“Linda Parson,” he said.

She turned to look at him, then looked back at Jax and the box. She took a step back to try to get them both in view, but there just wasn’t that much room, and she fell backward, landing on the bed. “Hey!” she said, agitated. “Who the fuck are you guys?” She looked long and hard at Runstom. “Why are you painted green? Are you cleaners or what?”

“No, Linda Parson,” Runstom said. “We’re not cleaners.” He looked at Jax.

“I’m a LifSup operator,” Jax said. “From block 23-D, Gretel, sub-dome of Blue Haven, Barnard-4.”

“What?” Linda Parson said, bewildered. Then a look of recognition crossed her face. “Oh, shit,” she breathed. “Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit—”

“My name is Detective Runstom, of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping. Here are my credentials.”

“Oh fuck.” The woman didn’t bother to look at Runstom’s creds. “How did you find me?”

The men exchanged looks, and Runstom wondered if Jax noticed that he threw the word Detective in front of his name. With a hard stare he willed the operator to play along.

Jax set the box on the floor in front of Linda Parson. “Show us how it works. Please.”

She looked at the box, then to Jax, then to Runstom. The officer said, “You’d better do as he says, ma’am.” She stared at him blankly. His voice rose ever so slightly. “Show us. Now.”

Goosebumps formed on the woman’s arms. She sank off the bed and knelt in front of the box. “Are you going to arrest me? I didn’t know what it was for!”

Jax looked at Runstom briefly, then knelt down beside her. “Linda. You’ve been set up to take the fall for something. Something terrible. If you help us, we can help you. Tell us about this box.”

“No, I didn’t know,” she started. “Wait, yes – set up – that’s what it was. It’s not my box.”

“And someone showed you how to work it, right?” Runstom strained to be consoling rather than hostile. “Just show us how to turn it on.”

She nodded slowly, looking from Runstom to Jax. “Okay,” she said finally. She ran her fingers over the panel and hit one of the switches. Nothing happened. “Um,” she said, her face twisting in confusion.

Jax picked up the long black cable and handed the end of it to Runstom. “Off – err – Detective. Could you find an outlet for this please?”

Runstom took the cable and plugged it in. Linda Parson tried the switch again and the box whirred to life. The side that the red arrows were pointing to slid open and a small transponder-dish emerged from the inside of the device. “It’s a transmitter of some kind,” she said weakly. “But I didn’t know what it transmitted. You gotta believe me!”

“Okay,” Runstom said, putting his hands out. “Relax, Linda. Take a deep breath. Tell us what happened.”

She tried to breathe deeply, but it came in shudders. “I got the transmitter when I was on Glomulus Serpentus. It’s a research facility, near the asteroid ring. They use them to beam data back and forth between different-sized asteroids. For gravity-lag research.” Runstom nodded, waiting patiently for her to get to the point. She continued, “Anyway, one of the workers on the base gave it to me. He told me I’d need it for my cruise back to B-3. It was all boxed up. I didn’t even know what it was when they gave it to me.”

“So when did you discover it was a transmitter?” Jax asked.

She flipped open a panel on the box, revealing a small slot. She poked at it, and a thin, little black square came out, about two centimeters long. “I had to put this in it. And then just take it to the outer deck, and set it down under my table. Turn it on and sit there for about twelve hours.” She gave the black square to Runstom, who looked at it for a few seconds, then passed it to Jax. “It’s some kind of chip. It arrived in a package, a few days after I got on board.”

“What kind of package was it, Linda?” Runstom said, calmly.

“Um.” She began fumbling over her words. “It was a box of cookies. It was a brown-wrapped package, like from one of the interplanetary delivery companies. Inside, it was a box of cookies. And this chip was hidden in that. He told me I’d be getting the chip in a package. He said to use the chip in the transmitter exactly four days after the package arrived.”

“He?” Runstom stepped closer to her. “Who is he? Who told you to bring a transmitter on board?”

She swallowed hard. “He … I don’t know his real name. He’s X.”

“X?” Jax asked, and Runstom waved at him before he could ridicule the nickname.

“What delivery company was it that brought the cookies?” Runstom asked. “Do you remember? Do you still have the package material?”

“No,” she said, quietly. “I threw it away.”

Jax made a choking sound. “That’d be the only thing she threw away,” he muttered under his breath, earning a sharp glance from Runstom. He frowned, then held up the chip. “The stealth program that infected my LifSup system – I’d bet everything I own that it’s on this chip.” He paused for a second. “I mean, pretend I actually own stuff – stuff that’s really valuable. We need to get to a computer terminal or something with a port on it that can read this.”

“What about the box?” Runstom said.

“It’s just a transmitter. I doubt there’s anything else of value in it. Of course, that would be assuming we believe Coordinator Parson’s story.” Linda Parson hung her head while the other two talked.

“Right.” Runstom knelt beside the woman. “Linda. Tell us about X.”

She lifted her head and stared forward at nothing. “I don’t know who he is.”

“But he knows you. He has something on you,” the officer prodded. “You’re in debt to him.”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “It was the Jersey head coordinator elections. It was such a close election. I knew if I missed that chance, I’d never get a shot at a mayorship in the future. Losing an election can destroy your career. No one understands the risk you take when you run!”

“So you set out to make your opponent look bad,” Jax said.

“Well, yeah. But it wasn’t my idea. It was one of my aides, during the campaign. She said she knew a way to give me an edge. She said I wouldn’t have to know how, that someone else could take care of it.” She sniffled a little bit, and cleared her throat. “I said okay, just as long as no one got hurt. My aide said that X would take care of it. I just kept campaigning. After a couple more weeks, I even kind of forgot about the conversation. When Eagelson’s wife made the news, I was as blown away as everyone else.”

“When did you learn it was X?” Runstom asked.

Parson sighed. “Two days after the election results were in. I got a bouquet of flowers. I mean, I got lots of gifts from friends and supporters. But one bouquet had a note that just said, ‘Congratulations on your victory.’ It was signed ‘X’. Normally I wouldn’t have given it much thought. But something in the back of my mind warned me.”

“Did you ask the aide about it?” Jax asked.

“She was gone. She collected her last paycheck and didn’t show up to work after the election.”

“Okay,” Runstom said. “So when did you hear from X again?”

“It wasn’t until I got the cookies. There was a card. Wait, I think I still have it!” She got up off the bed suddenly, wavered for a second or two, then went into a set of drawers and dug around. She pulled out a small, white, folded-over slip of paper and handed it to Runstom.

He opened it and read it. Jax tried to lean over and get a look, but the officer just folded it back up and stuck it in his pocket. “Okay, Linda. We’re going to take the transmitter and the chip. You’re not going anywhere for a while, so we’re choosing to trust you. We’ll be back to check on you ever other day or so. If you know anything else, it’d be wise to let us know.”

“I just can’t believe this,” she said, her voice cracking. “I heard what happened to that block on B-4. I didn’t believe it was me who did it. But now I know. I killed those people. I killed those innocent people!”