Trent: “In a way, yes. I just got off the phone with division. They’re scared. I get the feeling this thing is about to go very bad, in a very big way, and I don’t think they’re telling me everything.”

Dani’s father: “Why would they hold back?”

Trent: “I think they’re getting ready to cover their own asses, if the worst outcome happens. I think it’ll be a few of us here who take the fall. Me, for sure.”

There was a silence. A few seconds.

Trent: “I’m speaking with all the department heads here, starting with you, because I want to know as much as I can. Anything at all you’ve heard, anything you even suspect, I want to know.”

Dani’s father: “I don’t think anything I know is related—”

Trent: “Let me tell you what I know, first, and then if you can build on it, I’d appreciate it.”

Dani’s father: “Of course.”

Trent: “First there’s Pierce. Gone without a trace, one year ago. Now there’s Coleman, missing under identical circumstances. None of his relatives can account for him, no sign he’s using his credit card or hitting ATMs. Nothing at all. He’s just gone, like Pierce—into thin air. We dug into both of their work histories, tried to find anything they had in common. We came up with exactly one thing. An old project called Rigel. You know it?”

Dani’s father: “Rigel … No, what is that?”

Trent: “I know very little beyond the names of a few people involved … and how it started and ended. It was a black-budget thing, quite a while back now. Pierce established it, right here on-base, almost ten years ago. He worked on it for five years. He had a handful of people off-site doing peripheral work on it—people at labs in D.C., and a few out west. Whatever they were developing, after those five years Pierce himself pulled the plug. He flew to D.C., went before some closed-door Senate panel, and told them they should kill the project. His own project. He said it should be disinvented, if possible. Burn the files, scrap the equipment, everything. Like it never existed.”

Dani’s father: “Jesus.”

Trent: “Pierce was that scared of it, whatever it was. And the government followed his advice. They erased Rigel right out of the books. You can imagine, then, that it raised a few eyebrows when Pierce disappeared last year. It was possible someone had grabbed him to learn about Rigel. All the files were already long gone, but obviously he still had important information in his head.”

Dani’s father: “So now with Coleman missing, too—”