Though it had been only a few hours, the state of the investigation into Paki’s disappearance was in disarray. Stacia had taken it for granted how much Maya aided them in their day-to-day work. They created specific subroutines to aid in making connections between cases and scenarios. Still not with the creativity of a human imagination. Maybe. Stacia mulled the idea of Maya’s other possible artistic endeavors. Paki missing meant that the workload now fell on Dina and Hondo. Without his constant vigilance, the pair would work all around the problem without actually getting anywhere. Perhaps that was the entire point. Paki. Maya. Maybe this was about the investigation itself, taking out the pieces that drove it in order to slow the entire process down. All Stacia knew for sure was that she was missing something. It was foolish to imagine that she would be able to investigate as the captain. Her simply entering a room disrupted the space. Put everyone on edge. Though maybe she could use that to her advantage.

“What do we have?” Stacia asked.

As head of her security team, Kenya York was the closest thing Stacia had to a jeli. She turned slowly, setting down her probe. “I see you, Captain.”

“I’m sorry. I see you, Kenya.”

“Not much. Evidence of a scuffle, obviously.” Kenya enacted the virtual imaging womb. Paki’s chamber appeared all around them in hard light approximation. “Maya being glitchy does not help. We’d come to depend on them to help sift through the copious visual information. Not to mention trace analysis and genestream profiling. I’m still running tracking protocols tracing everyone’s movements.”

Stacia studied the room, capturing an image and expanding it for closer inspection to test out the womb’s capabilities. She usually read only the final reports. It had been a long time since she’d been in an investigation firsthand. Her eyes drifted back to the overturned chair and smear of blood against the wall. Where a head might have tumbled against. She enlarged the screen capture of his workstation. No Code Black / Eyes Only material, but some files had been flagged. Related to the Mothership Incident, an attempted breach. No one should even know enough to go looking. On the neighboring screen, an overview of Bek’s classmates’ work.

Stacia wondered what connection there could be between the Mothership and her son’s homework. “So it’s going to be a minute.”

“It’s going to be a minute,” Kenya repeated. Without heat or a hint of sarcasm. Only a gentle reminder.

Comfort was too strong a word, but Stacia found a measure of calm in her presence. It allowed her room to trust a little. “I had an unauthorized visitor.”

“When?”

“Right before Paki’s abduction. An O.E. operative. He breached my chamber using a site-to-site glyph.”

“Then he’s on this ship.” Kenya turned from the scene. “This … wasn’t in any report.”