busy in his own endless lessons. No one had encouraged him, but no one had stopped him, either. They might have, had they discovered how easily he had cracked the house network. As it was, he had been allowed to upgrade the personal computer in his room to the most state-of-the-art possible, on the pretext of wanting a good game system. Gozaburo's philosophies to the contrary, Mokuba had been allowed whatever games he wanted, as they kept him quiet and out of the way. As long as he didn't share them with his brother, who had no time for such frivolities.

He had played a lot of games, and not just to keep up appearances, but it wasn't the same, playing alone. He had spent more time investigating the KaibaCorp network, figuring out ways to exchange messages with his brother during any lesson he was online, until Seto had at last told him to stop--"I'm too busy for that," he had said, which might have also meant, "If Gozaburo found out we'd be punished." By that point they had meant the same thing to his brother anyway.

His brother was the best hacker Mokuba knew, but Mokuba worked differently than him. While Seto tended to view hacking (like most things) as a game, a competition between himself and the programmer whose code he sought to crack, Mokuba liked to think of it as an art. There were guidelines it was better to follow, but no fixed rules, no ultimate wrong or right answer, as long as he got results.

There wasn't a system written that his brother couldn't smash his way into, with the algorithms he had written and the processing power of KaibaCorp's network. But that wasn't always necessary--the key wasn't always to break through a system's defenses, but to get around them without even being noticed. Finding the loopholes and backdoors, the cracks in firewalls and the commands that didn't require passwords. Not working against the programmer, but rather working with the computer, convincing it to share its secrets with you, give you its data as if it had been programmed to do so all along.

It was almost too easy, how quickly MainBrain's servers opened to his probing, yielding what he wanted. Mokuba smiled to himself as he watched the download progress, numbers flickering by.

Then he frowned, hit a key to stop the process. That was a new cluster of files since yesterday. He typed a command to open one in a secure shell, scanned the document in disbelief. He had known this must exist somewhere, but they wouldn't have been so dumb as to put that data in a linked directory, would they? Knowing that the main files were compromised?

Mokuba thanked all the gods he didn't believe in for the existence of stupid people, and copied the whole directory onto his key drive. Electronic evidence wouldn't be as convincing as a paper trail in court, but then, a suit against MainBrain was more feasible than a criminal case, and besides, if there were any hardcopy evidence, this would be a good starting point for finding it.

No sooner had the copying finished when one of his other windows began to flash. Mokuba swore. They had been faster than he had predicted to notice the access; though they hadn't traced his terminal yet, it wouldn't take them long. He wasted no time withdrawing from the system, not needing to take care hiding himself when they already knew he was there, just closing down everything. Yanking out the key drive and stashing it in his jacket's pocket, he manually switched off the box, then flipped on the terminal next to it, hopefully buying himself a little confusion. And now time to withdraw in person.

He was almost to the lab door when it began to open. Mokuba froze. There should have been no way to trace his terminal this quickly--unless he had missed some signal--but if they had made an educated guess, sent a couple guards to investigate...being just a kid, he would have the advantage of surprise, if nothing else, and he braced himself--

"Katsuya-kun?"

Mokuba blinked. "Takeuchi-sensei?"

The teacher didn't return his look, checking over his shoulder as she stood in the doorway, not quite blocking his way. "So you came back tonight to work on your project?"

"Yeah," he said, struggling to remember what his cheerful voice should sound like. No reason for him to be nervous, he was just a diligent student--"I'm almost done with the assignment, actually, I was going to head back to the dorms soon. Though I'll have a lot to make up after missing today, huh. I'm really sorry for flaking out like that..."

"That's all right," the teacher said. She sounded distracted, glancing around the empty lab as she spoke to him. "Katsuya-kun, did you notice anyone else in here, last night or tonight?"

"You mean in the lab with me?" Mokuba asked, and hoped she wouldn't hear how fast his heart was pounding. It was beating in his ears so loudly he couldn't see how she would miss it. "There might've been a couple guys, I wasn't paying attention. Why?"

"This afternoon I was called into the office of one of the vice presidents," Takeuchi said, finally looking at him. "He wanted to know if I had any students this session who might have the expertise to crack the mainframe's security. I told him I had several, and he wanted their names and files immediately. I'm not sure why it was the vice president asking; if there had been some kind of cyber-attack, the network security team should be handling it. But I gave him your name, Katsuya-kun."

Mokuba couldn't tell if she sounded guilty about that, or accusing. He swallowed, pulled a grin. "You really think I'm good enough to hack the mainframe? Cool!" Pointing to the computer he had just turned on, he said, "Hey, Takeuchi-sensei, since you're here, could you maybe go over what assignments I missed today, if you've got time? I'll be right back, I just got to go. To the bathroom, I mean," and he squirmed appropriately.

But the teacher didn't sit at the computer, remained standing in the doorway, though she didn't make a move to stop him, either. "Katsuya-kun," she began, as he sidled past her into the hall, "are you sure you saw someone else here--"

The tramping of running feet in the adjacent hallway interrupted her focus. They both glanced down the corridor as a blond head stuck around the corner and looked around.

A familiar blond head. Mokuba stared. Behind him, Takeuchi said, "Excuse me, who are you? I've never--"

"Whoops," Jounouchi said, quite deliberately looking at her instead of Mokuba. "Sorry, my bad, I'll just be going--"

"Wait!" Mokuba said, seizing the offered opportunity by sprinting forward and taking hold of Jounouchi's sleeve. "Takeuchi-sensei, he's the guy I saw in the lab today!"

"Let go, kid!" Jounouchi shoved him off with just slightly less force than he actually would have needed. Mokuba let go, stumbled back at the precise angle to fall into Takeuchi as she rushed forward, knocking the teacher to the floor. Jounouchi flashed Mokuba a wicked grin, then took off back down the hall.

Not a moment too soon. As Mokuba climbed back to his feet, apologizing to his teacher and trying (ineffectually, given his height) to help her up, the doorway at the other end of the corridor burst open, and four of the gray-uniformed security guards rushed up. At least two, Mokuba noted, had their hands under their jackets, concealing shapes that were too small and not blocky enough to be tasers. Illegal handguns.

"We have a report of a possible intruder," the man in the lead said, looking between Mokuba and the teacher with his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Yes..." Takeuchi brushed her hair out of her eyes, glanced over the four guards herself and hesitated barely long enough to catch her breath before nodding. "He went that way," she said, pointing in the appropriate direction.

"Thank you, Takeuchi-san," the guard said, and he and his men headed off down the hall at a jog.

The teacher turned to Mokuba. "Katsuya-kun, have you ever seen that young man here before?"

"Never before tonight," Mokuba said, honestly enough. He hadn't ever expected to see Jounouchi here, either. Couldn't even guess how he had gotten inside to be a decoy. "But he came into the lab earlier--I thought he might, uh, be an intern?"

"No," Takeuchi said, "he's not, to my knowledge--I don't think he was supposed to be here at all. I wonder how he got in here..." She smiled at Mokuba, relief evident in her expression. "Katsuya-kun, I want you to stay here in the lab while I go take care of something. I'll be right back, okay?"

"Okay," Mokuba said obediently. No need to ask what she had to take care of so urgently. The guard had known her name, and for them to have appeared so quickly--they hadn't been following Jounouchi; they must have been on standby, waiting for a signal from her. If he had tried to run, they would have been on him like that.

Judging by the upset twisting her expression now, Takeuchi-sensei had noticed the guards' guns as well, and that had been an unexpected element for her. "I'm sorry for all this, Katsuya-kun," she said, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder, then left, the lab door clapping shut behind her.

Mokuba waited until the rapid clicking of her heels on the floor faded, then tried the door handle, and was unsurprised to find it locked. Trusting the teacher might be, but not stupid.

Not that it mattered to him anyway. Clambering on top of the file cabinet in the corner, he took his miniature screwdriver out of his pocket, quickly opened the air vent in the ceiling and climbed into the ventilation duct, closing it behind him.

There were advantages to still being a half-grown kid; he had plenty of room in the shaft to crawl. Having memorized the architectural plans for the building before ever stepping foot in it, Mokuba easily navigated through the narrow metal tunnels. At the third juncture he paused to peer out the grill to the hallway below. There was no one in the hallway, but he could hear shouting and boots tramping farther down. He listened, but none of the voices sounding like Jounouchi.

The lights were still on as normal, but on the door locks and fire alarms, small amber diodes were blinking. Hardly noticeable unless you were paying attention, but Mokuba knew what that alert signaled. The building had been locked down, with all external exits would be closed to anyone not authorized.

Which was hardly a problem for Mokuba, even if his own ID permissions had likely been cancelled by now. Reaching into his pocket, he closed his fingers around the ID card he had unclipped from Takeuchi's jacket when he had bumped into her. She likely had already discovered its absence, but he should have enough time. There was an unguarded exit to the rear parking lot only five meters down the hall. His way was clear now, with everyone pursuing Jounouchi, and Takeuchi's card would get him through the doors. Once outside, Mokuba would be safe, with the stolen data.

But Jounouchi would still be inside, with no way out, until the guards captured him.

It wouldn't take much questioning for them to realize that Jounouchi wasn't their hacker. That he was just a nobody kid, and maybe they would just throw him out. Wouldn't even bother pressing charges for trespassing, likely; they wouldn't want to bring the police into this if they could help it.

Unless they thought Jounouchi might know something, suspected he might be working for Kaiba Corporation. Then they might want to question him farther. Or else simply ensure that he wouldn't be reporting back to anyone, just in case.

Jounouchi was as old as his brother, old enough to take care of himself. He had understood that Mokuba had a job to do. His brother was depending on him, and there would be no way to help Seto, if MainBrain caught Mokuba now. And it wasn't as if Mokuba had asked for Jounouchi's help. He hadn't even known Jounouchi was here until five minutes ago.

The way was clear now, but guards could come at any second; this was his best chance to get out of here.

A chance he wouldn't have had, if Jounouchi hadn't shown up like that and thrown off Takeuchi's suspicions.

He hadn't asked Jounouchi to come.

The guns he had seen under the guards' jackets probably shot tranquilizer darts anyway.

Mokuba hesitated for all of three-quarters of a second, before turning and scrambling back through the ventilation shaft, away from the exit, towards the raised voices of the security guards.

to be continued...

The computer hacking here is (fittingly enough) a hack job; kindly put up with my delusions. And my gratitude for all the wonderful reviews! I humbly thank the readers for their patience. This chapter needed a rewrite, but I didn't think it would take me this long to get to it...