"The Batman chair?" Tamira repeated. "What's that?"
The woman gave her an odd look, as if surprised anyone wouldn't know what that meant. "It's this huge black swivel chair. Looks like something a supervillain would sit in. Roni has a god complex." She chuckled. "He's entitled, though. The things this kid can do are more magic than code."
Tamira thanked her, and they continued on, following the directions through a maze of workstations and equipment. The underground facility was sprawling, a technological hive that pulsed with energy.
And then she saw it.
The Batman chair was impossible to miss. It was massive, upholstered in black leather with a high back that curved around the occupant like a protective shell. Multiple monitors were arranged in an arc before it, the images on their displays meaningless to Tamira, but they were clearly significant to the skinny male slouched in the center of it all.
Roni.
He looked younger than she'd expected, barely out of his teens, or at least appearing that way. His dark hair was messy, and his expression held the particular sourness of someone who resented being interrupted.
"What do you want?" he asked without looking up from his screens.
Tamira straightened her spine and cleared her throat. "I'm Tamira, and this is Elias. We were?—"
"I know who you are." Roni's fingers continued to fly across his keyboard. "The shaman and his harem lady. Kalugal's been pestering me about finding your missing kid." He finally deigned to glance at them, his eyes sharp despite his apparent disinterest. "What I don't know is why you are here and what you want."
Kalugal's warning had been apt. The man was indeed unpleasant.
"I want to know everything you can tell me about Darien," Tamira said, keeping her voice steady and friendly despite her agitation. "You found him at JFK, flying out to Singapore. Is there anything else? Perhaps a photo from the airport in Singapore?"
Roni sighed heavily, as if she'd asked him to move mountains. "I programmed a facial recognition crawler to search for matches in various databases. Airport security footage is one of the easiest ones to access. It has lots of cameras, lots of data, and relatively standardized systems." He tapped a few keys, and one of his monitors displayed a grainy image. "This is what I found." He enlarged it, typed something with incredible speed, and the image sharpened, revealing a face that was achingly familiar because Darien was the male version of her.
The timestamp in the corner read three weeks ago.
"Can I have a copy of this?" she asked.
"Sure." Roni's fingers flew over his keyboard, and a moment later, the printer on his desk started working. It took almost a minute for the photo to finish printing, and when it was done, hehanded her a glossy photograph with a crisp and clear image of her son.
"Thank you." Tamira clutched it like a lifeline.
"Is there anything else you can find?" Eluheed asked, his hand warm on Tamira's shoulder. "Flight records? Credit card transactions? Anything that might help track his movements?"
"I'm swamped with work right now, and your son isn't a priority." He must have seen the pain that flickered across Tamira's face, because his expression turned apologetic. "That's not a judgment on him or on you. It's just that he's not a threat, and he's not in danger either, at least not that we know of. That's why he's not a priority."
"I understand." Tamira forced the words out. "Thank you for all you have done. I appreciate it." She turned to leave, clutching the photograph against her chest.
"Wait."
She paused, looking back at Roni.
He was scowling at his screens, but there was a reluctant softening in his posture. "I'll see what I can do. No promises, but I'll try to find more."
"Thank you." She meant it with every fiber of her being. "Thank you so much, Roni."
He waved a dismissive hand, already turning back to his work. "Yeah, yeah. Don't get all emotional on me now. Just go away and let me work."
As they left Roni to his kingdom of screens and data, Tamira kept her hand pressed against the photograph, drawing comfort from its presence.
"That went better than I expected," Eluheed said as they emerged from the underground facility into the sunlight.
She arched a brow. "Did it?"
"He agreed to help. That's more than I thought he would do." Eluheed checked his phone for the time. "We have about forty minutes before my meeting with Kian. Would you like to get something to eat?"
Tamira realized that they hadn't eaten breakfast. She hadn't even thought about food since Kalugal's text had arrived. "Yes. Something to eat would be good."
