Judas Unchained

“No, of course not, Ms. Myo, I know who you are. But that’s the truth. This is the second day they haven’t shown up. It’s quite a talking point here. The senior partners aren’t happy.”

“Check their offices,” she told the arrest team.

The forensic staff was given the all clear to come up. Freeze programs were loaded into the company’s entire array network, and their data copied into high-density storage systems for analysis by an RI. All three offices of the missing associates were sealed off, and a detailed examination initiated.

Seaton lived closest to the office, an apartment in a luxurious block on Park Avenue, just past East Seventy-ninth Street. Paula took five of the arrest team with her, using their priority clearance to bounce through traffic, even sidelining the cabs.

As before, she embargoed the building’s cybersphere connection. The uniformed doorman let her and the team straight through the grandiose lobby and into the elevator.

Mrs. Geena Seaton came hurrying into the hallway as soon as the maid announced her notorious visitor. According to Paula’s file, the Seatons had been married for eighteen years. Neither of them came from a particularly well-to-do background, though they were clearly making up for that now. Raw ambition was powering them up toward the kind of wealth and professional status that would support their high-life aspirations.

Geena Seaton wore a prim floral-print silk dress, her face and hair perfectly made up, heels clicking on the polished floor, looking as if she were on her way to some career-making function of her husband’s. The perfect supportive wife for an ambitious associate in New York’s ruthless corporate society.

When asked about her husband’s unexplained absence, she said he was away at a legal convention. Somewhere in Texas, she wasn’t sure where, the office would have the address. He’d left with rather short notice, admittedly, but someone else from the firm had dropped out at the last minute. “Why do you need to know?” she demanded. “What is this about?” Her delicately mascaraed eyes scanned dismissively across the team standing behind Paula.

“There are some anomalies we believe your husband can help to clarify for us,” Paula said noncommittally. “Isn’t it unusual for him to be out of contact with you for this long?”

“Hardly. I expect he’s getting intimate with some female delegate and doesn’t want to be disturbed. Really, we have several clauses about nonexclusivity in our partnership contract. It benefits both of us.”

“I see. In that case we will require you to come with us for a medical forensic examination.”

“Impossible, I have a hundred things to do.”

“You will come with us now, either voluntarily or under arrest.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“Indeed it is.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m not at liberty to disclose that.” Paula wasn’t even sure if a neurological scan would be able to identify a Starflyer agent. All she had to go on was Bradley Johansson’s propaganda, that the alien somehow mentally enslaved humans. There might be unusual brain wave activity that the forensic neurologists could spot. It was a long shot, but everything else he had been claiming for the last hundred years was coming uncomfortably true.

“Am I under suspicion? What is this anomaly? Surely it’s not that tiresome undeclared payment to the Senate aide again. That was cleared up last year, you know.”

“We can discuss this at our headquarters.”

Geena Seaton glared at Paula. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Legally, I mean. My husband’s firm is not to be trifled with. I had to threaten that dreadful reporter girl with an antiharassment suit yesterday; and I certainly won’t hesitate to apply for one against you.”

“What reporter girl?”

“The cheap one who dresses like a hooker the whole time. I remember she did an invasion report for Alessandra Baron. Mellanie somebody.”

***

The express from EdenBurg delivered Renne back in Paris just after midday. She should have gone back to the office straightaway to file her report, but it had been a long frustrating trip. Her duty shift had lasted for nineteen straight hours so far, and as well as being irritable from lack of rest she was also ravenous. The little restaurant she and her colleagues often visited was only three hundred meters from the office, so she got the cab to drop her off there first. Fifteen minutes while she had a coffee and a burger wouldn’t make any difference. With any luck, Hogan and Tarlo wouldn’t be back from Mars yet. She was still mildly jealous she hadn’t been included.