Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

face into the plasterboard with a resounding thud. She held him there as he went limp under her grip and turned her head to look at the other guard. His eyes were bulging.

‘Are you going to try to stop me?’ she asked. Slowly, he shook his head. ‘Good boy. You’ll want to lie him on his front when I let go. Otherwise, he’s going to drown in blood and snot.’ Letting her victim go, she continued on. Behind her, there was the sound of a body hitting the floor.

The machinery had been pulled out of the factory as soon as it was declared defunct. There would be a lot of metal involved and metal was always recycled. With most of the world ruled by Rasputin, the supply of metals to Japan had got sparse and expensive. There had been some expansion in the supply thanks to deep-sea mining operations opening up, but metals of all sorts were still expensive, and recycling was ubiquitous. Replacing the machines were scrounged tables and chairs, a boxing ring someone had to have stolen in its entirety from a gym, and various people, men and women, who looked like the cat had considered dragging them in but had concluded they were not worth it.

Right at the back of the room, where you had to go through the whole gang to get to him, was Rupert Macauley Carter, also known as Bear. He was a big man who shaved his head and wore a leather vest and jeans a lot. Tatsu’s image recognition software picked him out of the crowd easily as a person of interest. He was not actually wanted for anything, but Tatsu was sure she could find something to arrest him for if she spent thirty seconds looking. She prepared herself for the delightful task of getting across the room to him when a voice she recognised piped up from one of the nearer tables.

‘That you, Yamada?’ The speaker was a slight man, a little shorter than Tatsu and definitely not as well-built. He looked intelligent, partially because he wore glasses with square frames. His hair was mid-brown, his eyes were mid-brown, and he was as white as a sheet. He wore T-shirt, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket, all in black. Well, the shirt had a band motif on it, though Tatsu had never heard of the group. There was a bottle of domestic beer in his hand and it looked like he was playing cards, which was not a smart move with this bunch. This was Dexter Burrell.

‘God, Dex,’ Tatsu said, starting toward him, ‘what possessed you to hook up with this gang of iyarashī?’

‘I figured no one would come looking for me here,’ Burrell replied. ‘Should’ve known you would.’

‘Is this pig bothering you, Dex?’ The rumble came from Carter who had come over to check on things. He had a voice like gravel going through an industrial compactor.

‘Sergeant Yamada is okay, Bear,’ Burrell said. ‘She won’t be a problem unless you make her a problem, and then it’ll be your problem that she’s feeding you your spine.’

Carter looked down at Tatsu, who looked up at him with a sanguine smile on her face. ‘She don’t look much… And that’s the worst kind. Okay, Dex, but I don’t like having pigs in my place.’

‘She won’t be staying long. She’s come about the ViraShield story, right? I heard you were assigned to the case after that thing in The Hole.’ From inside his jacket, Burrell produced a data stick, holding it out. ‘I am only giving you this because whoever made it wanted the cops to have it after I aired the story.’

‘Whoever made it?’ Tatsu asked.

‘I got handed the stick in the street by a kid. Kid got five thousand yen to hand it to me, no questions asked. Said he was given it by “some old man,” but I got the feeling anyone over sixteen was old to him. Has to be someone in ViraShield though. No way someone outside it could get this data.’

Tatsu took the stick. ‘I’ll look it over. You’re sure it’s accurate?’

‘I’m convinced. There’s stuff on there that could only have come from the ViraShield corporate servers. Emails. Code from their PIN! I’m no programmer but–’

‘I am. One of my many talents. Okay, Dex, stay safe. Considering you have just broadcast the fact that ViraShield may have knowingly let dangerous code out to their customers, it might be harder to stay safe than you think.’

‘That,’ Burrell said, ‘is why I’m here.’

Tatsu glanced at Carter. ‘Right. I’ll see myself out.’

On her way to her bike, she stepped over the unconscious form of the kid who had admired it. He was lucky he was just unconscious. ‘Well, I did warn you…’

24th July.

Whoever was behind the data stick, they had collected a lot of data. At one in the morning, Tatsu was still working through it.

What it came down to could be covered by a report written by an anonymous auditor indicating that there were several issues with the authentication mechanism employed by the monthly update software, an email sent to Hideki Fukui bringing his attention to the problems, a second email from Fukui indicating that the issues would be investigated and fixed in the next patch release, and a third stating that this was insufficient. Tatsu had checked the code provided and confirmed several of the listed problems. Someone had badly rushed the implementation. Or maybe the initial design had been faulty. It was quite possible that both were true. Whatever, it should never have got through testing like this, which likely meant they had knowingly released bad code.

The name of the security auditor had been redacted in all of the documents involved. They could have been fakes, but they did not look like it to Tatsu. If she had to guess, the anonymous auditor