“No, I don’t. Dr. Mantis said I don’t.”
“It’s a big black hole in your vision, Go Jung-hwa. And you’re going to fall into it.” Layne’s mouth opened. Hwa saw down inside it. It wasn’t pink, or even red. It was black and huge and deep and cold. Like the ocean. “You’re going to fall into it, just like the rest of us, Hwa. Hwa. Hwa. HWA!”
She sat up. Joel had both his arms up, forearms out, blocking the sweeping blade of her arm. Sweat rolled down her neck. Slowly, stiffly, she lowered her arm.
“Your lights were still on,” Joel said. “And you were shouting.”
The adjoining rooms were to help her protect him, not the other way around. So much for that idea. She ran a hand over her face. “Sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“I had a bad dream. That’s all.”
Joel turned around. The images from Layne’s and Calliope’s files were still projected up on the ceiling. “Well, no wonder.”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry.” She raised her arm to wave the pictures away, but again Joel blocked her movement.
“Are those your friends?”
“Aye.” Hwa nodded. “They are. Were. They were my friends.”
Joel sat down on the bed. He tucked one leg under him and leaned back. “Two USWC 314 members, both with Krebs machines in their bodies, a month apart.” He raised his voice slightly. “Prefect, does time of death for each of these women match the same phase of the moon?”
“No.”
Joel shrugged. “Just a guess. Sometimes these things are lunar.”
“These things?”
“Serial killers.”
Hwa shook her head. “No. It’s not that. Layne died when she was at the bar with me. Not like Calliope.”
Joel turned to look at her. “Your friend died right in front of you?”
Hwa’s lips went hot. She looked at her knees. It occurred to her that her arms and legs were bare—she was just in a singlet and her underwear—and Joel hadn’t even mentioned her stain. Jesus, the kid was so good. Great, even. Zachariah Lynch was right. His youngest really was the best of the line.
“Yeah,” she said. “She died right in front of me. I couldn’t…” She clamped her lips shut for a moment. “It happened really fast.”
Joel grabbed another pillow and placed it behind his head. Then he lay down perpendicular to her along the foot of the bed. “Prefect?”
“Ready.”
“Confirm Joel Lynch.”
A pause. “Confirmed.”
“Execute override code Juliett Lima Oscar, 080378.”
Slowly, the mosaics over the redacted forensics reports dissolved away to reveal complete documents. More images appeared. So did other documents—and they looked to be internal memos, with the Lynch letterhead over all of them.
“What did you just do?”
“I have a backdoor to the Prefect system.” Hwa watched Joel pull up Calliope’s and Layne’s reports. He blew past all the personal data and opened up the designs of the Krebs machines. “Requesting profile data on all team members related to Krebs development, including classified material.” A series of folders with headshots and employee ID numbers appeared. Joel turned to her. “Anything in particular you think we should look for?”
Hwa stretched out alongside him to stare at the ceiling. “Filter out all developers not living in New Arcadia.”
A significant number of employees faded from view.
“Fifteen men and five women,” Joel said. “We really have to work on that ratio.”
Hwa checked her watch. “Prefect, if I gave you my old password to the Belle de Jour system, could you try to match these names against client and appointment data? They’ll be encrypted.”
Another long pause. “That will not be a problem.”
“User G-O space J-U-N-G hyphen H-W-A; password G-zero-F-C-K-Y-R-dollar sign-L-F.”
“Nice,” Joel said. “Subtle.”