“Not time, even, but…some other perspective,” Alison tried. “It wasn’t like it was seeing the future, it just had such a perfect and complete grasp of our present that it could make these predictions. But it was patchy. And when the network dropped, then whatever careful chain of trades it had set in motion couldn’t be completed. That was because the grand plan couldn’t be accessed, and so it all crapped out right then. The network cutting out caused the temperature fluctuations, by the way, not the other way around. The heat didn’t cause the network to fail; the network brought the cold with it.” Alison scratched Simms behind the ears, and he grumbled at her.

“So then what happened?”

Alison’s laptop had snapped back to its regular view. Then all she could see was the trade data unspooling from SFI’s system, unheeded and lost in the ether. When she scrabbled to see what she could salvage from those earlier revelations, there was no trace of it whatsoever. And she had absolutely no proof it had happened.

She had tried to call Charen but couldn’t reach her. Eventually she had gone down to the server room, braving the blast of cold air when she opened the door.

Charen wasn’t in there.

The only rational explanation was that she had gone out of the fire escape. Although Alison wasn’t entirely sure where she stood on rational explanations, after what she’d seen. Certainly the investigation was never able to locate Charen Volkovska again.

Housekeeping: SFI was broken up. What wasn’t widely known was that the computer assets were bought by a sequence of companies that also bailed out the disgraced Swayne. But Swayne’s computers ended up as the exclusive property of one firm, and effectively one man.

“One firm?” Julian echoed.

“Pushed my resources to the limit to find out,” Alison said, “but someone was really interested in what Swayne had…uncovered, maybe’s the best term. Rove Denton.”

“And now…”

Alison wordlessly showed him her photos again. “Whatever this is, this ‘network’ of Volkovska’s, it likes to identify things with numbers. But it uses numbers that make sense to us: social security, company registration. Unequivocal identifying tags that exist in our datasphere. And this is Rove Denton Ltd. You can look it up at Companies House. Rove Denton bought up SFI, and maybe they bought in Charen Volkovska as well, who knows? Rove Denton links to Billy White too, this transaction here…right before he takes it in his head to whack Dr. Khan. And yes, I know: the ‘network’ is the bloody emperor of unverified sources.”

Julian was nodding slowly. “Well, quite,” he agreed. “What am I even supposed to do with all of this?”