He got out his credentials. “Stanford Runstom, Modern Policing and Peacekeeping. We’re investigating a criminal case and we need to know the names of those inspectors.”

An hour later, they were on another mag-rail, back out from Grovenham, this time to a residential sub-dome called Tamillan. They had come back from Industrial Sub-Dome A only to pass straight through Grovenham and out the other side. On toward what could possibly be their final destination on Sirius. They rode in silence for the first half of the trip out. Runstom knew Jax wasn’t happy that he’d pulled the ModPol card, but they’d gotten the results they were looking for.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” Jax said, finally broaching the subject.

Runstom had his notebook out, but he wasn’t really reading it, just kind of staring at it. “I don’t know exactly.”

The officer fidgeted. This was it. They had the name of their suspected programmer. Their last viable lead. They were just about out of cash. They were probably long overdue for getting caught by ModPol. In any case, ModPol would be on them very soon now. Runstom’s credentials only held weight when they could be verified, which meant someone at the plant office had to run them through the system. Normally, cred-validation would get logged for some ModPol drone to review the details as they worked through a backlog. But Runstom knew that there would be a flag somewhere just for him that would set off alarms.

Only one of the VSI employees that were part of the “RG” team had checked out a LifSup system for an off-site inspection in the last couple of months: a core-programming inspector by the name of Jenna Zarconi. She had identified a particular quirky flaw in one of the systems coming off the line and logged her reasons for needing to take it home over the weekend for analysis. The check-out log also mentioned that the problem could be systematic, and that there was a potential that other systems coming off the line could suffer from the same issue. She had needed to investigate further, and couldn’t wait until the following week.

The core of the LifSup system was basically just a specialized computer. It was small enough without the peripheral components that she would have easily transported it home, probably just taking it with her on the rail. The check-in log a few days later showed a mea culpa, with an explanation having something to do with a false-positive on a poorly designed test. Jax postulated that the management was probably so relieved to find out that there was not a serious issue on their line, they overlooked the fact that the flawed test was actually written by Jenna Zarconi herself. The phrase who examines the doctors? came to Runstom’s mind when Jax explained this detail, though he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it. It had the ring of something his mother would say. In any case, it seemed the inspector had written a test that she knew would fail so that she would have an excuse to take the component home. That little detail made her a prime suspect in Runstom’s book.

“What worries me,” Jax said, one hand inside the other, cracking the individual joints in his fingers one at a time. “Is that she’s probably not X. That she’s another pawn. But she knew what she was creating. She was a pawn who knew she was creating something that would hurt people.” He was almost arguing with himself.

“Maybe she’s not a pawn,” Runstom said in a low voice. “Maybe she’s a partner.” He gave himself a minute to digest his own insight. Maybe she was X’s partner. She was close enough to the worst part of the crime that it was possible. “In any case, you’re right. She knows what she did, and that makes her dangerous.”

“Great,” Jax mumbled.

“We have to get it out of her first,” Runstom continued. “We have to make sure she was the programmer. She’s capable, based on her employee profile.”

“If it was her, and she’s being exploited, then X has to be behind it.”

Runstom frowned and looked out the window of the train. The desolate landscape of Sirius-5 blurred on by. “We can start with that angle. Tell her right up front that we’re after X, and we know she was involved.”

“But that we believe she did it against her will,” Jax said, nodding in agreement. “At the very least, we’ll probably get some reaction out of mentioning X at all.”

“Yep.” Runstom knew they’d get a reaction, alright. The officer was not so eager to find another pawn. Another in the long line of victims of exploitation. He was ready to find someone who was guilty. He was ready to find justice.

The scenery went black as the train entered the station tunnel inside the sub-dome Tamillan. He turned and faced the operator. “Now or never.”

CHAPTER 19

“Oh. Hello, Stanford. I thought you were going to call.”

Jax looked from the woman in the doorway to Runstom and back. The woman who answered the door had green skin, similar to the officer’s, although slightly … greener. She was also a lot prettier.

“Hi,” she said to Jax. “I didn’t expect Stanford to bring a friend. Well, to tell the truth – I thought he was going to call me, not just show up.” She stuck out her hand and as he looked at it, he thought about how the color of her half-sleeve, button-up shirt was the kind of white that most domers couldn’t get away with wearing without it clashing against their skin. “I’m Jenna.”

“Hi. I’m, uh.” It occurred to Jax that he should use an alias, but then again, this woman had used her real first name. And Runstom’s. “I’m Jack.” He took her hand and shook it.

They both turned and looked at Runstom, whose mouth was stuck somewhere halfway between open and closed. “Hi,” he said, finally. “Hey. Jenna. Hi.”

She smiled warmly at him. “It’s good to see you again, Stanford.”

“Um. You too,” Runstom said with a cautious hand motion in her direction, like he was waving to someone he didn’t want to see his friends waving to.

She nodded, still smiling. “So,” she said after an awkward pause. “You fellas want to come in? I was just about to open a bottle of wine.”

“Sure,” Jax said. “That sounds great.” He looked at Runstom, who just blinked meaninglessly at him. The officer’s skin had paled into a kind of ashen, gray-green color.

They followed Jenna inside. Jax went in first, as Stanford lagged behind for a moment, sticking his hands into every pocket and digging around frantically. The woman had a nice place. They walked straight into the living room, which was a fairly large space and featured four very comfortable-looking sitting chairs.

“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll go get some glasses.”

She went off into another room. Jax gave Runstom a look, trying to mouth the words, “What’s going on?” Runstom just shook his head and sat down. He stared ahead at nothing and put his fingertips to his temples and held them there, as if trying to keep something from escaping out of his skull.

Jenna Zarconi came back into the room with three wine glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other. The men stood up and she gave each a glass and poured them some wine, then portioned some out for herself. They all sat down and tasted the wine. Jax got the sense that he wasn’t the only one thankful to have something to occupy his mouth momentarily.

“So, Jack,” Jenna said, after a minute or two of uncomfortable silence. “Did Stanford tell you he met me in a bar yesterday? Over in the main dome.”

“Oh,” Jax said, looking briefly at Runstom. “Yeah, actually, he mentioned that.”

“Are you two – partners – of some kind?” she asked. “Stanford didn’t exactly tell me what he does.”

“He’s a consultant,” Runstom said before Jax could say anything. “A technical expert, if you will. I hired him to assist me with this case that I’m working on.”

“I see,” she said, smiling. This bit of information seemed to put her slightly more at ease. She folded her hands together around her glass.