“Fiona then.”

“Ah, a beautiful name. Irish for fair. I must say, I agree this case.”

I tipped my head slightly - acknowledging but not thanking him - in his direction, then looked over and Gary shook his hand. 

“Gary, I haven’t had the pleasure of working with you much. Lawerence usually handles my neck of the woods.” Gary gave me a knowing smile. I shook my head and smiled. “I see.” He was just as curious as his counterparts. Got it. 

“Ivan has a different kind of problem he wants to discuss today. I usually handle this side of the business. And I must say, I was curious to see your talents at work. I hear they are a thing of beauty.”

Called it. 

I laughed and strolled over to the other side of the table, waving my hand for where Ivan and his man should sit. “Only in our world would it be considered a thing of beauty.”

Gary shrugged and sat next to me. Once everyone was seated, I began the meeting.

“So, tell me Ivan, what can we do for you today? What kind of services are you needing?” 

“We believe we had intrusion. A week ago, our system start acting funny. Things slow, some things could no be accessed, etc. Now, we have in-house tech team. They believe we have virus. That we may been hacked, but they fail find culprit. We heard your firm would be help with that.”

I opened my laptop, the one Linda had already set on the table for me, along with my coffee – she spoiled me - and started typing. “That should be easy to find out. Did your tech team narrow down the specific places they think were hacked?”

The two men looked at each other. The unknown man shrugged his shoulders. 

“No, they did not.”

Okay, unknown was on the tech team, or at least involved with them. 

“That’s not a problem, it would have just helped me know where to start. What was being done on the computers when the problem first started?”

Ivan gave a helpless look. “We have many employees, much work done at once…”

I nodded. I hacked into the administration mainframe. “Any specific location I should be looking into, or all locations on the same VPN? Or WAN?”

Ivan looked at the silent man again, almost like he was looking for a translation. 

“VPN.” The man answered again, without an accent I noticed. “The problem seems to be spreading, but it started in one of our sports bars near San Fernando.”

I nodded and typed away for a minute. I pulled up the database for The Perun Hotel. It had a sports bar connected to the lobby. Separate entrances were available, for non-hotel guests. Perun, from what a side search told me, was basically the Russian version of Zeus and a bit of Aries. He ruled the other gods with lightning and thunder. He blessed the people, but he was also the god of war. Something about that name seemed significant, I just couldn’t put my finger on why yet.

There was a folder marked Game Night, so I clicked on it. I kept myself from rolling my eyes. A bookie folder. They had gambling there. Awesome. 

I strolled through, but nothing seemed amiss. No sign of a virus. In fact, they had a very secure system. It shouldn’t have been so easy for me to get in. It was almost like they were holding back their defenses, lulling me into a false sense of security.

A weight of doom settled over me when that thought hit me. 

I looked up at Ivan, who was watching me expectantly. I opened a few cameras, getting a look at the place. 

I stopped when I came across a man who looked to be sleeping in one of the stock rooms. Only, it wasn’t actually a stock room. It was too empty. It also didn’t look like it belonged inside a hotel.