Ink, wearing her usual short-sleeved blouse and Dockers, shook her head and ran her fingers through spikes of black hair. Ink was Korean, though she’d been raised as an adopted child in the States, and as usual, her skin was liberally covered with the tattoos that had given the woman her sobriquet. The wild card had given her the ability to control the appearance of those tattoos with exceptional detail and versatility. Today, the tattoos were echoing the reports she was handling, with text slowly scrolling down her arms like a fleshy marquee.

Ink had been with the Committee for only a few months now, and Barbara already wondered how she’d managed before. Ink had also become a semi-confidante for Barbara; there was something about the young woman: a carefully concealed vulnerability that drew Barbara to her.

“I can’t tell you, Mizz B.” Barbara had quickly given up any hope of convincing Ink to call her “ma’am” or “Ms. Baden,” as did most of the staff. Ink’s competence as Barbara’s chief of staff more than made up for her casual attitude. “I’ve called the people who sent in the last three reports, and I’m sure they all believe they’re telling me the truth, but they’re also all telling me different and contradictory things: food riots, some kind of student uprising, an attempted military coup. I don’t think anyone knows what’s actually going on. But it’s clear enough that there’s something awry in Kazakhstan, and specifically around Talas. Whatever the trouble is, it is growing. Fast.”

“I want you to call the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek,” Barbara told the woman. “Tell them we’ve gotten troubling reports out of Talas and we need to know what the problem is there ASAP. They have to have good contacts on the ground there. Keep forwarding any new reports to my phone, especially when you can verify the truth of them.”

“I’ll do that. But I’m worried. Things are getting worse there, not better, and the contradictions in the reports…” Ink pressed her lips together. “Somehow, those worry me even more than what I’m hearing.”

“I agree. I think we need people on the ground ourselves to tell us. I’m going to see Klaus now and try to convince him that we need to get boots on the ground there.”

Ink nodded once to Barbara, ran fingers through her hair once more, and left the office, the tattoos on her arm losing the appearance of text and shifting to abstract, Escher-like patterns. Barbara gathered up the papers in front of her, put them in a folder, and went down the hall to Klaus’s office. She nodded to his secretary, who waved her on.

“Hold his calls,” Barbara said as she passed. Then, as she entered the office: “Klaus…”