A long night in Toronto....

"...Hmm?"

Liz hadn't noticed him even after getting up, until his voice was made known. She would have wondered what he was doing just sitting there, but at this point she was too tired to really care.

"Shouldn't you be in a hospital bed or something still..." She murmured, as she moved towards the machines. Browsing through the options there wasn't anything amazing that stood out, so Liz grabbed two of whatever contained the most caffeine, as well as a chocolate bar and a bag of chips for herself.

Moving back to her seat, she reluctantly put one of the can's across from kale, before sitting down and placing her laptop into position once more.

Kale opened his eyes as the beeping noise sounded in his ear again. He watched her set the can down before him, to which he replied "Thanks." He picked up the can with a wince, as moving hurt. He then popped two pain pills into his mouth that tasted like floor cleaner, and took a drink before the taste of the pills had a chance to make him retch. He then sat back with another wince, and addressed the young woman across from him. "Before you get hopelessly lost in whatever you're about to do, I would like you to answer some questions."

Her hands came to a halt only seconds before they could grab her headphones once more, her glance only shifting slightly towards Kale as he continued to speak. She leaned back in her chair with a "hmph..." Only one eye remaining open to look at him halfheartedly.

"I already told you I don't know anything about what happened." She said bluntly, only wanting to get back to her game or just finally be released to go home. "There shouldn't be anything else since you wouldn't let me look at that toy. Perhaps you should worry more about resting, than wasting time with me."

Kale watched and waited for the woman to look at him, then he raised his phone and snapped a picture of her face in one smooth motion, a bored look on his face as he did so. "Luckily for the both of us, I'm as interested in a recount of your ignorance as you are Miss..." He glanced at his phone. "...Stevenson." He looked at the screen, tapping at it with his thumb for just a couple of seconds more before he sat it back down. "I'm more interested in why you tried to hack my phone." He looked back at Liz, and took a drink from the can she'd given him. "So let's talk about that."

Liz let out a breath as she closed her other eye, leaning back into her chair. Had he seen her? She was pretty sure that even if he could see her from the train at that time she was just holding her phone, that didn't mean anything so how did he know? She was confident Keena wouldn't have made any errors either, so it didn't make much sense. Hopefully if she feigned ignorance, maybe he'd give up. It's not like his phone was the target anyways.

"No idea what you're talking about. You just trying to keep me here longer?" She uttered with distaste, her eyes still remaining shut as she got more comfortable in the chair.

"I don't want to keep you here any more than you want to be here." Kale said in a disinterested tone. His gut told him the antsy Miss Stevenson was lying. "But, what can you tell me about Keyphone. You know..." He tapped some commands into his phone, instructing Mayflower to scan the surrounding wifi environment. Elizabeth's phone screen turned on for a moment as it received the ping across a government channel, and responded as it was hard-coded to do. "...your phone." Kale finished with an arched eyebrow as his screen showed no phone with that name nearby. Kale pressed anyway. "Care to explain?"

(( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXlrkYp-4hU ))

"KeyMobile?"

Liz's eyes opened to look her dear investigator in the eyes, shifting in her seat once more. Not out of fear or nervousness, but in confidence, as she began to wag her finger as if to say "tsk tsk tsk." This was her time for a turnabout, just like one of her favorite series and she was going to take it all the way home. She knew he was just bluffing now.

"I think you must be mistaken, Mr. Detective. If you were to be so kind as to check the registry you'd know that my phone is clearly registered... as Lizzerd97. It's my gaming tag, since I'm commonly using my phone for such things it only seemed appropriate. It's also an inside nickname but that's another story all together." She retorted bluntly, with a smirk on her face.

"Therefor, I would have to conclude that you have the wrong phone and thus the wrong person."

Kale smiled as Elizabeth caught him in his lie, and proceeded to confidently shoot him down. It was an interesting shift from her earlier behavior when he suspected she was lying, but this time he, without any doubts, knew she was telling the truth that her phone currently did not identify itself as KeyMobile, but as Lizzerd97. However, the young woman had unwittingly played right into his hand. "I'm terribly sorry, yes. I know your phone is not identified as KeyMobile." Kale looked down, speaking in a light tone as he laughed while scratching the back of his head, as if abashed. Then he stopped, and looked back up at Elizabeth. "However, Miss, Stevenson, I distinctly remember accusing the owner of a Keyphone." His tone was much darker than during his abashed act.

(( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abgJHwySVKU ))

Kale picked up his phone and turned the screen to face her. It showed connection and ping contact with a phone called KeyMobile. "So tell me, where exactly do you happen to know the name KeyMobile from, hmm?" But he didn't stop there. "Surely a professional hacker such as yourself would know the importance of the little details, such as the difference between KeyMobile and Keyphone. Otherwise, Symantec would't have hired you, now would they? It would be quite embarrassing if you confused bloodhound901 with bloodhound9001, wouldn't it?" He smiled at her as a simple press of a side key changed the image to a dossier on her, one Elizabeth Stevenson, in her office interview's best. "Nice photo, by the way."

Liz paused for a moment, her wagging finger declining in speed ever swiftly as her expression of happiness melted. For a couple seconds she proceeded to stare blankly at Kale. Until she snapped and almost feel completely out of her chair, laptop being kicked up and balancing just enough to not fall off the table. If she could speak one would definitely hear a long exasperated "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

As she climbed back into her chair and adjusted her electronics she attempted to recompose herself, before amending her testimony. "Ahem... look if you know what I do for a living, you don't have to be a jerk about it. Besides, I never wanted anything with your phones to begin with." A slight glimmer in her eye as she was reminded of the delicious piece of electronics that was the tablet.

"Your two phones were the only things online, so I thought they were blocking the signal to that sweet new tablet. I figured if I jumped through, I might be able to see who made it. You wanted to know a bit more about it too, after all. I was just trying to get around you tech-blocking me, here."

Kale sat there with a thoughtful expression on his face as Elizabeth practically spilled the information he was seeking from her without any prompting. When she was done, he uttered a non-committal "I see." He then looked her in the eyes once more. "You've shared with me some interesting facts. For starters, you say two phones." Kale pointed at his phone. "However, I only own one." He held up fingers as if ticking off points. "I also wasn't attempting to block communication with the tablet, since I knew nothing about it. If I was, you simple wouldn't have signal at all. Mayflower, if you would."

As Kale finished speaking, all wifi signal reception in the room just died in the face of overwhelming signal noise. "Thank you, Mayflower." The jamming stopped. "Which brings us back to the tablet itself: If I wasn't jamming you, and you saw more phones than I own, then the tablet must be doing something...." Kale scratched his chin in thought.

Liz nodded with his explanation, realizing that her other theory was likely to be correct. "Now that you've confirmed my suspicion, that solves one of my queries." Her eyes shined once more as she began to realize the tablet seemed to have some sort of defense mechanism, redirecting all outside sources to a nearby signal.

"When I pinged all signals, one came at a significant time delay, but both went to your phone. Meaning most likely that tablet is somehow copying your phone, which sent me your way when I attempted to get in." Her thoughts began to race as she processed the new information, wondering just what kind of system would have this sort of redirection and why it would even be active.

"I can only imagine someone is trying to prevent access and hide something on that tablet, because that some heavy duty security that most tablets couldn't hope to have. Meaning it could be related to the incident at hand! So if you want to get to the bottom of things... you should probably let me do what I'm best at and lemme look at it. Free of charge, for the earlier misunderstandings, hehe."

"Deal." Kale reached into his coat, and pulled the tablet out of the inner breast pocket. "I've already gathered the physical evidence off of it, so it's fine. Just do your work where I can see it." He really wanted to know what he'd been shot over, since he took it personally.

Liz's eyes with brimming with excitement and joy as she quickly snatched the tablet, and proceeded to fangirl over it in a somewhat distubing fashion. If one could read her mind a loud "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~" would most likely be heard.

Immediately she prepared her computer for work, closing out any and all game files she had, preparing some potential work music and got to work. Liz began to examine the tablet in detail, checking for anything and everything she could.

The ruggedized tablet was roughly 7~8cm wide by 15 cm long, and maybe half a centimeter or so thick. The top edge, as determined by the orientation of the power button at the bottom of the tablet, had a covered data jack port, a covered card reader, and a covered sound jack. The right side of the tablet featured a slider with the letters [LOCK] printed next to it, and the slider was in the Locked position. The screen of the tablet was powered off, and was dead to the touch. The bottom edge of the tablet had a covered power adapter port, but no indicating text for what kind of power it accepted, so simply finding a power plug that fit the jack was a dangerous proposition and best avoided if possible. The upper left side of the tablet had a power light on it that glowed amber, the almost universal signal for a device that had power, but was in standby mode. A row of three more lights, all powered off, were set up in a line next to the power indicator, none of which were marked. There was no text anywhere on the tablet to identify the make or model, and it did not match the design or dimensions of any current tablets manufactured today.

Her curiosity truly peaked, and knowing that the machine still had power Liz didn't bother wasting any more time before trying to remove it from standby. Of course in the event that the Tablet would be locked with some sort of password system, Liz was already preparing her computer to do the work of breaking into the thing.

Liz tries the power button, but is unrewarded for her efforts. So she flips the slider on the side from LOCK to blank, presumably unlocking the tablet.... and the screen comes to life immediately. The interface was... unintelligible to her. It was all displayed in Zaftran. She did not speak Zaftran.

"Huh? Whatever this is i don't speak it... so lets change the locale first..."

Liz was not deterred as she reached into her bag, searching for her Data cable. Before connected the tablet to her PC however, she made sure all of her system defenses were up and ready. After all, you can never be too careful of what a mysterious piece of equipment could do to your system if it was infected.

With her system ready, she connected the tablet and prepared to work on getting a nice English setting running.

Elizabeth connected the PC to the tablet. Nothing seemed to attack her PC, so that was good at least. On the other hand, the window she was trying to explore the tablet with started displaying text in Zaftran. She couldn't read Zaftran, and God only knew what the window was telling her.

Seeing the foreign language once more, Liz scratched her head. She didn't speak zaftran, so she would have to rely on an old friend to help her. Quickly pulling up an internet browser, the words "Zaftran to english translator" were inputted. She spent a bit of time searching for one she was comfortable with, and with that out of the way she got back to work.

Trying to use the translator, she attempted to first decode the message. Provided it wasn't anything too pressing, she would then proceed to try and decode the menu and menu options until she could find the locale and adjust it to the english setting.

Elizabeth was able to decipher quite a bit of what the tablet was telling her, but it took her a solid hour to do it.

The tablet's actual screen was displaying some sort of monitoring program that was keeping watch over the contents of the tablet. The interface for this program allowed setting changes so that it would display different screens of data, sorted and filtered as directed by the user. However, even translated from Zaftran to English, what the program seemed to be monitoring and reporting to her was all but meaningless. It was data in a field of study that Elizabeth was not a student of, and may as well have been Martian for all the sense she could make of it. What was clear, however, was that the interface had no language settings she could get to, whatsoever, and the program could not be terminated so that she could get at the non-existent operating system. Near as she could tell, this WAS the operating system.

The window on her computer screen was asking, in Zaftran, for an AI medium to act as an interface. It did not have any sort of user input prompt other than to confirm or cancel. Cancelling closed the window, and opening the window back up required unplugging and replugging the data cable. Confirming did nothing, as her AI was chilling in her phone at present, and just asked her again for an AI to act as a medium after a short processing cycle and accompanying failure to detect an AI message.

The tablet did not respond to any other forms of access or hacking. This machine was locked down, hard.