“All right, acknowledged. So that scenario would be doubtful.”

“We need to find out what’s happened to Horatio,” Poi Li said. “But without any fuss. Which is where you come in. This has to be kept quiet.”

“Poi Li recommended you,” Ainsley said. “She said you were the one we needed for a job like this. I know this is a big ask, but fuck it, this is my family!”

“It’s a logical ask,” Yuri said, trying to make it sound businesslike—although inside he was flying. A personal favor for Ainsley fucking Zangari? This is my cast-iron route to head of security. “My office already has executive authority, and uses it. I can request any file or operation we need without anyone wondering why.”

“Thanks,” Ainsley said. “I appreciate that, Yuri, I mean it.”

Yuri held up a hand. “This is not a one-person investigation, sir. I understand and appreciate the need for discretion, but I’ll be bringing in some of my team to assist. Not many, but people I trust.”

“Of course.”

“If this is ordinary bad, I need to get started right now.”

“What’s ordinary bad?” Ainsley asked.

“He’s got a dependency problem, or he’s placed some bets offline—neither of which he’ll tell Gwendoline about, for all their lovey-dovey honesty with each other. If he owes money to those kind of people, then right now he’s in some blacked-out room having the shit kicked out of him. The danger there is that once they break him—and they will—he’ll call Gwendoline, begging for money. So first priority, we install a link diversion on her altme. If he calls, that gets routed straight to me.”

“Whatever you need, whatever it costs. Just get it done.”

“Yes, sir.”

—

Yuri called Jessika Mye while he was still in the rickety old lift on his way back down to the entrance hall. She’d joined the Monitoring Office as one of its first recruits, at age thirty-four—a Hong Kong native who’d immigrated to Akitha, where she’d got her exobiology master’s degree. When he asked her why she’d come back to Earth, she’d told him that Akitha was too quiet for her, and she wanted the money to buy full telomere treatments. Yuri could sort of appreciate that; the Utopial principle strove for egalitarianism, but not even their society could afford to provide telomere treatments for the entire population from such an early age. Akitha democratically decided that, for a thirty-four-year-old, it was vanity, not necessity. Jessika was attractive and clearly motivated to remain so. Yuri quite liked that determination, to be able to reject past choices with confidence if they didn’t meet her own demanding standard, so he gave her the job there and then.

“What’s up, chief?” she asked.

“We have a new investigation. I can’t even give you a priority rating, it’s so high.”