Act 1: Beating Heart

Segment 4: Breakup

Chapter 4-8: Lazarus

Brian clacked away at a keyboard, then paused to sip a coffee. He set it back down. Makoto and Rei should be here any moment. He looked over their skill sets again. One of them was an electrical and computer engineer with an interest in systems design engineering, the other was a computer scientist with an interest in distributed systems. They could basically have been the same thing.

He double-checked their last names. Tokuda and Nagatomo. Some cybercrime detective named Tomonobu had contacted him months ago about Prometheus, and how it was the only affected data in there, and that he suspected someone had targeted his systems.

What if it was them the whole time? His eyes narrowed. Why would they bother? They had literally nothing to gain from it. Surely it couldn't be. He had been pushing this thought to the back of his head, but now that the Autumn term was rolling in, and the two of them were wrapping up their final years, he had to know.

The meeting he had called with them was booked under the guise of discussing their thesis topics further. It wouldn't be. He leaned back and gave his usual warm smile as Makoto and Rei appeared in his doorway.

"Professor, good to see you," Rei greeted. She bowed slightly and sat in one of the two chairs opposite Brian's desk. Makoto closed the office door and sat in the other chair.

"So, can I ask why both of us are in here at the same time?" Makoto was already catching on.

"Well," grunted Brian as he sat up straight in his own chair, "your two skill sets are so similar, I figured you might be able to bounce ideas off each other." It was a good enough lie.

Makoto took the bait. "Man, where to start, then. Any topic?"

"Any topic, as long as it's in the realm of computer science."

Rei pondered it a bit. "I guess quantum computing is out of the question."

Brian burst into laughter. "It's quite a leap from regular computing, but if you do wish to pursue it, feel free to! I'm not the best professor to be asking about that, unfortunately."

"Never mind, then. Hm…" Rei stared at Makoto. They had agreed to tiptoe as much as they could around the Digimon and Prometheus, but Makoto had been intent on trying to figure out what had gone wrong with Prometheus. Rei, for her part, wanted to avoid it altogether, but she agreed that if they could get any information, it was better than none right now.

Brian suggested, "You could always consider my specialization, or one of my colleagues."

Makoto let out a nervous laugh. "Actually, about that, Professor. Would you be willing to … let us work on Prometheus?"

Brian raised an eyebrow. He was not expecting this. He leaned forward. "You want to work on a failed project?"

"I want to understand why it failed first. Maybe there's something to be learned there."

Brian chuckled. "We tried that once, Makoto, and got nowhere. It's an external factor." Makoto had a sharp look in his eyes, the same kind that some of his former students had. "But you seem motivated."

"I am. Both of us are."

Brian nodded. "You can look into it in your spare time, but I'm afraid I'm literally not allowed to endorse any related projects anymore. You know why." It was a lie. Nobody had ever said that. He wanted to find out why they were so interested. Surely, now, there was some kind of link.

"Understood, Professor. We still have several months until we graduate, though. Perhaps we'll get some ideas after digging through the code?" Rei suggested.

Brian drummed his fingers on the table. And just let them walk away with Prometheus 3 like that? What if that was the goal? He couldn't let that happen. "Rei, Makoto, I'm sure you've been well aware by now that the incident in late March was treated as a cybercrime."

"Y-yes, we are," stuttered Makoto. Brian's face was turning serious, and it was a rarity.

"A detective approached me afterward, with some family names that are yours. Even the kanji is written the same. Would you mind explaining yourselves?"

Makoto laughed awkwardly. This had soured and he wasn't expecting it. "Uh, there must be a mix-up. I mean, these family names come up all the time-"

"Satsuki and Asuka, who are they?" The question killed off any resemblance of pleasantry in the room. "And what did they have to do with my work?"

Rei and Makoto stared nervously at each other. "Professor? How do you know these names?"

"They were given to me by the detective, along with two others, a certain Ryuta Koyama and Kazuhiko Shimizu. I'll ask again, what did these people have to do with my work?"

Makoto quivered. He had never heard that tone of anger in Brian's voice. He did not want to be on the receiving end of all of its pent-up rage. "Professor, I-I-I, well, uh, how do we put this…"

Rei, on the other hand, was nowhere near so nervous. "Professor, what else did this detective tell you?"

"That was all he gave me, four names."

"Professor," Rei continued, "what I heard from my younger sister was that this detective was not of sound mind when they found him next to the data centre."

Brian's brows furrowed. "Not of sound mind?"

"He was saying something about aliens and black web-like materials and things called Plasmids. Professor, I'd like you to re-evaluate your information sources." Makoto stared at her. She was incredible, thinking on the spot like that. It was all a lie, but possibly an effective one.

Brian closed his eyes and leaned back. "He had an official badge."

"They can be faked."

"And why would someone go through the effort to fake one to me?"

"You said it yourself. You felt you were being targeted. Why not target someone by diverting their attention somewhere it shouldn't be?" Rei had a very serious face on.

Brian looked over at the documents that had been sent to him. They seemed far too authentic to be faked. A badge, code, police ID, all of it. Tomonobu Isono had all of it. Either he was lying, or the kids were lying. He wasn't sure who to trust.

Prometheus was a dead program. To heck with it. Maybe Rei and Makoto would confess now that the guilt was put in them. At least Makoto might. "Fine, I'll take your word for it," Brian grunted. "I'll send you a link to the private repository for Prometheus 3. And don't," he accented as he gave them a serious stare, "share it."

Rei nodded. "Understood completely, Professor." She kicked Makoto's shin under the table to get him to respond. Makoto mumbled a thanks before hurrying out of the office with Rei.

Brian watched them leave, then returned his gaze to the documents submitted by Tomonobu Isono. Plasmids? Alien beings? It was crazy talk, and he wasn't about to confront a person out of their mind with their own hallucinations. It wouldn't do anything. If Tomonobu was just insane, then he would be no use, and if he were a criminal himself, it also wouldn't be of use to him. Brian closed the documents on his laptop and tried to forget about them. Perhaps it was just a bad and silly coincidence.

He started typing code into his editor. With a reduced cohort to care for, he had plenty more free time than he used to. He could rewrite Prometheus himself. He could breathe new life into his own work.