“If we had the person in our criminal database, we’d have identified them by now. Ordinary citizens, though?” Crawford shrugged. “Best case, we might get some ancestral matches that we could trace to the region, but our WAI would’ve noted that. The only feature it highlighted were some unusual genomes. Let’s head back to my alcove, and I’ll pull up the details.”

Crawford handed Welga a tether and slipped one over her own wrist. She shared a section of the analysis report that Welga hadn’t reached. The damn thing had grown to over a thousand pages.

“The DNA from the fragment has no significant match to anyone within five percent similarity,” Crawford said. “That means no immediate family.”

Beyond that, the search results listed nearly two hundred people who could be distant relations, none with ancestry from North Africa or the Middle East. One had a note attached: 99.999 percent similarity in several unusual sequences, with greater than 85 percent confidence. That entry belonged to a dead kid named Jun-ha Park. American. Fatal genetic disorder. Died in 2087 at age thirteen. No connection to the caliph.

The number of human genomes in the global public database had exponentially increased since the passage of international safety laws. Any adult who took a drug or used a pill had to submit to genetic screening, but minors were protected. Jun-ha Park’s DNA was logged only because of his unusual medical treatments.

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Crawford said. “I entered everything into evidence. It’s keyed to the code word in case you come across anything related.”

“Thanks,” Welga said. She downloaded the information into her local storage so she could look at it while traveling—or in a blackout zone. “I guess we’ll need more creative methods to identify who this blood belonged to.”

“I suspect I know where you’re going to do that. I just want to say, in case I don’t see you again, good luck.”

“Thanks, Crawford,” Welga said.

That was as close as anyone in this office would get to saying good-bye.

Just before she removed the tether, an alert popped into her visual: Connor Troit is awake. He’s en route to your apartment in San Francisco.

Welga took the elevator to the ground floor and exited the building. Security drones moved to hover above her, making no attempt to hide their presence. Other, far less obvious sensors would be tracking her, too.

Heavy gray clouds looked to threaten rain. Treetops bent as wind stirred fallen leaves, carrying the scents of sunbaked dirt and oak pollen. Storms on the East Coast had moved from seasonal to year-round over the previous half century. They no longer came as a surprise, but she’d ignored the alerts while indoors. The building would be sealed against wind and rain damage in less than thirty minutes. She couldn’t linger outside too long.