Part 18 (2/2)

Or both. The tile floor, with its bloodstains, seemed to cover a matching floor, but Nyquist couldn't be certain. The walls were made of the same concrete as above.

It bothered him that his links worked down here. The jammers should have kept all but the emergency links off-even with the security system down. And it was colder down here than it should have been. The air smelled musty.

If this was supposed to be an area where someone could safely hide, the environmental systems should be top grade. Instead, they seemed to have failed.

”Find anything?” Romey asked. ”No,” Nyquist said. He looked around, examined the area above, then the floor again, but saw nothing unusual.

Finally he climbed out of the square hole and back into the main part of the living area. The internal pinging shut off.

”My links work down there,” he said.

”They do?” she asked.

He nodded.

She peered down as if the hole held obvious answers. ”They shouldn't work at all.”

”I know,” he said. ”The air seems old, too. There's something odd about it.”

”Let me look,” she said, and before he could respond, she went down the steps.

He watched her reexamine everything he had looked at. She gently used her gloved hands to examine the wall, and then she crouched.

She leaned forward, and there was a bang. Then the floor rose and slammed into place. Only she didn't rise with it. She should have. That floor covered the base of the hole, and she had been standing on that base.

”Romey?” he shouted. ”You okay?”

She didn't answer. Or maybe she couldn't.

He sprinted across the floor to the automatic opener, but as he was about to press it, the bang repeated itself.

The floor fell open, and he heard Savita Romey laugh.

”This is brilliant,” she said.

He walked back to the hole, as if she hadn't scared him to death.

He peered inside. ”What the h.e.l.l just happened?”

”The floor doesn't fall,” she said. ”It only looks like it does. It slides under another part of the floor. When everything closes, lights come on along the walls. It's yet another security system. Or maybe a storage area.”

”Did your links work when it closed up?” he asked.

”Yeah,” she said. ”And you'd think they wouldn't. Someone can trace you through links.” ”So maybe it's not designed to hide people, but things,” he said. ”Or maybe it's malfunctioning,” she said. He sighed. ”We need more techs.”

”Everything about this case seems to be about techs,” she said, ”and I have a hunch it's only going to get worse.”

26.

DeRicci turned to the third report without looking at the raw data again.

So this time, she was surprised to find that the information was about power glitches in the Port of Armstrong.

The power glitches were minor, maybe two or three seconds long at their worst, just enough for a dimming of the lights and backup systems to start.

The port had enough of those glitches that it called in outside experts to examine the system. Those experts found nothing wrong with the port's systems, nor any reason the glitches should have happened. Yet they had.

And the dates of the power losses coincided with the dates that the fifteen-year-old information vanished from the system.

Or at least, that was what it seemed like when computer records got traced. No one knew for certain when the information vanished.

It could have vanished ten years ago or during the week of the power glitches.

All the data stream told the researchers was that something in that data pool-where the information had been stored-had been either accessed or removed during that period of time.

Or, as one researcher noted, someone tried tried to access or remove the information during that period of time. to access or remove the information during that period of time.

No one knew for certain.

DeRicci put a hand to her forehead. Her stomach was in knots. Something about this series of reports bothered her, and it wasn't just that the raw data was too technical for her to understand. She could get someone whose expertise she trusted to look at the material.

What bothered her was that all of this seemed important, but she couldn't tell at first glance what the importance was.

Usually security breaches were pretty clear cut. A member of a species without access to the Earth Alliance had gotten stuck in holding at the port. A bomb threat against Gagarin Dome. A murder threat against the governor-general.

DeRicci had dealt with all of that and more, and while it might have seemed difficult while the case was ongoing, her understanding of the security breaches was easy.

She wasn't even sure whether this was important. Although the loss of banking records and port records was troubling.

She turned to the last three reports and saw more of the same. Those reports, written by a.n.a.lysts farther up the food chain, tried to put the three disparate pieces of information together, to show why there could be a threat.

These were the kinds of reports she hated. And these three reports were the kind that had caused her to examine the raw data herself before reading reports.

Sometimes she thought the midlevel a.n.a.lysts were hired for their imagination, not for their knowledge. They could make up a threat where none existed or they could completely miss the real threat for some imaginary threat.

She skimmed these reports, seeing very little worthwhile in them except that the three separate a.n.a.lysts, working without contact to each other, were as disturbed by the preceding three information reports and the raw data as she had been.

Because during the time she'd been looking at the reports, she wondered whether the sense of unease that she felt had come from the resurrection of Ki Bowles's news story or the reports themselves. That separate a.n.a.lysts who had nothing to do with each other had the same sense of unease that she had made her feel better.

Or worse, depending on how immediate the threat seemed.

DeRicci wasn't sure how immediate this threat was or wasn't.

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