Clara stretched out her fingers, wishing her dog companion was with her, pretending she could feel the strange suede of its skin under her palms. She hadn’t seen her friend since everything exploded with Reid, which was odd since it was never far from her side.
Stepping further into the closet revealed nothing else, and it filled her with melancholy.I have more than he does. I have more and I’m a homeless nomad.
She had things to her name, items she’d collected throughout her years that she couldn’t part ways with and Reid had nothing but the essentials: clothing, toiletries, and a place to sleep. Her fingers slipped down one of the ties, the silk leading their way, and she wondered why Reid was the way he was.
Why did he choose to stay in such a bleak, dead place like this when he had the universe at his disposal? Clara stared at the sleek cloth. He was ageless, powerful, beyond human and yet... she’d never heard of him before. And if he died—would anyone mourn him or care?
I would.She tugged the material once before letting it go and placing her hand on her stomach.We’d care.
She crossed her arms over her chest and turned full-circle, taking in everything at once but mostly taking stock of the lack ofeverything. One spin was all she could handle and she moved to leave the closet when a thin indentation—lined into a small square door, almost impossible to discern within the metal framework of the wall—caught her eye. It was cubby-sized, big enough to be the entrance of a crawlspace—or a doggy door—and her hope alighted that it might be another exit if the android dog was Reid’s.
She checked behind her and eyed the lighted entryway to the bathroom for a full minute—waiting to be stopped—but when Reid didn’t magically appear and nothing happened, she kneeled in front of the square and traced the edges with her fingers.
Hmm...
With a slight bit of pressure, the panel swung inward. Clara tapped it and it swung harder, revealing another space. She lifted the barrier as far as it would go and peered in, her eyes adjusting from the bright closet space to the darkness beyond. Past the gloom was the intermittent LED light of technology and it grew brighter as she moved her hand inside.
She crawled through the door and let the swinging panel rest behind her and at first perusal, she thought she found a hidden server room. Screens appeared and flickered, sensors quietly went off, and the light increased as she moved further in.
The first thing her eyes settled on were the screens, numerous screens, disjointed and placed all over.
She curled her limbs into her body, half afraid that if she touched anything, an alarm would go off or it’d break.
Numbers and codes came next, flooding every surface within her immediate view. She quickly lost interest and stood up, winding her way toward the back and the one large screen that took up the entire wall. Images moved in squares across it as she made her way closer.
Clara recognized it all immediately—the rooms and hallways of the facility. They were from the security feeds all over the building, but as her gaze went from one feed to the next, she discovered they were all feeds of places she frequently visited in the building.
My room.Clara frowned.From several different angles.Her throat tightened. She knew what she signed up for and allowed her stomach to settle. She knew she hadn’t gone into the situation blindly.
Her eyes moved to some of the other squares that were of the medical labs, the habitable zones, hallways, and the last several, the parking lot. Her eyes roamed over it all again, rubbing her neck. Half the feeds were aimed at her space.
Because I’m the only one here.
Wait.
She scanned all of it again—everything—looking for anything, any movement, but here was no sign of life anywhere in the whole building. No Reid. No Marsha. No androids. And no dog.
Clara tentatively swiped her finger across the glass and it switched the feeds to new angles and new locations. To morenothing.
Where did he go?She leaned back on her heels feeling a little betrayed, watching a whole bunch of nothing for no reason, and feeling guilty because she was spying. A little spinning disc at the corner of the glass caught her eye and she touched it, minimizing the security and bringing up a network desktop that was littered with labeled folders in a series of numbers that also meant nothing to her.
She knew she should stop. Something in her gut screamed at her that how the facility was run was none of her business, but her curiosity won out and she looked back at the hidden wall crawl space door one last time, waiting for something to stop her. For him to stop her.
Santino eroded her ability to trust blindly long ago.
And with that thought, she started on the first folder.
***
STILL SOURCING FORSantino’s whereabouts, he found himself at the end of his rope parked back in the empty vestiges of old Dallas again. His spine molded and stiff against the seatback and while his body was in stasis, his mind traveled the network, clinging onto anything that would give him a lead.
The red flags came first—always. The pieces of information that were public knowledge, that any quick search could find. Santino’s imprisonment, his crimes, and the news generated by both.
Deeper in was the information behind the fail-safes, the private info, and the secret sources. Anyone who knew how to hack and hack well could access the deep. Beyond the deep was the abyss, much like the ocean for a Cyborg. That network held its own wonders, and its own monsters.
In the abyss were traces, direct connections with his target, those that went from one IP address to the target, or to an alias attached to the target. That’s where he searched now, where his mind roamed.
Reid followed the link from Marsha’s phone again and again—the one that led him to Natalie—but there were no more traces to be found. He debated returning to the site and searching manually but discarded it, knowing by now, that whatever he found there would be old news. Santino would have moved on and cut ties.
