Pryce nodded as the specialist used the passwords and addresses Brandt had given them to download the files directly onto Pryce’s personal slate. It was as Kaori had speculated. The originals were images, off-center, slightly askew, uncropped. And there were images here, pages of memos, parts of Becker’s diary, that hadn’t been released.

Pryce would use those.

“Good,” she said, watching as the specialist physically disabled the network on the slate as Pryce had instructed.

“I’ve done my part,” Brandt said. “I can go now?”

Pryce looked at the woman. Brandt put on a brave face, but there was a quaver in her voice. The woman wasn’t a threat, so far as Pryce could see. And God knew there was no reason to put her infant son in federal custody. But they still had to be sure.

“Soon,” Pryce said. “With any luck, you’ll be on your way home within hours.” She gestured to the men waiting outside. The men in white lab coats. The door opened.

Brandt looked around, confused, then frightened as the technicians put their hands on her, started to pull her away. “You said if I cooperated I could go!”

Pryce nodded. “I did. But first we have to make sure you told us the truth. I believe you’re quite familiar with Nexus, Dr Brandt?”

Brandt’s face turned to horror.

“Well,” Pryce said, “now you get to try a slightly modified version.”

60
Yingjie

Wednesday 2040.12.12

The Avatar watched carefully as Chen finished the preparations for the trap. She forced him to check each step, again, and again. Nothing could go wrong.

The equipment she’d requested from her new staff had arrived this morning. The metal box. The pressurized cylinders, filled with the molecular recipe she’d specified, one her greater self had designed out of curiosity but never deployed. Would it work as expected?

It will work, she told herself again. The only question is how fast.

That too, would be informative. A test, for a much larger deployment of this new molecular recipe. A much larger deployment with much larger consequences.

So much was going well. The censors were hers, ready to let through the information she wanted. The Peace and Harmony Friends were hers, selectively dropping hints, changing the narrative, priming the populace for the revelations and events to come.

But she was still so vulnerable, trapped in this tiny body.

And she was watched by a potential assassin – Chen’s driver Yingjie.