Mensah might be the face of the group of political entities and companies determined to get GrayCris for killing their citizens/employees. But I was the one who had made the recordings of the most important evidence, I was the active component of the company SecSystem who had collected and stored all that data. If I was shown to be unreliable, compromised, whatever, then the SecSystem’s data could be called into question and that might help GrayCris’ case.

Another possibility was that the Preservation team had been contacted by GrayCris and asked to lure me here in exchange for Mensah’s release. Yeah, that possibility was no fun at all.

I watched Ratthi on the recordings, but the automated system had had no reason to zoom in and the resolution wasn’t good enough for a real evaluation. But I ran a few of my archived records from the survey mission: Ratthi walking when he was tired after a long day, absorbed in a conversation as he walked with Arada and Overse, laughing and pretending to defend himself as Pin-Lee threw a cushion at him, running as we frantically loaded a hopper to escape.

I wanted to say he walked through this hotel like it was a prison, but I wasn’t sure. Real humans don’t act like the ones in the media.

I’d just have to wait and see. (And yes, that was painfully stressful.)

The surveillance was an interesting problem, but not unsolvable. Everywhere but in the lobby, the hotel had its own secured feed, which it charged extra to access. To encourage use, the hotel was choking the public feed. This meant the security system already had code in place to redirect feed accesses. That was convenient for me. I set some alerts on the various feeds in play and started picking which shows I wanted to watch on my gigantic display surface. I only picked old favorites I had watched before, though, because I really needed to buckle down and work on some new code. With luck, I wouldn’t need it, but … Let’s face it, I would probably need it.

Five hours and seventeen minutes later Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin left their room and headed toward the pod junction. Twenty-three seconds after they left their room, the system registered a door opening and closing in the same section. Two hostiles exited the room to follow the Preservation team, and I was able to set a redirect on the feed stream they were using to get orders and deliver reports.

I waited to see if the Preservation team were just going to one of the food service or entertainment areas. It would be safer (for everybody, but especially me) to approach them outside the hotel.