Link cracked the lock on Walker's door and slipped inside, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the laptop charging in its accustomed place. He took his own computer out of his bag, set it on the desk, and opened it, typing in his password, then retrieved his headphones and a USB camera he had in his bag. By the time he everything plugged it in and the camera clipped to the front of his shirt, the video call had connected.
"Just so you know, man," Kiredori said, "we're wasting time. Soon as we run into a real password, it's game over."
"I know," Link said, putting a piece of sticky note over the camera on Walker's computer. "Let's just do what we can."
"Alrighty," Kiredori said, with the air of a man rolling up his sleeves. "First thing we're going to do is see if it's something stupid and obvious. Check the machine over physically. You're looking for a switch."
"A what?" Link asked as he turned Walker's computer over in his hands.
"A switch that isn't factory-installed."
"A switch for what?"
"A second hard drive."
"This is a laptop," Link said.
"So?" Kiredori said. "Solid state drives are tiny. He could practically tape the fucker to the case, and no one would notice unless they were looking for it. It's possible that your monster drive was snuggled on top of a smaller drive, and he keeps his legit stuff on the small drive, and the goodies on the monster. Install a simple switch somewhere, and he pretty much has two computers in one. Hell, he can just open it up and swap out the plugs if he doesn't feel like putting a switch in, but if your boy's as good as you say he is, there will be a switch."
Link suddenly felt stupid, but he hadn't though to look for a second drive. With that much space on the visible one, he hadn't imagined any point to a second drive. He looked carefully, holding the machine close to the camera on his chest, and ran his fingers over the edges.
There it was, a tiny slider snuggled alongside the USB port. "Got something," Link said.
"Okay, fire her up," said Kiredori. "I mean, you might have just shut off the wifi, but you won't know until you try."
Link hit the power button and waited. To his surprise, the loading screen for Windows 10 appeared. "The fuck?"
"There she is," Kiredori said, "although why Windows? Windows is such a killjoy."
"Shit," Link said, but he was faced with a password.
"Blue USB stick," Kiredori said. "Might as well give it a shot."
Link plugged the blue USB stick Kiredori had sent him into the slot and waited, chatting quietly with Kiredori about nothing. He wanted to ask about Tewak, but he didn't dare. Kiredori had the same crush he did, and Link needed his help too much to to risk any hard feelings.
This time, the password took only five minutes to break, but it was short and integrated Mana Walker's name, something Kiredori's program was written to try first.
Link was elated. Kiredori sounded dubious. "That felt too easy."
Link wanted to disagree, but as he looked through the programs, he realized that Kiredori was right. This drive was apparently devoted to games. Walker had a Steam account, a Nexon account, and apparently played Guild Wars 2, League of Legends, Skyrim, and Dragon Age. There was also a handful of indie games, but nothing remotely illegal.
"Check the system files," Kiredori said.
Link went into the add/remove programs section, which gave him a quick run-down of what was installed on the machine. Nothing special. Then he went into the properties menu for the computer itself, and this time found that the hard drive information all made sense.
"Browser history," Kiredori said.
It was surprisingly consistent, mostly Youtube, Twitch and game-related stuff. Link pulled up gmail, and found nothing but the same junk account Walker always used.
"All right," Kiredori said. "Shut it off. Let's have a look at the other drive."
Link powered the machine down, flipped the switch, and started it up again. "This isn't a bad idea," he said. "The monks discourage gaming, and I doubt most of them would know to look for a second drive."
"They discourage gaming?" Kiredori asked. "Along with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, right?"
"Pretty much, although you know what's funny?" Link said. "Walker had Minecraft on his phone, but not on the Windows drive."
"That is funny," Kiredori said. "If he has it on his phone, you'd think he has it on his computer, too. On the other hand, you don't need Windows to run Minecraft. Maybe he likes to have it where he can get to it easily. That's a good game for multi-tasking. Oh, hey!" There were happy noises from Kiredori as the login screen came up, then a small, voiced sigh as Link typed in the password. "Yep, that's Arch. Okay, go to the terminal. Let's see what we can find."
Link typed as Kiredori dictated, and the terminal displayed what looked to Link like a lot of gibberish. Apparently, it looked much the same to Kiredori, because he cursed. "How old is this kid?"
"Sixteen," Link said.
"Little wiseass," Kiredori said. "He's named all of his stuff random crap. I worked with a guy like him once. He named an index 'glasses,' just so that every time the computer needed to retrieve that index, it was looking for its glasses. Dude spent all of his time looking for his glasses, too. I have no idea what half this shit is. He's got something labeled pepperoni pizza, and I have no idea what the hell it does."
"Walker eats like a pig," Link said.
"Figures," Kiredori said. "Half this shit's named for food."
Kiredori muttered, half to himself and half instructions to Link. The pizza turned out to be a program that emulated a scientific calculator.
"Why?" Link asked, exasperated.
"Because he can," Kiredori said. "One way to learn something is to make a computer do it."
"Right," said Link.
A file called Avalon turned out to be a heavily-modded version of Minecraft, while Shoreditch was vanilla Minecraft. So the game was on this computer, just hidden in a way Link hadn't seen the first time through. The word processor was called silver mines. Finally, after Link had typed in considerable amounts of gibberish that sifted through various homemade apps, Kiredori made a noise that could be construed as victorious. "Got you, you little bastard! He called it Iron Horse, whatever the fuck that means. All right, let's see if we can get in."
Link followed Kiredori's instructions, and the computer went through a kind of restart sequence, offering a new loading screen.
Kiredori sang the Mario death song. "Game over, man. This password's going to be some kind of 32-character, alphanumeric monstrosity."
"I have to try," Link said, but he was running out of time.
"Go for it," Kiredori said. "Yellow USB stick."
Link plugged the appropriate stick into the side of the machine and waited, but there was no result. Finally, as the clock told him he had one minute before the bell, he unplugged it and shut the machine down.
"Sorry, man," Kiredori said. "Send me that machine, and in a few days I'll tell you what's on it, but I'm betting he's got that partition locked down good. Depending on what's on it, it may even self-destruct if it's broken into, in which case I might need a week."
That was a possibility Link hadn't considered, that the computer might brick itself the way a phone could. "Thanks," he said. "Gotta go."
"Ciao!" Kiredori said.
Link shut his own computer down and tucked it into his bag as the bell rang to signal the end of the hour. It made him want to panic, but he knew better. Even if Walker came back to his room between classes, there was still time. Link removed the sticky note, made sure the computer was back in its place, made sure he had all of his equipment with him, and left, closing the door quietly behind him.
He was almost down the hall when he heard the sound of running feet, and he ducked into the stairwell as fast as he could. Kiredori had warned him that there were a million ways Walker could know if his computer was being tampered with, and some of them could send an alert of some kind. Phones were turned off during class, but if Walker turned his on between classes, the alert would come through.
Either that or Walker had forgotten something he would need for his next class. Link hoped it was the latter, but as he watched Walker open his door, he had a bad feeling he was probably wrong.