“More robust assurances would come only when we knew we could trust you to some degree. Obviously, we’re not about to share particulars with a stranger. You could turn around and join a rival group and share that information with them.”

“And if I became less of a stranger, it would require an investment of time and trust. At that point it would be hard to escape. Sunken cost.”

“Then it seems we’re at an impasse.”

“So it seems.”

“And I can expect you to leave promptly, then.”

“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” Ashley said. She turned to walk in another direction, heading for another clothing store.

⊙

“Switch to the overhead camera. I want to see what Prancer says and does.”

“I’ll project onto the other wall,” Kenzie said. “I want to keep the main camera on Ashley.”

She struck a few keys. One face of the projector box behind her desk lit up, projecting onto the wall. The image was blurry and badly affected by the light around the room at first, as any projector screen could be, but it swiftly clarified, crystallizing into an image as sharp as any flatscreen television. It was an overhead of the street.

The overhead image split, until that screen showed two camera views of Prancer at the same time, one directly overhead, and another that gave something of a view of his face.

The main camera, on the wall in front of and above Kenzie’s desk, showed Ashley’s point of view. The view bobbed with every step Ashley took, and was periodically obscured when Ashley blinked.

Tristan was bringing things into the room. The team’s temporary accommodation. Rain was in the corner, where a table had been set up, laying out parts of mechanical arms while Chris watched.

In the center of the room, Sveta, Natalie the law student and I watched things on the cameras.

Natalie had her arms folded. Her hair was shorter than most boys wore theirs, with a curl at the forehead, her glasses seemed oversized for her face, and her forehead was wrinkled in worry or concentration. She dressed in clothes that made me think she’d picked clothes out of a magazine without reading the rationale behind those clothes. She wore a blouse that fit her body closely, made of a faintly reflective material, with a black ribbon tied where it drew the collar together. She wore a straight-cut skirt that started at the waist and ended at the knee, and dark hose, with tidy, heel-less business shoes. It was the kind of thing that made a model in a magazine look stunning, but Natalie was five-foot two, she didn’t really have a waist, and the outfit made both of those things very obvious.

“What do you think?” I asked.