She pursed her lips and scrunched her nose, thinking. “I have never seen this before. But I’m sure you’ve surmised by now that, yes, that is my maker mark. And that makes me very concerned that someone is either helping themselves to my equipment”—she looked back at the scanner, rubbing her neck—“or is trying to associate my name with something that I am not a part of. And I don’t like either one of those scenarios.”

“You’re sure it’s not something you made a long time ago and forgot about?” Scylla asked. “I mean, look how worn that thing is. It had to have been buried for a few years, at least. If not a few centuries,” she added under her breath.

Mama D replied, “Definitely not. Every time I upgrade my devices, I change my maker mark so I can keep track of when something was made. See these curlicues here?” She pointed to the monogram in the trapezoid’s corner. “I added those when I got this printer”—she pointed to a machine against the back wall—“about three months ago. So it would have to be newly made.” She pulled the glasses off her nose and tucked an errant hair into her bun. “Though it sure doesn’t look like it, does it? I suppose it could be a coincidence, but I don’t like it.”

She narrowed her eyes at the four of us. “Would you mind if I held on to this for a few days, so I could get a better look at it?”

We all looked at Scylla. She was the one who had found the object, so it was as close to being hers as anything else.

“That’s fine,” she said. “We need to make sure GSAF doesn’t find out that we took it, though. After today—that is, we technically aren’t supposed to take things off-site, like you said. It’s just that there’s been some kind of weird things turning up, and after Tamara saw that mark…” She omitted the part where we’d smuggled the object off-site before Tamara had seen the monogram, of course. But it wasn’t necessary to tell the whole truth there.

“Right. Then we’d better make sure no one tells Bryn.” Delia’s voice was severe. “She’s uptight around GSAF enough as it is, but with AresTec applying for a permit to expand into Tharsis Province, Bryn’d probably have an aneurysm if she heard about this.”

“If I heard about what?” Bryn asked from the top of the stairs. My stomach jumped up into my throat, but Delia didn’t miss a step. Before I could blink, the object was back in the scanner and the lid shut.

“That Tamara’s planning on dropping out of school to join the circus,” she said evenly.