WASHINGTON—The FBI has issued a Missing/Endangered Person Alert for Cora Sabino. Sabino was last seen on the afternoon of Wednesday, April 16, during a Senate hearing in which she testified in favor of personhood for amygdaline ETIs. Sabino disappeared after Senator Todd Julian (I-IL) revealed that she had been a witness to the previously classified death of four CIA agents allegedly killed by an unnamed ETI in October of last year.

As of Friday afternoon, Sabino has been missing for over 48 hours. Sabino is 21 years old with light brown hair and hazel eyes, stands 5′5″ tall, about 110 pounds.

No other information has been released at this point. If you have any information about this case, please call the FBI’s missing persons unit at (202) 324-3000.

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Kaveh packed his bag like an assembly line machine. He had been nervous about going to publication before, but never like this. He looked at the hard copy of the article he had readied for submission, wrapped in a neat manila folder like a rustic Christmas present. He’d had this conversation with his editor at The New Yorker several times in the past few weeks—is it ethical to honor this NDA? Should he “break his silence” regarding what he knew? They had agreed that it all depended on how the Senate hearings went, and in some ways, they could not have gone worse.

It was still too soon to really see how much the needle had budged politically; it would be another few days before any meaningful polling would be released, but the national mood had obviously changed. The world knowing about Nikola’s defensive capabilities was one thing, the revelation that the government had covered up the deaths of, at minimum, four CIA agents was something else entirely. At minimum, four CIA agents killed by amygdaline ETIs. Probably, there were more that hadn’t even been uncovered yet.

“It’s a bust,” said Paris from the living room. She’d only just gotten back from a long assignment in Seattle yesterday, and today was supposed to be their “catch-up hang.” So much for that. “This sighting in Oregon. It’s been debunked. It’s not her.”

Kaveh still hadn’t decided what to tell Paris. If he told her what he was really planning to do, that might make her an accessory. If they tried and failed to bring the might of the U.S. government down on him, tried and failed to extradite him, they might punish Paris instead.

Then an even more nauseating thought: They might punish her either way.

“She’ll turn up when she’s ready.”

“Kaveh . . . we need to take into consideration the possibility—”