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camelot_exe
Chapter 4: Echoes in the Code
“Let’s go talk to him,” Gav said, practically bouncing on his toes, like someone about to introduce his ordinary friends to a celebrity.
I mustn’t have moved at all, because Percy snapped his fingers in front of my face. My muscles appeared detached from my brain as he grasped my elbow and drew me forward with them.
“For God’s sake, Arthur. He’s a geek who puts his pants on one leg at a time, like the rest of us.” Percy whispered into my ear as we weaved through the café, Gav leading the way like an eager puppy.
“I’ve never met a 'synesthesia genius' before,” I mumbled back.
The man with the dog named Dragon was just as I remembered him. Those long lashes still outlined the same ancient blue-gray eyes, peering solemnly from behind black-framed spectacles. His dark hair remained cropped close, revealing sharp cheekbones on his thin face. The dim corner brightened his youthful appearance and paled his skin.
Gav gestured toward us. “Mateo Ixpac, meet Arthur and Percy. They’ve brought something extraordinary.”
Mateo’s gaze landed on us, cool as a winter creek. He didn’t seem surprised to see us. But an emotion tightened around his eyes when they flicked towards mine.
“Pleasure,” said Mateo with a practiced smile.
“Actually, we’ve already met,” I ventured. “At the beach? Your dog nearly flattened me.”
“Right.” His voice fell flat, puncturing my heart a little. “Not often you encounter an Armani suit at Sludge Beach.”
Mateo turned his attention to Gav, who was grinning stretched wide with anticipation. “I thought I made it clear I’m retired from this business, Gav.”
“Take a break from your books for a minute. This feels like your brand of magic,” Gav pleaded.
“What are you studying?” I was unable to stop myself. What did brilliant minds pursue? Data analytics? Cybersecurity? Mathematical theory?
Mateo’s fingers went to his glasses, adjusting them with a slight hesitation. “My thesis explores where Latin and Indigenous histories overlap.”
“Neat,” Percy chimed in. “You don’t look Latin, though.”
I cringed.
“Studying a culture doesn’t require belonging to it. Everyone should explore histories beyond the conquerors’ accounts.” He didn't look offended. “Though as it happens, I’m Quechua through my grandfather and Irish through my mother.”
“Fairly different cultures,” I said.
Mateo’s mouth quirked, though he still didn’t glance at me. “Only if you ignore the pattern. Different empires, same script. The English, the Spanish, the Portuguese all banned the native tongues, rewrote the gods, replaced story with sermon.”
Banned the native tongues. My father enjoyed referring to our network as a “shared tongue,” as if converting all to uniformity might alter our origins.
“So you know more languages than English and Binary code?” I was genuinely curious.
“I'm fluent in Spanish and Portuguese with a working knowledge of Latin, Gaelige, Runasimi, Mandarin, and Aymara.”
Damn the guy is smart. Yet he still wasn't looking at me.
“A lot of dying languages on that list,” I said before I could stop myself.
Mateo’s eyes lifted only briefly at that. “Ñawpa rimaykunaqa manan wañunchu, chaskisqaniykuchu mana kaptin,” he replied softly.
While Gav rattled on in tech-speak, which I didn’t understand, I studied Mateo’s face. Not ruggedly handsome or boyishly cute. Nothing about him screamed dreamboat. Yet when he sipped his coffee, the way his Adam’s apple moved along that slender neck held me transfixed. I might have sat in that café all day, watching him. No talking, no thinking, just existing in his orbit.
I noticed myself staring, so I glanced down at Dragon, who still looked anything but “friendly.”
I have Grace, remember.
Mateo addressed only Gav. “Seems like you need more time with this one to figure it out.”
"More time won't help." Gav straightened his shoulders. “I know you’re past all this now, but this wasn’t some rookie mistake. We’re dealing with a subharmonic feedback loop that created a phantom mirror of the executive dashboard. For, like, two seconds. Who even knows that stuff?”
Mateo exhaled as Dragon stirred beneath him. “Pull up the visual pulse overlay waveform.”
Gav opened the files. I worried we’d removed too much crucial data while protecting proprietary information, but Mateo nodded with interest. He leaned toward the screen, close enough that I could make out the faint scent of soap and ink, like the pages of a well-thumbed book. His quiet hums of recognition were as though he were reading the waveform like a painting, not a dataset.
I sat very still, unsure whether I wanted to lean in or bolt.
His assessment took mere seconds.Then his eyes lifted from the screen and landed on mine. It was an intense but brief gaze. Not one of interest, but the look of someone confronted with a puzzle that needed solving. Or perhaps someone who’d just realized they’d made a terrible mistake.
“Gav, it’s right there.” His bony finger indicated what appeared to be random data. The thinness of his wrist made me want to summon my personal chef and feed him high-calorie foods. “That green anomaly in quadrant seven. It shouldn’t peak that elevated unless there’s an embedded callback signature.”
Gav looked aghast. “You see that?”
“See what?” I asked, suddenly feeling like I was trying to understand quantum physics while still in preschool.
“Think of it like a canyon at sunset,” Mateo said. “Not a glitch, but more like a message embedded in the system’s light refresh rate. Just enough distortion to show something before your system wiped most, but not all of it.”
I leaned in. “You’re saying someone hacked the system and left a message MORDRED couldn’t fully erase?”
Gav nodded. “I understand now! The obvious stuff, like the ‘Crowns Belong to No One’ line, was meant to vanish, but not everything was supposed to disappear.”
“Exactly. Their AGI erased most of it deliberately because it thought it dangerous,” Mateo said, eyes narrowing. “Dangerous to whom, though? That’s the real question.”
My pulse quickened, and a flicker of protectiveness rose in my chest toward MORDRED, of all things. “But something stayed? A clue?”
Mateo tapped the screen. “The intruder left their signature buried in the harmonic residue. Like a guitar string still vibrating after the sound fades. You wouldn’t hear it unless you knew to listen.”
I gripped the edge of the table. “You mean he signed his hack with his own name?”
“Yes. The loop structure’s timing, color modulation, and waveform decay spell out a name.”
“What is it!”
Mateo’s stare met mine directly and stayed there for the first time since we sat down. His face was solemn, his eyes ancient; so forgive me for the cliché, but he appeared an old soul in a young body.
“The signature was signed ‘Merlin.’”
“Merlin,” I repeated, “As in the wizard who crowned King Arthur?”
“Yes. Your hacker has a sense of theater,” Mateo said carefully, fingers drumming once against the table before going still.
“That doesn’t tell us who he is,” Percy said. “Can you find him?”
“Or her,” Mateo added. He stroked Dragon’s massive head, who seemed concerned about his master’s mood. “As I told Gav, I’m retired from this business.”
“But you cracked it in seconds,” I said, leaning forward. “We’d pay you well. You could—”
“He doesn’t freelance for megacorps,” Gav cut in, defensive now. “Especially not greenwashed technocracies.”
I blinked, too stunned to defend myself from the too-hip, anti-establishment hacker.
Mateo closed the laptop with a soft click. “I showed you what’s there. That’s all I can do.” He stood, Dragon rising fluidly with him. “Good luck with your kingdom, Arthur.”
The way he said my name made my chest ache.
The café door chimed as he left.
I sat there, the name Merlin echoing in my head and alongside the memory of Mateo’s smile at the beach. A smile I was suddenly not sure I’d ever see again.
But Merlin. Merlin I would hear from again.
