From the garage, they took service doors, all of which opened at their touch, which led in turn to a long tunnel. They moved down the tunnel quickly, silently, no other human in sight, slowing only to maneuver the substantial and cumbersome mass of the three carts and their tanks around the bends and corners of the subterranean tunnel network that linked this vast complex of buildings.

At the tunnel’s end, they would make one more turn, and then reach the United States Capitol.

Instead, they stopped, by a red maintenance door with a sign that proclaimed FIRE PROTECTION EQUIPMENT – AUTHORIZED PERSONEL ONLY. Breece punched in a code he’d been given, and it unlocked. They opened the double door, rolled the carts inside, and followed another hallway to an elevator, where they had to unhook the carts from one another. Then down, to another hallway, chain up again, then to another door, which opened to another code.

Breece looked around, and smiled beneath his chameleonware. The walls of the giant room were subdivided into individual panels, each of them labeled. Almost every panel had a set of tanks hooked up to pipes. Breece searched until he found the right label, above a massive panel. Then he and the Nigerian set about silently swapping the tanks they’d brought for the tanks connected to pipes there.

Kate walked slowly, silently, nearly invisibly through Breece’s Baltimore warehouse, clad in high-end chameleonware. The cameras in her visor took picture after picture, amplified the light, presented the scene to her.

She took it in, processed it, made sense of it.

The chemreactors.

The pressurized tanks.

The fittings.

The labels on the tanks.

She put it together with the blueprints and maps she’d found in his accounts.

She knew his identities. She knew his accounts. He’d been careful with everyone. But not with her. Not anywhere near as careful as she had been with him.

Kate stopped in the middle of the warehouse, turned slowly, taking it all in, imagining it in action.

Breece was up to something big. This part, at least, she approved of.

73
By Their Very Absence

Monday 2041.01.07

Sam sat at the terminal in her office, her face lit by the pale blue glow from the screen, her brows knit together.

Feng was long gone for the night. She’d left, herself, had eaten with the children, had played games and read stories and given baths and kisses and hugs and goodnights.

The best thing ever. There was nothing that compared.

Now they were asleep. And she was back.

Her role as an external advisor to Division Six came with certain access. A security clearance. Not a particularly high one. Less than she’d enjoyed in the US. But she needed some access to do her job.