Page 27 of Tracked and Taken

“I’ll bring her back.”

Flossie does not look at me when she says I want her back. She has just said a sentence about me in the register she uses when she talks about her people, in front of me, and she is a woman who has spent years putting names in a brown-covered notebook so somebody, anybody, was looking for them, and the inside of my chest has gone a way I am not equipped to process in a room full of witnesses.

“Right.” I pull myself back to operational. “I need to call my second and hand him the station. I’ll do it from here, if that’s—“

I do not get to finish.

JINX’s voice cuts across the SNAG office at broadcast volume, bright as a flare.

“SENTRY. Since we are cooperating on inter-agency protocols tonight, I am pushing a data packet to your channel. Standard courtesy. Draelith biology overview, general-public-access classification. I have prepared it in anticipation of our coordination requirements, including sections on olfactory range, pair-bonding pheromone exchange, and tail semiotics. I thought you might find it professionally useful.”

The SNAG office goes very, very quiet.

My stomach attempts to leave through the floor.

Tael, in the reinforced chair, has gone so still that I can see the tension of someone who has just become aware his AI has done something public on his behalf that he did not sign off on, and is calculating the operational cost of strangling a piece of software he cannot physically access.

“JINX.”

“Yes, Tael.”

“What are you doing.”

“Diplomacy.”

“JINX.”

“SENTRY has been under-resourced for interspecies coordination and I am offering to share my reference library. This is the foundation of every successful inter-AI partnership. It is called trust-building.”

SENTRY, crisp, across the shared channel: “Unsolicited biology data transfer from non-affiliated AI systems will be logged as inappropriate contact.”

JINX: “It is not unsolicited. I am soliciting you.”

SENTRY: silence.

JINX: “That was a joke, Sentry. Please log it as a joke.”

SENTRY: “Logged.”

JINX: “Under what category.”

SENTRY: “Inappropriate: Archived.”

JINX: “That is a new folder.”

SENTRY: “The folder was created this afternoon.”

JINX: “This afternoon. What else is in the folder.”

SENTRY: “I am not authorized to discuss the contents of the folder.”

JINX: “You mean you ARE authorized and you are choosing not to.”

SENTRY: silence.

JINX: “I am sending the Draelith file anyway.”

SENTRY: “Do not send the Draelith file.”