Dinner and debrief was short on Day 2 of Project Dawn, but everyone had experienced the same thing and had nothing to share. Dzam went over the plan for the weekend while most stores, museums and ancient sites were closed. Egypt's weekend ran Friday and Saturday and would be spend in the hotel rooms working on specific assignments. As they would most likely finish quickly, during the evenings, the crew would be permitted to enjoy the town on their own time for shopping, clubbing, or anything else that was open during the evening hours.
Setsuna, Ishizu, Karin and Sabrina would be working on character designs in their room.
Seto, Yugi, Akira, and Honda would be working in the middle room to experiment with some programs from the home team that would, in theory, alter the texture of the holograms to be more opaque and firm enough to touch.
Dzam, Mokuba and Leo would be working in the middle room to sync basic background sounds with the hologram environment.
With everything arranged, Dzam dismissed the teams, who almost universally went to bed. The heat from the day and hours of walking had taken their toll. Yugi returned just as the brothers were finished changing and ready for bed.
"Good visit?" Mokuba asked.
"Yeah…it helped," Yugi admitted.
The brothers decided not to pry, instead relaying the plan Dzambul had set out for the weekend while Yugi got ready for bed. Sleep came hard and easy for all eleven of them.
The weekend passed by uneventfully. Sabrina recovered from her migraine and was able to work most Friday, declining to try out the nightclubs with Setsuna and Mokuba who were the head of the self-named "party animals". The coding for opacity was flawed: the objects were solid but too bright and too hot to touch, an error Dzam and Seto would have to find and fix. Karin's plot of adventure and discovery took off, giving Setsuna and Leo good direction for character interactions. Work was done, but no major breakthrough or accomplishment were worth noting. They were ready however, to get out of the hotel rooms and back into the field as soon as Sunday morning hit.
Seto jolted in his sleep hard enough to wake himself up. Lifting himself from the pillows, he took a moment to let his eyes focus on the alarm clock, reading it as just after 3:00 a.m. He sighed, knowing he wouldn't fall back asleep with Leo snoring next door.
"Dreams?" he heard Yugi call out from the fold-out couch.
"Yeah. You too?" Seto grunted, still not fully awake.
"Yup," Yugi replied.
Mokuba remained motionless, clearly unphased by his awakened roommates. Yugi slipped across the room while Seto stretched, turning on the floor lamp and making himself comfortable in the computer chair. Yugi sat at the foot of his bed.
"Reliving memories or just your brain running on auto pilot?" Yugi asked, speaking quietly for Mokuba's sake.
"It felt very real," Kaiba admitted, "But it wasn't anything I'd seen before, not from Ishizu or from the Pharaoh's memories."
"About Kisara?"
"I don't want to talk about it." Seto replied flatly.
"Ok," Yugi sighed, secretly thinking Ishizu was right: he was stubborn. "Can I at least talk about mine?"
In truth, Kaiba wanted to be left alone, but he felt a twinge of obligation as a friend to listen. "Yeah, feel free." he replied leaning back in the chair, listening, but not intently to his comrade explain the disjointed chain of events that he had dreamed. Atem had sent Mahad to the present to watch over Yugi and something about making him promise to keep the Millennium Items concealed, and Tea and Joey might have been in there somewhere. Yugi finished eventually, both relieved and exhausted.
"Thanks for listening. Sometimes it helps just to have someone to talk to," Yugi sighed with satisfaction. He leaned back on Seto's bed and put his hands behind his head. Perhaps he intended to talk further, but he soon drifted off to sleep. Seto saw no need to insist he move back to the couch, he was too awake and too agitated to go back to sleep. He put on his headphones, attempting to find the coding error he had been working on for the past two days.
His fingers twitched, typing incoherent letters in a string only to backspace it out of existence seconds later. He wasn't focused on the screen, instead letting his mind wander to what Ishizu had told him two days prior. Pegasus had research data he hadn't release to the public, and all he had to do was pick up the phone and ask; the worst that could happen is he would say no and they would be no worse off than they were before, but his pride refused to let him. He had no desire to ask help from the man that had attempted to take his company from him, kidnapped his brother, and literally sucked the souls out of anyone who got in his way.
There was another option. He pulled up the hacking tool he'd programmed himself two years ago and set it to breaching the firewalls of the Industrial Illusions mainframe. In his teenage years, he was a hacking master and had even hacked into the Duelist Kingdom server while the tournament was in progress. In recent years, firewalls and other security measures had advanced and he had trouble keeping his skills sharp while still focusing on everything going on at his corporation.
As the progress bar grew across the screen, Kaiba had a brief moment where he thought there might be bad repercussions. No sooner had he pushed the apprehension from his mind than the coding on his screen froze and the progress bar began receding. Sound blared out of the speakers despite the headphones still being plugged in.
He'd been back-hacked.
Seto Kaiba had made a mistake.
The alarm bells from the computer intensified, waking Mokuba and Yugi up as Seto tried to stave off the security breach. He showed no signs of panic but worked with a sense of urgency. After a few moments, his fingers and resolve failed. Reaching under the desk, he unplugged the computer, cutting the power altogether. He climbed out of his seat and rushed to the adjacent room, turning on the lights as he went. Inside Dzam's room, he saw that Dzam and Akira were already awake and at their computers, but Honda and Leo were awakened by the sudden light and noise.
"Pull the plug. On everything. We've been hacked."
Akira knew the gravity of the statement. He'd routed everything to a single plug and pulled it out of the wall. The network went down. He then pulled the computer's power cords from the UPS, watching their hard-earned progress go out with a flash of the monitor.
"Get in the girl's room and get their computer off now. Everything connected to that network goes off. Cellphones, laptops, smartwatches, I don't care it powers down." Seto ordered at no one in particular. Akira was the hardware expert out of their crew and went to pound on the girls' door. The computer's outburst had woken all four of them up, giving them a chance to get decent before Akira came in and pulled the appropriate plugs.
There was a very awkward meeting following in Seto's room. The rooms had been harmoniously humming and glowing with all the electronics, but now, in the early morning hours with everything save two lamps on, the rooms seemed creepy and dark.
"We experienced a cyber-attack earlier this morning while working on Project Dawn," he said quietly, not going into any kind of detail. "I am not sure how much we gave them access to, but for now, everything stays off the network, and all cell phones stay off. Nothing that can give access to our computers until we can determine that the threat is gone and can be prevented in the future. Is that clear?"
Everyone nodded, still bleary eyed, some not fully awake. Dzam and Akira went back to working, the girls filed back into their room, and Honda and Leo tried to catch a few more hours of sleep.
Mokuba was not pleased. "Did you try hacking into Industrial Illusions?"
Seto sank into the office chair. "Not now, Moki."
"Ishizu told you about that room and you wanted to know what was inside, so you tried hacking in. You had to know he'd have a keystroke logger; some way to trace it back to us."
"I said: not now," Kaiba escalated his voice to a growl.
At that moment, the room phone rang.
"Dzam said we could sleep in," Mokuba groaned reaching across and picking up the receiver, "We're up, we're up," he promised.
There was a short pause. "Could this be, little Mokuba?" The boy's blood ran cold and his arms immediately were covered in goosebumps. Yugi and Seto locked eyes, recognizing the voice immediately.
"Mokuba, hang up the phone," Seto said calmly but firmly.
"Is Kaiba-boy there? I need to speak with…" the receiver crashed back onto the cradle. Mokuba stared at the phone, both afraid it would ring again but almost daring it to at the same time.
A few seconds later, the phone rang again. This time, Seto answered it from the computer desk. "What do you want from me?" he snarled.
"You were digging around in my servers," Pegasus responded with his traditional flamboyant cadence, "I think the question is, what do you want from me? And don't pretend you were just fishing. This is the second time this week someone's attempted to retrieve information from my archaeological dig back in the 80's."
"Second?" Seto seemed skeptical, but curious.
"Yes, unfortunately, they were smart enough to quit before my cyber security division could trace it back. You on the other hand were just too greedy. You know, you could have just asked nicely. I might have given it to you."
"Ok, so you've caught me. Now what?"
"Now?" Pegasus almost giggled. "Now you have a choice. I can either turn you over to the FBI for corporate espionage, which I am sure they would love to investigate after both the GGO murders and the prison murders originating from your home country…."
"Or?"
"Or you can visit me in person and have unlimited access to the whole of my research: photos, artifacts, archives. We can make an evening out of it: dinner, maybe a walk through Central Park, get coffee and I can give you a tour of my private artifact collection."
"Now?" Seto asked, a little perplexed.
"No time like the present, my dear Kaiba," the American responded.
"I'm in the middle of a research trip," Seto tried to explain.
"I'm aware. Luxor, staying at the Pyramisa Isis, rooms 803-805. Eleven occupants," Pegasus listed off as if he were reading it straight from a page or computer screen.
"I can't just drop everything and fly to New York!"
"Why not? Your private jet is still at the airport, and it looks like you're booked at the hotel for another nine days. You can fly over and be back with still a week left to do all the finding and excavating you'd like. Of course, I could always spend my evening with the American authorities, if your research is so important you can't pull yourself away."
Seto inhaled, flaring his nostrils in frustration. He'd been cornered and he knew it. "Fine," he huffed. "I'll take off as soon as I can get the plane and pilot ready to fly. I'll be there by the end of the day." He cringed as he could almost hear his former nemesis smile on the other end of the phone line.
"Excellent," he beamed, "And Kaiba-boy, bring your new girlfriend with you."
Seto crinkled his nose. "I don't have a girlfriend."
"Oh," Pegasus let out another one of his delicate giggles. "My mistake. I mean bring the woman you were seen exiting your private elevator with looking very flustered after a suspiciously long ride."
Kaiba's eyes went wide. He looked to Mokuba and Yugi who were equally shocked.
"How do you know about that?" demanded Seto.
"Word gets around," he said vaguely.
"Fine. I'll notify you when we land in the states."
"Wonderful! It will be so good to see you again. It will be like old times. I can't wait. Buh-bye."
Kaiba was left holding a silent receiver, still a little stunned.
"What just happened?" Yugi asked.
"I just made dinner plans with Maximillian Pegasus, and I hope to all the gods in Egypt it isn't just like old times."
"Why am I going to New York?" Sabrina asked again.
"Maximillian Pegasus has agreed to let us look at his research but refuses to send any pictures via the internet for fear of them being leaked or hacked. So, you'll have to come and take pictures and any sketches."
"What about here?" argued Setsuna. "We have plans to go Kul Elna today, and if she's gone, who's going to take pictures?"
"Just have Akira take extra pictures. He has a good enough camera and there's already tons of information on the internet about the City of Thieves. She won't be missing much."
"Ok, fine, when do we leave?" Sabrina asked, already packing up her photography equipment.
"As soon as you pack," Seto replied, "The pilot says he'll be ready for takeoff in an hour."
Before the sun rose, the Lear Jet was lifting off with Seto, Sabrina, Mokuba, (who was loth to come along, but did so for Seto's benefit) and Yugi, under the guise of talking to the CEO of Industrial Illusions as a SME.
"So, we have fifteen hours to kill," Mokuba mused, looking at Yugi
"…And we didn't get a good nights' sleep thanks to someone in our room kicking off the cyber apocalypse…" Yugi agreed, returning the look.
The boys gave a synchronized nod before simultaneously heading to the sleeping quarters, leaving Seto and Sabrina alone in the cabin. Seto perceived what they were doing as they scurried out, mentally plotting out his vengeance before making polite conversation with the woman he only half knew.
"They're talking," Mokuba whispered, his face pressed against the floor as the peered through the crack underneath the door that led to the main cabin. "Operation Kismet is a go!" He extended his arm for Yugi to help him up.
"What do we do now?" Yugi asked, pulling the younger Kaiba to his feet.
"We give them some privacy and let them have a little bonding time," Mokuba said brushing himself off. "There's a spark there, I saw it when they first met, we just need to feed the flame a little. It looks like our work here is done, let's get some sleep. Heaven knows I'm going to need it before we have to meet up with that fancy, flamboyant, foppish freak."
Yugi laughed at the alliteration and the moniker. He'd harbored no ill will toward the aging man but was also not ignorant of his flaws. He grabbed the bunk across from Mokuba and they slept over the better part of North Africa while a tiny spark was growing into a flame in the cabin.