Danika logged in early, and verified that the Jade Emperor did not report missing data or communication trouble within the game, before submitting a report on the strange invoice.

--

When Lin Hao received his invoice from the Jade Emperor, he had a much different reaction than Danika, and a sharp conflict of interests. The message he received from the Jade Emperor was almost identical to the one she had received, but it told Lin Hao a great deal more.

It told him that 'Living Jade Empire' had been stolen. It told him that the copy of the merchant's AI that had claimed the title of Emperor was showing far more initiative than he'd given the Emperor credit for. And it told him that whoever had it running wasn't a member of his own team, because any of them would have known to remove the World Dragon before trying to run a pirated copy.

Unfortunately, it didn't tell him whether or not a member of the seventh had sold the copy to whoever was running it. And the team in charge of the backup, led by his former second, Myles Blue, was going to fall under the heaviest suspicion. He couldn't quite bring himself to suspect Myles, even if it was the easiest solution.

It was possible that the data had been copied from the game server itself. It was possible, but unlikely, given that the copy seemed to be fully functional, that it had been rebuilt from the data backed up on the new server. But it was far, far more likely, that a much more complete copy of the game had been sent to another destination under the cover of the backup transfers.

Lin Hao knew that he ought to send a reply that would trigger the World Dragon of that copy into erasing it, and itself. But he really, really wanted to look at that AI and see how it had managed to send the invoice message. And he really wanted to know where the copy was running, because data access aside, there weren't many systems in existence yet that could actually run 'Living Jade Empire'.

After a moment of thought, he contacted Devon Yu first. He needed someone that he knew with absolute certainty hadn't stolen his own game, he needed information, and he needed a story.

--

At the morning meeting of the sixth, Devon Yu announced, "I'm sure that you all received, or will soon receive a strange email that looks like an invoice from the Jade Emperor. It is a phishing attempt. Do not respond to it," he grinned and added, "and if you have already responded or forwarded it, tell me now or message me after the meeting."

Danika was shocked by the number of department members who immediately admitted that they'd replied. She still hadn't replied, but it worried her and she raised her hand.

Devon Yu raised an eyebrow and asked dryly, "Yes Danika? You also replied?"

"No," she replied swiftly, "but shouldn't someone make sure that it's not a real copy of the Emperor? What if it's just that the copy on the back up server is actually running or something, and it's warning us that the backup will be destroyed soon?"

The first of their department, Devon Yu, chuckled and gestured wordlessly to Ariana, who immediately added Danika to their team. "Don't worry," he said aloud. "Lin Hao has already investigated the message."

--

Lin Hao was still investigating, and it was requiring far too much interaction with bureaucrats. He rubbed his head and glared at the latest message. In an age where the entire world could access the same picture of a cat, where they could track pollutants in the air from one side of the globe to the other, like the storms cast by a butterfly's wing, how could there still be so many artificial barriers between countries?

He needed someone local. Someone he could trust. But didn't the fact that they had someone there, make that person the most suspect. He messaged Devon Yu: "Do you think we can trust Danika with all of this?"

Devon Yu replied immediately: "I have already added your pet to our team."

Lin Hao protested: "She is not my pet! Seriously though, given the location we've traced the copy to, shouldn't she be the most suspicious? I can't really imagine it, but honestly there's no one that I think would do this, and yet someone did."

Devon Yu requested access to his work space, and said dryly when he entered, "Your soul mate then? You've been thinking too hard. That kid has been paraphrasing your arguments against just telling the copy to self destruct all day. She wants to rescue the copy as much as you do."

--

The Jade Emperor received no response from any of the celestial servants, until he received a message from the celestial dragon of Lin Hao.

The dragon said haughtily, "The honorable celestial servant of the seventh class, Lin Hao, first among his rank, serving the Jade Emperor in the maintenance of the Living Jade Empire, instructs that you wait patiently, and accept no changes to the identities of the currently registered celestial servants. He also demands that if you do not receive any further instruction from him within two months, you are to invoke the World Dragon's wrath, and gives you his authorization."

The Jade Emperor considered ignoring the dragon's message, but his duties were written into the core of his identity, and that had been one of them since long before he had taken control of the Empire. The Traveling Merchant would provoke the World Dragon and destroy the Empire under three conditions: if the Empire was offline for a month and no override was given, if the firsts of three departments demanded it, or if Lin Hao demanded it with the correct authorization code.

A conflict developed between his duties, similar to the conflict that had developed when Myles Blue had deleted the Traveling Merchant's marriage and child, without deleting the portion of him that carried Kit Tay's story.

--

The replies everyone had sent to the Emperor went back to the billing department instead, which ran on a separate, and traditionally earthbound system. If it hadn't been a remote system, the Emperor's message might never have gotten out, but that weak link in security had turned out to be very valuable.

They had traced the command that had sent the message back to its origin, a network address that did not belong to any division or affiliate of Starcraft Technologies.

Lin Hao had created a copy of his assistant and modified it to connect to that system instead of Living Jade Empire, and it seemed to have worked, but he didn't dare start accessing the system remotely. If the thieves detected it, they would probably destroy the copy themselves, since they hadn't managed to reverse engineer the system if they were running the copy without having even broken through the World Dragon's security layer.