“That’s why we have to do things this way, because right off the top of my head, neither am I.” I gestured at the server bank. “Like Dave says, this isn’t just me and a team that fits in a van anymore; this is a business. You know why corporate espionage keeps happening, no matter how bad they make the penalties for getting caught?”

“Greed?” ventured Alaric.

“Poor judgment brought on by possession of insufficient data?” said Kelly.

“People stop caring,” said Dave.

I pointed at him. “Give that man a prize. People stop caring. Once you reach the point where you’re working with more people than can comfortably go for drinks together, folks stop giving as much of a shit. Politics creep in. Do I trust everyone who works for us with the day-to-day? Yeah. I’d trust every Irwin we have at my back in a firefight, and every Newsie we’ve got to tell the truth according to their registered biases. But we go dangling a giant cherry of a story like ‘The CDC has illegal clones, and their dead researcher isn’t really dead, oh, and maybe there’s a conspiracy blocking certain research paths,’ somebody’s going to leak it. They’ll do it for profit, they’ll do it because it gives them the leverage to get a better job with another site, or they’ll do it because it’s just too damn good not to share. Every person we bring in on this is another chance that this gets out before we’re ready, and we’re all fucked.”

“Some of us more than others,” muttered Kelly, sotto voce.

“You trusted us with Tate,” said Becks.

“We didn’t have a choice with Tate, and we didn’t understand the stakes the way we do now,” I said. “We tell Mahir, we tell Maggie, and we stop there until we know what’s going on. Anyone really feel like arguing?”

No one did.

“Good,” I said, after taking another look around the room. “Doc? From what you’re saying, the CDC’s out of the picture. I’m assuming that means WHO is also compromised.”

She nodded marginally. “WHO and USAMRIID. There’s no way we can go to them without the CDC finding out what we’re doing. But…” She hesitated.

“But what?” asked Becks. “I’m sorry, Doc, you can’t just show up here with your corpses and your conspiracy and your craziness and not give us at least a place to start.”