“Paranoid much? That feed probably goes directly to his AR display,” Rosalyn explained. “A few guys in our labs did this. I always thought it was insane, you know, just choose a personal code and make it a long one.”

“Right. Why would you do that?” Edison asked, leaning over to watch her flick through the few icons on the tablet.

“Added security. Nobody can touch this thing without being recorded, so Piero, if he was still with us and his AR chip was functioning, would know if anyone tampered with his stuff. I guarantee you there’s a keylogger, too. We all used them at . . . at my work,” she said. Edison caught the hesitation, flagging it for later. She had freely mentioned that she worked somewhere important, but now he wondered just how important.

Rosalyn stopped, squinted, then faced him squarely and held up the tablet, showing him the usual start-up screen.

“Anything strange about this to you?”

Edison raked his eyes over the three icons. Mail, ScribNotes and Trash.

“It’s a little bare-bones,” he said. “Kinda sad. Very sad.”

“We can’t access new mail without a signal, but look.” She opened his inbox. It was completely empty. “Does your inbox look like that? Mine certainly doesn’t.”

“A killer with a scrubbed inbox,” Edison gave her. “Or he doesn’t get much mail. Would you send him messages?”

“God, no, he’s a creep, but no professional has a completely scoured inbox. It’s shady, Edison. Everything about this is shady. Tuva. The badge. The note. He’s starting to seem like way more than just hired security.” She swiveled the tablet back around, navigating into the trash, which was also empty, and then into ScribNotes, which was filled to the gills with . . .

“Code,” she murmured. She scrolled and scrolled, her eyes getting wider as she went, so wide Edison felt a cramp of nervousness in his gut. “We should have Misato look at this. Here.”

Her fingertip moved over what looked like a screen name in the otherwise unintelligible, garbled language.

pe_BRIT0711007

Rosalyn stared at the little slice of code for a long time, then her shoulders began to tremble. He watched her crumple in on herself, then slowly, carefully turn toward him.

“That’s an employee ID code,” she said, her voice oddly robotic. “I recognize it. I have one just like it; all Belrose Industries employees are assigned one. Oh my God, Dad, what were you getting us into?”

Rosalyn clutched the tablet to her chest, going suddenly pale behind her visor. He instinctively reached to touch her shoulder, and she leaned into him almost imperceptibly. There was a tremor in her fingers, a dull sheen to her eyes.

“We’re connected to this,” she went on with a shake of her head. “Belrose Industries. My family. What would my dad want with this stuff? What would anyone want with this stuff?”

—