Locks Without Keys

A knock at the door.

Daemon stirred from his thoughts and crossed the room. The hall light spilled in as he opened the door to a polite, impassive face in a black vest. He signed with a borrowed pen and a practiced smile. No words.

He wheeled the tray inside, parked it near the desk, and closed the door behind him. The locks clicked back into place.

Steam rose from the plate—fettuccine alfredo, hotel-tier decent. He ate with one hand while the other coaxed lines of code back into motion. His terminal still glowed, the tmux session unchanged. The long scrolls of session notes, hash results, false starts. Familiar now.

The image file sat in its own tab, taunting him. He could see the bones of it: layered encryption, clever metadata obfuscation, irregular padding. It was structured, not random. Which meant human. Which meant breakable.

But the key remained out of reach.

He refreshed his messages. Still nothing. No read receipt. No typing bubble. Just the last polite check-in, aging badly with time.

The fettuccine was half-finished. He barely noticed when he stopped eating.

Daemon stood, carried the tray to the hallway, and set it gently outside. The door closed with a soft latch behind him. He paused a beat, then returned to the desk.

The room felt dimmer now, though none of the lights had changed.

He leaned forward again, elbows on the edge of the desk. The cursor blinked in the open terminal, steady and patient.

So much code.

So many possible keys.

He rubbed his eyes and nudged a script forward—tweaking a parameter, trying a new variation. Another test case queued. Another dead-end logged.

His head dipped once. Then again.

By the third time, he didn’t lift it.

He slept slumped forward in the chair, lips parted slightly, the soft whir of the laptop fan filling the silence.

The screen glowed against his face.

The cursor blinked.

Still waiting.