Masterminds (13 page)

“He said his so-called death was complicated,” Flint said, more to himself than to Talia.

“He did? What else did he say?”

“Not much,” Flint said. “He was too ill. He gave me a name, and then the doctors carted him off into surgery. Which is why I’m here.”

He paused, uncertain now if he should ask her to leave the Security Office.

Talia’s expression brightened just a little. She clearly wanted to do something. That pleased him.

He would let this be her choice. She had shown an interest, after all.

“I have Murray at Space Traffic keeping an eye on Zagrando,” Flint said. “Murray assigned a lot of cops to watch the medical unit. And they’re looking for ships that might be in pursuit.”

Talia was frowning. “He’s in the port still?”

“They’re operating on him onsite. He was in too bad of shape to be taken away. I’m afraid someone will move in on him while he’s under. I’m also worried that he might wake up, need to talk to me, and no one contacts me.” Flint paused.

Talia’s eyebrows went up as she considered all of that.

“I’m also worried that under the influence of whatever drug they have given him, he’ll say the wrong thing. I could go back to the port, Talia, but it means I’ll either be doing research there or I’ll be doing nothing important.”

Talia’s fingers tightened on the tablet.

“If there are traffic cops,” she said, “I could go. I know I need to get to the
Emmeline
if something goes really bad. And if someone tries to harm him, there should be protection nearby. I don’t mind, Dad.”

Flint’s heart was pounding. He did mind. He didn’t want her in danger again. But he wasn’t really convinced that watching Zagrando was dangerous.

And she understood Flint’s fears.

“If you’re willing, then I’d like you at his side.” Flint swallowed hard. He was actually nervous. “Let me know when he wakes up, make sure that no one identifies him or tries to take him off the Moon. If he has to talk, you record it and then contact me. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Talia said. “I don’t have to get him out of there if something goes wrong, do I?”

“No,” Flint said. “You leave that to the authorities.”

Talia shrugged. “Then it’s just sitting, right?”

“And making certain you call him by the right name, and making sure that no one kicks you out of the area. You have to be by his side until I come back.”

“I can do that, Dad,” Talia said. “As long as you tell me what name he’s registered under.”

“I will,” Flint said. He extended his hand for the tablet. “No research into Zagrando’s past while you’re there, either. You have to read a book or play a game or do something while you wait. Nothing out of the ordinary for a kid your age.”

“Wow,” Talia said with a bit of a smile. “I’ll have to imitate a real person.”

“You can do that,” Flint said. “I have faith in you.”

She still hadn’t handed him the tablet, so he took it. Then he stood and helped her up. He pulled her into a hug. She leaned into him for just a minute, then stepped back and eyed the tablet.

“I can work encrypted,” she said.

“Not there,” he said.

She sighed. “Can I go there now?”

“Yeah,” Flint said. “And promise me you’ll stay in touch. If I tell you to leave fast, you will.”

“I promise,” she said, and almost skipped out of the room.

He watched her go.

He hoped he was making the right choice, both for this investigation and for his daughter.

He would contact Murray Atherton to make certain that Talia was protected—as best as anyone could protect her.

Then Flint took a deep breath and willed himself to let the worry go. He couldn’t control everything, no matter how much he wanted to.

At some point, he would have to trust Talia again.

He might as well start now.

SIXTEEN

Ó BRÁDAIGH WALKED
Petteway to the elevator. It was farther away from the controls than Ó Brádaigh remembered. Everything in the substructure was far from everything else. That alone was a part of the design that Ó Brádaigh didn’t like.

Petteway entered, then put his hand on the door. “You coming, Ó Brádaigh?”

Ó Brádaigh shook his head. “I always take the stairs. I see more that way.”

“And exhaust yourself further.” Petteway jerked his head toward the back of the elevator. “Take a rest. Come on up this way.”

“I’ll meet you at the top,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I’m going to take the other stairs up.”

“Other stairs?” Petteway asked.

“I took the north stairs down,” Ó Brádaigh said. “I’ll take the south stairs up.”

Petteway let go of the door. “You’re a glutton for punishment, Ó Brádaigh.”

The door started to close. “I’ll see you up there, sir,” Ó Brádaigh said.

“No, you won’t,” Petteway said. “I’m going home. You should too.”

And then the door closed tightly. If he had said anything else, Ó Brádaigh couldn’t hear it.

He rubbed his hands over his arms, feeling goose bumps. They weren’t caused by the temperature down here. The environmental system kept everything at a consistent twenty degrees Celsius.

He was unnerved that Petteway had had the same thoughts that he had had.

Or rather, slightly different thoughts. Petteway had thought someone could tamper with the controls.

Ó Brádaigh made his way back toward that wall. He had no idea how anyone would get into the control area, let alone tamper with them. It took levels and levels of clearance for someone to do that.

And then a shiver ran through him.

Petteway had levels and levels of clearance.

Ó Brádaigh’s heart started to pound. He’d known Petteway forever.

But, then, those Peyti clones had been on the Moon, working as
lawyers
, for godssake, for decades. No one had suspected them until they went rogue.

Ó Brádaigh didn’t like how he was thinking. Maybe that was how the bad guys—whoever they were—won this battle of minds and hearts. Maybe their stupid attacks managed to make everyone suspicious of each other, in a way that would nibble at what little trust existed among the disparate communities on the Moon.

Only Petteway wasn’t part of a disparate community from Ó Brádaigh. Petteway was a co-worker, his
boss
. They’d had beers on more than one occasion. Petteway had given Ó Brádaigh the needed cover and time off to deal with Fiona after the first Armstrong bombing. It had taken months to get his life in order again, and Petteway had let Ó Brádaigh have the flexibility he needed to tend to his baby daughter and his own broken heart.

Ó Brádaigh didn’t like that he had even a moment of suspicion against his boss. The man wouldn’t have treated Ó Brádaigh so fairly if he were a bad guy, would he?

Ó Brádaigh walked back to the nanowall. It looked flat again, undisturbed. Petteway would be upset if he knew Ó Brádaigh was having these thoughts. And what would Petteway think if Ó Brádaigh went into the control room to double-check?

Would Petteway suspect something off about Ó Brádaigh? Or would Petteway see the behavior as a sign of mistrust? Which it was, of course.

Ó Brádaigh’s cheeks heated.

He hated what he had become.

But he couldn’t just leave this alone. He had to see what was going on inside the control room.

If that got him fired, well, then, he would move up the chain of command and argue his case. They couldn’t fault him for protecting the dome.

He hoped.

He took a deep breath and placed his hand on the access panel, sending the control room his own personal passkey.

Error 5221

Entrance Off-Line

The message appeared across his eyes and on the door itself.

His heart rate went up. Had Petteway just denied him access to the control panel?

Then Ó Brádaigh remembered: access to the control room wasn’t determined here or through links. There were other controls elsewhere in the substructures, designed to make it almost impossible for an outsider to figure out how to tamper with the system.

And Ó Brádaigh had seen Petteway go up the elevator. He couldn’t have denied Ó Brádaigh access.

The access had to have been changed earlier, if Petteway had done it. Or it had just been changed now from a different location.

Ó Brádaigh tried again. He got the same message. His heart rate increased more, and his palms grew damp. He wiped them on his pants.

His clearance couldn’t have been revoked or he wouldn’t have been able to get into the substructure. And the clearance system was set up so that even if clearances were revoked, the revocation never took place while someone was in a protected space.

There were too many ways to trap a person down here, even accidentally. The changes in clearance happened outside of secure levels to prevent someone from dying down here.

Ó Brádaigh glanced toward the stairs. For a moment, he wondered if that system had just been overridden.

There was only one way to find out.

He jogged toward the stairs, and placed his sweaty palm on the panel. The door said hello to him like it always had, and then swung open.

He didn’t leave—he wasn’t ready to leave. He held up a finger as if he were still with another person and had just forgotten something, then headed back to the control room.

He tried again, and kept his palm on the access panel. He got the error message again. He stared at it.

Error 5221

Entrance Off-Line

Entrance Off-Line. He’d never seen that before, in all his years working for the city. He hadn’t even seen it during Anniversary Day.

He checked the database of codes that he had in one of his chips. Error 5221, when applied to a control room, did mean the entrance was offline. Offline meant several things, but it didn’t mean that the person trying to get in had no access.

He scrolled through the meanings and found several that alarmed him.

The door was broken. The entire control system was damaged. The access panel was broken.

It went on and on.

He slipped his fingers against the edge of the door. If the door was broken, it might have been broken
open
. So he tugged.

Unauthorized Access

Use Entry Passkey and Try Again

He expected to get that message if he had tried the door without using the passkey. So that was working.

He wondered if Petteway had had trouble accessing the room. If he had, wouldn’t he have told Ó Brádaigh?

Had this problem cropped up since Petteway was in the control room?

Ó Brádaigh started to open an encrypted link to Petteway and then stopped. This was the moment in which Ó Brádaigh decided whether or not he trusted his boss, the man he had known for decades.

Ó Brádaigh’s throat was dry, his face flushed, his heart pounding.

He felt the risk as if Petteway were standing right here.

And, after a moment, Ó Brádaigh shut down the link. If he hadn’t seen Petteway here not ten minutes ago, Ó Brádaigh would have opened the link as a matter of course.

But he had seen Petteway and now the control room wasn’t responding properly. And Petteway had said nothing about it.

Ó Brádaigh cursed under his breath.

He wasn’t sure who he could trust. He was also aware that he was down here alone, after his shift ended, and if someone reviewed the security footage, they would think he had acted suspiciously.

Any other man would have walked away and saved this for another day.

But he couldn’t.

He needed to investigate, and he needed to do it now.

SEVENTEEN

“
DID YOU CHECK
to see if the DNA has clone marks or some kind of trademark?” Berhane asked.

Kaspian stared at the faces floating around him on the various holoscreens. Berhane didn’t glance at them, not at the moment. She would deal with the faces—the
identities
—after she and Kaspian finished their discussion.

“Yeah, I had our labs check,” he said. “No clone marks, no trademarks, nothing. I didn’t have them check for shortened telomeres, but I’m not sure, given the samples we’re using, how reliable that would be anyway.”

His comment on telomeres made her think. She didn’t like seeing these long-dead faces, and she really didn’t like the implication that yet more clones were on the Moon, plotting something evil.

But she didn’t yet know if that was true. She grabbed one of the chairs and leaned on its back, staring at the floating faces. A few of them looked vaguely familiar, but she didn’t trust that. All faces looked vaguely familiar once someone placed that suggestion in a person’s brain. She wasn’t going to rely on her gut sense.