“I’m sorry.” Kenna swiped a tear from her cheek.
Zeyla cleared her throat. “We should talk about this when I get back. I’ll be there soon.”
The comms channel went dead.
Kenna peeled off her headphones. “Is she okay?”
Maizie looked at her computer, a sheen of tears in her eyes. She sniffed. “She’s on the sidewalk now, heading to where she parked the car.”
Kenna laid her head back on the seat. “We need to find Sylvia. She knows where Ellayna is.”
Maizie said, “I know. She hasn’t used her credit cards or her phone. Same for Marcus and Wallace and Crystal. She’s not using theirs either.”
“Hopefully, Marcus is the only one of them who is dead.” Kenna looked at the article. “She was really raking me over the coals. According to this article, I’m basically inept.” Kenna kept scanning, skimming what Sylvia had written. “But then it mentions my skills and my aptitude? It’s more like a report on my performance than journalism, but it certainly has a flavor of that.”
Maizie said, “There’s an article about the president battling health issues that might be affecting her job performance. It has the same part at the end that yours does, her aptitude and ability to function long-term while under stress.”
“Do you know if she actually has health issues?”
Maizie shrugged. “There’s nothing on a basic web search, but maybe they’re privy to information the general public doesn’t get access to.”
“That I believe.Ifthis is aDominatusnews report.” Kenna sighed. “The more I learn about them, the more I’m disturbed and the less I’m surprised.”
“But if you told some regular person on the street, they’d think you’re some crazy conspiracy theorist.”
Kenna grinned. “Isn’t that the truth. To us, it doesn’t sound like such a crazy thing that they took Wallace Lofton’s voice and created additional podcasts after he said he wanted to quit. That they just…pretend to be someone.”
Huh.
She frowned.
Maizie asked, “What is it?”
Kenna shut the lid of her laptop and looked at the young woman. “You had access to that program at one point, right?”
“Yeah, when you were held captive and they were using Jax’s face on calls to shut down the former president. The president was trying to build a team to fightDominatusin the US.”
But they’d killed him.
Kenna pushed the fear away as if she could hold it back by sheer force of will. “Is there a way to tell that a voice was produced by the program?”
“You want me to run the podcasts through it, see what was real and what wasn’t?”
“Maybe, but I was thinking something else.” Kenna jogged her knee up and down, wondering if she was right or if she was actually losing her mind and doubting everything she believed. “I want you to run the voicemail I got from Ellayna through it. I want to know if it was really her.”
Maizie flinched. “What makes you think it might not be real? We know they’re capable of capturing and hurting people. Why would they need to fake it?”
“Call it instinct, because I’m not sure I can put my finger on it exactly.” It was more like a culmination of a few things, like the way the articles were written and how this whole thing had gone down. And why Marcus Neerwood needed to die.
The reason why a software company in Pueblo killed a man about to expose them.
“Find out if it’s really Ellayna.”
Maizie said, “And if it isn’t?”
“They’re still missing, and we need to find them,” Kenna said. “But they might not be the victims we think they are.”
Her phone and Maizie’s phone started to chime simultaneously, but Maizie was quicker to look at hers and react.She tapped the screen, and Kenna heard it ring through the speaker.
