Four years in space meant that the family couldn’t come back to Earth without suffering potentially deadly complications. She couldn’t find any public feeds or recordings of them from the station. The parents had arrest records on Earth, during the pre-regulation protests of the sixties. Since then, they’d become practicing lawyers and model citizens, the mother in bioethics, the father in finance. A Neo-Buddhist monk had married them and later became the head of Eko-Yi colony, eventually leading a successful effort to gain the station’s independence. Josephine Lee had a strong public presence for her work. Swarm feeds showed the family doing typical activities on Earth, with the boy encased in a mech-suit in his later years.

After that, they effectively disappeared onto Eko-Yi. No public appearances. No messages back to Earth.

Welga scratched at her neck. The family had no traceability. The blackout of the caliph’s empire was the only place on Earth where the Machinehood could disappear… but what if they weren’t on Earth? It struck her as more implausible than the sentient artificial intelligence theories, but she searched the rest of the report anyway. The only mention of the space stations was the connection with the smart-metal fragment. Jun-ha Park had never lived in space, and no analyst had followed up with his family. Welga added her findings to the document.

A dead child with unusual genes whose family moved off-world. A Machinehood operative with matching DNA sections. Smart-metal innards manufactured in space, a place as blacked out as the Maghreb. Was there a connection between Eko-Yi and al-Muwahhidun?

The space station had been built as a joint venture between China and India, a good-faith effort as the two countries learned to cooperate for the first time in modern history. China had established infrastructure in the Central African Republic, but the caliph had pushed their influence out of the Maghreb along with every other nation. He didn’t want their notorious spy capabilities breaching his information blackout. Would he buy tech from off-world rather than developing his own? Were the connections all coincidence? Was she giving it too much weight because of Connor?

The image of his bruised, emaciated face in the taxi filled her with guilt. Maybe he’s right… maybe I should quit this whole operation and protect the man I love. Someone else can take care of the rest of the world. She thought about Briella Jackson’s life bleeding out over a hotel rug. The other funders. The dead and wounded at the refinery. She saw the echoes from Marrakech, her squad mates and their captain lying scattered across the street, the acrid taste of smoke filling her throat. She hadn’t saved any of them. Was she being an idiot, thinking she could handle the Maghreb after so many years?