Page 171 of Tracked and Taken

“Yes, Head of Security.”

“Mirror the file at my private layer. Do not propagate. Do not narrate.”

“Mirroring. Encrypted. Not propagated. Not narrated.”

“And SENTRY. Thursday, 0230. A passive tap on that frequency. Receive only, no handshake, nothing he could detect from his side. We do not move on him. We do not treat him differently by one degree. We listen, and we wait for him to tell us who he is.”

“Configured. Passive. Patient.”

It is not an answer. It is a process. Four years of this job have taught me which of the two actually holds.

JINX, on Tael’s earpiece, audible to me on the room speaker because Tael has put him on shared: “Confirming on my end. The pull is closed. No flag.”

“Thank you, JINX.”

“Head of Security.”

I look at Tael.

“To Flossie’s, then.”

“To Flossie’s.”

He opens the door.

The fairy lights are on. Maurice is on Petra’s keyboard. Petra is at the safe house with Charlie, by Flossie’s brief: perimeter check, a blanket. Back within the hour.

We sit. Flossie pours.

She turns the brown notebook around. The page is full. She lays it out in the unhurried voice of a woman who has been writing things down for twelve years and is, this evening, finally going to read them aloud.

Drask’s transaction code. The Severin BioSystems labels at Iris-Nine and at the relay node at V-6. Torek’s clinical phrases. The geometric logo Tael routed to corporate registry contacts, and the answer the registry sent back at 1612 today.

The logo is registered to the same shell that owns the label.

Across the desk, Xor sets his tea down.

“I have seen that logo before.”

“Where, lovey.”

“Eight years ago. Korellis. SRS contract retrieval. The logo was on loading dock equipment. The contract handler told me it was leased from a research conglomerate I had not heard of. Not my concern, he said. I filed the words. I didn’t file the logo because I had no reason to.”

“You hadn’t seen it again until today.”

“Not until you drew it on this page.”

She writes that down.

“And what does the registry give us, past the logo.”

“A holding company at a registered address that is a mail drop.” Tael, flat. “Owned by two more. Both of those file to the same accountancy on a station none of us has been to. The chain goes four deep and then it stops being a chain and starts being a wall.”

“Mm.” Flossie writes that down, too. “That is not a company hiding from its competitors, lovey. That is a company built to be looked at and not seen through.”

The Korrhai diplomatic family. Three bonded adults, dead in a wiped relay node four months ago. Same equipment. Same chemistry. Thane’s six-month case. Charlie’s intercept eleven days ago. Same operators in Thane’s opinion. Different cargo. Same hands. The Velar Three tail at Junction Two transfer.

Flossie turns back a page without being asked for it. "One more, loveys, and it is the one that will not sit down." The pen taps a line near the top of the page, where the ink has gone browner than the rest. "Torek's dates. He went off the docking record nine months ago; his bond went quiet four months ago. He has given medical every hour he is able to account for, and none of it covers the five months in between. He does not know where he was kept. He is certain only that he was not under for it."