She unsealed an inside pocket on her jacket and handed me the key, which was designed to look like a feed-accessible memory clip. I downloaded the address information and spent one minute and forty-three seconds trying to access Mensah’s implant. So it was actually blocked for me, too. “Gurathin may be right about the main station security barrier.” I hated to say it.

Pin-Lee slumped in disappointment. “We don’t have much longer to raise the ransom. I was going to try to hire a local security company to help us, and just hope the one I picked hadn’t been paid off by GrayCris.” She looked away from the window, eyeing me again. “Speaking of pay-offs, the company is playing a double game, right?”

I was glad Pin-Lee had thought of that already and wasn’t going to deny reality. “There’s a ninety-five percent chance,” I told her. The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop. GrayCris’ best option at this point was to pour as much money in as possible.

Pin-Lee groaned and rubbed her face. “I’m almost glad you’re here.”

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

WHEN OUR BUBBLE RETURNED to the station, I went to a hotel kiosk to book a room and Pin-Lee went to get the others. She thought we needed to talk as a group in private. I sort of did, too. (We could have done it via the feed in the garden seating area, but I didn’t trust the humans not to wave their arms and draw attention.)

I took a pod up to the room and of course there was no security feed inside because of the stupid hotel wanting to lure humans in with promises of room privacy so it could record them in the public spaces. This hotel was less expensive than the previous one but the pretty quotient was about the same. And the feed was choked, unless of course you happened to know how to get around that.

The room was a lot more practical, with a normal-sized bed folded up into the wall to leave extra space for chairs, and a display surface that only took up a fourth of a wall instead of all of it, and a bathing facility with more room for towels. SecUnits are never allowed to sit down or use human furniture whether on or off duty, so I sat in one of the chairs and put my feet up on the table. Then I took my feet off the table because it wasn’t comfortable. I entertained myself by infiltrating the hotel’s security system while I waited.