The next morning, Torin arrived at S.O.A.R. headquarters slightly late and met with Director Locke and Sphinx in her office. Sphinx demonstrated his precognitive abilities by predicting Torin's lateness and finishing his sentences, which both impressed and unnerved the young musician. Torin asked Sphinx various questions about the future, including relationship advice, but Locke quickly redirected the conversation to business. She handed Torin a file containing his first recruitment assignment - a former S.O.A.R. operative named Keys who had gone independent after the organization's restructuring.
Keys, whose real name was Damon Yo, was a master hacker who had discovered that his ability to interface with machines was innate rather than drug-dependent, as he had previously believed. Under the tutelage of Knight Owl, he had become even more skilled since the fall of Quad City and now operated as an independent agent. Sphinx used his precognitive abilities to locate Keys at a coffee shop called Sea Bucks, where he frequently worked on his laptops.
Torin found Keys at the coffee shop, easily identifying him as the only person with two laptops open. He delivered a SOAR-encrypted container to Keys as a recruitment test, explaining that Director Locke wanted to see if Keys could crack the sophisticated cipher. Keys recognized the container as SOAR technology and realized he had been tracked for months. The container proved to be more challenging than expected, featuring adaptive security measures that made it increasingly difficult to crack with each attempt. The encryption seemed almost sentient, changing and evolving its defenses in response to Keys' hacking attempts.
Despite the container's sophisticated defenses, Keys eventually succeeded in cracking the cipher. When the container finally opened, it revealed an obsidian katana that emanated strange void energy. Director Locke contacted them via earpiece, congratulating Keys on solving a mystery they had been unable to crack. The katana was revealed to be a S.O.A.R. artifact that had gone missing during the Oni occupation, one of many artifacts that needed to be recovered.
Keys negotiated to help S.O.A.R. find the other missing artifacts, while Torin secured additional funding for Quad City rebuilding efforts. Director Locke then assigned them to deliver the katana to their next recruit - a woman named Kira who had been following Torin's band for weeks. The holographic display on Torin's card showed Kira's face and provided her location at Grandma Ellie's place, where she had been camping in a tent in the backyard.
