Web of Chaos - Chapter 17: The Restricted Section

Chapter 17: The Restricted Section

Step three: open the locked door.

Arturo led the others up the stairs toward the library’s top floor. Unlike the rest of his team, Arturo had actually been inside the restricted section several times. Not this year with all these silly rules and regulations, but before. Back when he’d been a third-year in the sigilcraft program.

His heart should have been racing right now, and his thoughts should have been scattered without his craft mana. But Arturo felt a strange sense of calm as he climbed the wooden staircase. Each step felt deliberate beneath his boots, and every thought came focused and clear.

He hadn’t been half this calm before he’d graduated, or this confident. Maybe he’d changed down in Creta with all those smuggling runs, car chases, and street fights. Or maybe it was the countless battles with his team. Not to mention all those Master-level dragons they’d faced—first the ice dragon down in Vordica, and then Valeria Zantano here in Koreldon City.

What was a little heist compared to that?

They passed the main antechamber and circled around a long corridor on the building’s west side. This brought them to an unassuming brown door with no labels. It looked like a supply closet to the untrained eye, but it was actually the back door to the restricted section. 

Unlike the main door, this one didn’t have a scanner for student or faculty IDs. Instead, the silver knob sported a narrow keyhole in its center. The keyhole looked as simple as the door itself, but it was anything but simple.

“How we doing on time?” he asked his teammates.

Akari glanced down at her watch. “Twelve fourteen.”

"Perfect.” Arturo said. The wards ran a diagnostic sweep every hour at a quarter past. This sweep would detect any tampering with the doors, along with any techniques in the room beyond. This was why they’d set up Akari’s portal in the stacks rather than up here.

He opened his Silver Sight and studied the sigil grid inside the door. There were twelve major nodes, each connected to the others in a complex web. Disrupt one without accounting for the rest, and he’d sound the alarm.

Arturo retrieved twelve adhesive pads from his bag, each one inscribed with the appropriate counter sigil. This door might be impressive, but it was still just a factory model. That let him prepare all his counters in advance.

The others remained quiet as he positioned the counter-sigils, but he’d already told them what to expect from this process. Even a fraction of an inch could throw things off. Arturo cycled craft mana to his second brain as he worked, double-checking his math and measurements. 

Once the pads were in place, Arturo connected twelve blue wires to a palm-sized conductor. The conductor was made of leythium, just like the wires—two dozen paper-thin layers to ensure a perfect distribution of power.

“Here goes,” Arturo said as he pushed out a trickle of mana from his palm. He watched the outcome in his Silver Sight, and the sigils canceled each other like inverse sound waves. 

He nodded at his work. “Now for the grand finale.” He held up the Master Key and cycled craft mana into the tiny artifact. Nothing happened at first, but then he brought it to the keyhole, and its shape changed like flowing mercury, adjusting to the shape and size of the lock. 

Slowly, Arturo slid the key inside. He couldn’t see the flowing metal now, but he felt the feedback through his aspect—a hundred tiny changes as the key shifted its teeth to fit it.

There was a soft click, then he turned the key to the right. The door swung inward with a gentle push, revealing the shadowy interior of the restricted section. 

“Twelve twenty-six,” Akari said from behind him.

“That gives us forty-nine minutes till the next sweep,” Arturo replied in a low voice. “Should be plenty of time.” 

He removed his adhesive pads from the door, stuffing them back into his bag. With that done, he hit the door with a splash of cleaner—the same brand the library used—and a few good swipes of a microfiber cloth. Better to clean up now, since they’d be leaving this room through one of Akari’s portals.

Step 4: Copy the dream tablets.

The group stayed close together as they crept into the restricted section. They didn’t have much of a choice, since Arturo’s camouflage unit only had a twelve-foot radius. 

Fortunately, he knew how to navigate this place. More than a dozen long shelves fanned out from the room’s center, stretching all the way to the edges. A stone arcade ran along two-thirds of the outer wall with stained glass windows between the pillars, and small cameras hidden within the shadows beneath each keystone. Those cameras shouldn’t be a problem as long as they stayed inside the camouflage unit.

The north wall contained a row of heavy metal doors, even more secure than the restricted section itself. In addition to the mechanical locks and sigil wards, each vault had a biometric scanner, attuned to the Artegium faculty members. 

Arturo couldn’t crack that scanner on his own, but they’d packed a mana battery with a small piece of Glim’s power. That shouldn't be necessary, but they had to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

For now, he led the team down the aisle on the east side of the room, pausing to face a row of dream tablets on the bottom shelf. These were arranged like books, and their spines listed the names and aspects of their creators.

“This is it?” Akari asked. 

Arturo breathed a sigh of relief as he knelt on the marble floor. “This is it, shoka.”

He pulled a case from the shelf and ran his gloved fingers over the transparent surface. Each tablet sat secured inside a clear protective shell, with sigils etched around the edges. There was a small opening on the bottom—big enough to cycle mana through the tablet, but not big enough to make a copy.

Arturo had already practiced with this exact case back at the loft, so it only took him two minutes to counter the protective sigils. From there, a simple power drill was all he needed to disassemble the case.

He placed the exposed tablet on a small mat he'd spread out on the floor, then he removed a blank one from his bag and placed it next to the original. Both tablets were identical in size and shape, but the blank one had a smooth surface, free of sigils.

"Time?" he asked without looking up.

"Twelve thirty-one," Akari said

So far so good. He retrieved a small connector from his bag—two thin wires of blue leythium that connected to the ports on each tablet. Then he cycled craft mana from the first tablet into the blank one.

The sigils on the original gave a faint blue glow and phantom images appeared over its blank counterpart. Arturo grinned as he watched the complex patterns transfer from one surface to the other.

The next half hour passed without incident as he set up five more connections. The process was more or less automatic at this point, but Arturo kept a close eye on the mana transfers, making small tweaks as they were needed.

“Twelve fifty-five,” Akari said as she paced within the small radius of their camouflage unit. “How’s it going down there?”

“First one’s almost done,” Arturo said. “We should be out of here with time to spare.”

“What about the cases?” Kalden asked. 

“Don’t worry about those. I’ll have them back together in two minutes.” 

Just then, footsteps echoed from outside the main entrance. 

"Someone's coming.” Akari stretched out a hand toward the floor, ready to make a getaway portal.

“Stay calm,” Kalden said. “Security makes its rounds up here, but they don’t come inside.”

Arturo nodded as he glanced back down at the tablets. Ninety percent.

The footsteps grew louder and more urgent. 

Damnit. Had they triggered a silent alarm? He’d been careful with the door, but what if he’d overlooked something else? Something that wasn’t in the security plans? Arturo cycled his aspect and pushed that thought aside. They could deal with campus security if it came to that. Better to stay clear-headed for now.

The main entrance gave a quiet beep as it accepted someone’s ID or insignia, then the double doors pivoted inward. Arturo opened his Silver Sight and scanned the newcomers through the shelf. He couldn’t see their faces from this vantage, but all three of them looked like Artisans.

He could work with that. At least it wasn’t a teacher, or a knowledge artist . . . 

Akari peaked around the shelf for a better look. 

“Shit,” she said after a short pause. “That’s Trask.”