Callum didn’t fit any profile they were used to. He wasn’t motivated by greed or ideology or religion; wasn’t mentally ill or drug addled. Didn’t want to rule the world. Callum was a man in love, and desperate. Best of all, he was smart and tough, unafraid to take chances.

“Do you not think something’s wrong with all this?” Yuri asked.

Kohei let out a small groan. “We got them all. What could be wrong?”

“Yes. We were always going to get them.”

“Not necessarily. It was only because you’re smart enough to work out what was going down that we found Phil Murray.”

“They stuck tape across his mouth. He’d have chewed through eventually.”

“In a disused warehouse.”

“Due a maintenance visit for the lights. And anyway, when Callum took a dive through the portal into exile, we’d have known Murray had been substituted.”

“They’re gone, chief. You need to close the file.”

Yuri stared at a large framed picture on the wall with an August 2091 date along the base. It was Callum and his team gathered around their Ducati 999, all of them with their arms around one another’s shoulders, smiling exuberantly. A tight crew.

“Would you do that for me?” Yuri asked his deputy.

“Chief?”

“If my fiancée had been renditioned, and I was planning to go after her, would you help me, knowing that help would be discovered, and the outcome would mean exile? Permanent exile in the most remote hellhole Connexion could find?”

“Well…I don’t know.”

“No, don’t flatter me; you wouldn’t do it.” Yuri’s forefinger tapped the picture. “Henry Orme’s partner is about to give birth, for God’s sake! Callum didn’t even let him go to the Gylgen plant; he sent him to supervise the Haumea end of the operation where he’d be safe. And the rest, they all care about one another. They’re friends, they face danger together on a weekly basis, they party together, they share the bike. But this…” He stared at the sunlit happy faces, trying to absorb the camaraderie. “To willingly go into an unknown exile together. To make that sacrifice, give up your whole life. Unanimously. I don’t believe it.”

“But…they did do it. They knew we’d send them after Callum, it’s the only way we could be sure this whole rendition thing didn’t leak to the media.”

Yuri moved his finger over to Callum’s head. “Yes. Why, though?”

“They owe him, maybe?”

“No, not owe. Trust. They trust him. Every time they face a disaster, they trust him with their life. He plans every operation. We think they take risks, but actually they don’t. Callum’s too clever for that. He’s got backups and fresh angles and cutoffs all worked out in his head long before they actually take that one step into a danger zone. And that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

“Sorry,” Kohei said. “I just don’t see it.”

Yuri smiled at the picture. “That’s it! We’re not seeing it.”

“Chief?”