In lieu of Jenn being able to do her part for the investigation on account of her being hospitalized, Josh had elected to take over her assignments, chief among which was the background check on Miss Harady. Back at DanariTek, while the rest of his team was ensuring the safety of the facility’s employees, Josh had taken it upon himself to talk to Stokes about how Miss Harady, a former prostitute who’d stabbed Harashima twice, had ended up working at one of the latter’s companies. According to Stokes, Miss Harady had simply walked into the building about six months ago, asking to talk to the head of HR – in other words, Stokes himself – and practically waving her CV in his face in a plea for him to hire her. Which, given how impressive her credentials had seemed at the time, he did without the small-est shred of hesitation.

Josh, of course, asked Stokes for a copy of her CV, and the man obliged. He may have been a corporate asshole, but at least he knew better than to fight the law when it came to inves-tigative matters. And immediately upon first glance, Josh noted several inconsistencies that set his alarm bells ringing. For one thing, the CV Miss Harady had submitted to Stokes made no mention whatsoever of her prostitution stint. Nor did the time-line of her “cybernetics studies” seem fully believable. That alone was enough to tell Josh that her credentials were falsified. He pointed the inconsistencies out to Stokes and cursed him for not having been more vigilant, and the only defense Stokes was able to produce was that her credentials seemed so impressive he couldn’t not hire her. Josh seemed to recall that the words Stokes had used to describe Miss Harady’s CV was “too good to be true” – only that had apparently been the case in a purely fi-gurative sense.

And now, back at the Office of Legal and Military Op-erations, he felt reinvigorated following the discovery. This was the puzzle piece that had been missing for so long, and thanks to it having been found, the case felt like it was finally progressing again. In a way, he was thankful to the murderer for having given him the hint about the kidnapping op at DanariTek – he wasn’t sure if he would ever have realized to return to the facility and question the head of HR about Miss Harady himself had the murderer not led him back there.

And he knew what to do about Miss Harady. He’d called her nurse to let her know that he wanted to have a word with her. It was kind of a good thing that Jenn was presently incapa-citated, as much as Josh hated to think of it that way. But had she been in Josh’s shoes right now, the foundation of empathy Jenn had previously established with Miss Harady might have interfered with what was coming up. What needed to be done.

You’re in a world of trouble, kid, Josh thought to him-self as if he was already having the conversation with Miss Harady as he strolled down the corridor where room 265 of the infirmary was located.

“Alright, Miss Harady,” the nurse’s soothing voice sounded. Enez had just had a change of bandages, and the wound in her stomach had healed enough that it no longer looked like it’d reopen and her guts would spill out if she tried to walk. Her smile was the widest it had been in quite a while. Anticipation permeated the air in her “hotel” room. Would they finally let her out or insist on keeping her in the infirmary for longer still? She hoped for the former.

The nurse pulled the mask off her mouth and continued: “The wound looks to have healed enough to exhibit no risk of reopening. I’m thinking you can be discharged.”

Enez brought a triumphant fist in the air and squealed in excitement. Finally, she’d be able to go home. “Best news I’ve heard all week.”

The nurse chuckled. “Glad you’re excited. That said, I do want to advise you to keep the bandages on for at least two more days. Just as a safety measure.”

“Understood. Thank you, nurse.”

“Anytime.” The nurse spun her chair around and started tapping at her holocomp. “Give me just a couple of minutes to fill out the paperwork. There’s somebody here who wants to talk to you in the meantime.”

“If it’s that bitch Officer Walters again, tell her—”

“Not her. Not this time.”

A look of confusion spread across Enez’s face. Then the sound of the door sliding open echoed. She stared at the face that entered intently, feeling more intimidated the closer it got.

Officer Heynes. This couldn’t be good.

“Sorry to ruin your excitement,” he said in a tone that didn’t sound apologetic at all to Enez’s ear. “But you won’t be going home from here. We’re moving you into prison.”

Enez laid a hand of disappointment over her face. “Oh, fuck me,” she muttered. She slid her hand across her face, stret-ching the skin with her fingers, then turned a gaze of frustration to Officer Heynes. “Well, what are you charging me with?”

“Forgery, sabotage and assisting in a murder.”

Enez chuckled, half amused, half frustrated. “So you finally figured it out, huh?”

“This is serious, Miss Harady. You went into DanariTek with faked credentials, produced a faulty prosthetic and sabo-taged its installation. Didn’t you?”

“That’s only one part of the truth.” Enez sat up on the bed, growing more agitated by the second. “I didn’t work on my own. Somebody planted me in there. And you’re not gonna like who it was.”

“Who was it then?”

“One of your own. The middle-aged Japanese-looking guy. Likes to wear sunglasses indoors.”

Officer Heynes’s expression changed. Softened. “You mean Koji?”

“If that’s his name, then yeah.”

The officer’s gaze drifted off to the side. He looked vin-dicated. He was quiet for what felt like an eternity, evidently pondering Enez’s revelation. When he turned his attention back to her, his expression was considerably less authoritative. But the next time he talked, he still did so from a procedural pers-pective. “You do realize that still makes you an accomplice?”

“Yeah, I understand as much. I’m just saying you have a black sheep in your ranks. Go ahead and arrest me, but you owe me thanks at the very least.”

Officer Heynes brought a finger up to his chin. Contem-plated something. Maybe a plan. Enez thought she could see the exact moment a lightbulb went off in his head from the way his eyes twinkled. “Okay,” he muttered. “You’re lucky I’ve been harboring my own suspicions about Koji for a while.”

“Uh-huh,” Enez muttered conspiratorially, adjusting her-self to the officer’s wavelength. “So what are you thinking?”

A throat clear pierced through the rising tension. Enez looked to her left, greeted by the sight of the nurse looking at the two of them with trepidation. As if she knew she shouldn’t be listening to the exchange. “Paperwork’s done. You’re free to go,” she spoke, then continued as she stood up and prepared to exit the room, as if she was in on the conspiracy: “Also, I won’t tell anyone about this.”

“Thank you,” Enez and Officer Heynes whispered in unison, staying quiet until the nurse was out of the room and the door was firmly closed.

Officer Heynes stared at the door for a moment, as if attempting to lock it by means of telepathy, then turned his at-tention back to Enez and asked: “Know how to pick a lock?”

Enez raised an eyebrow. “Depends on the type of lock.”

“Electronic. Keycode-protected.”

Enez hunched over and placed a finger on her chin. “Two ways to crack one of those. Break the encryption and force a keycode change or short-circuit the main PCB.” She turned an inquisitive gaze to Heynes. “But I don’t suppose you can sneak in a screwdriver.”

“’Fraid not. So you’d have to improvise.”

Enez nodded. “I can figure something out.” The look she gave Heynes grew more intense by the second. “Question is, how do you intend to expose him while I’m breaking out of pri-son?”

“That’s gonna be the tricky part. Need to figure out some way to rat him out in his immediate vicinity.”

“And make sure he comes after me?”

Heynes nodded. Now his motions looked a lot more apo-logetic. “Sorry to put you in harm’s way like that. But that’s the best plan I can come up with.”

“Better than anything I could come up with.”

A chuckle escaped Officer Heynes. Enez never thought she’d hear anything akin to one coming out of him. She looked at him with a hint of surprise. “What?” he inquired.

“Just didn’t think I’d ever hear you chuckle.”

“I may be a police officer, but I’m not humorless.”

“Right, sorry,” Enez said, throwing her arms up in mock surrender. “Clearly I had the wrong impression of you.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” he replied with the subtlest hint of humor in his tone, then brought out the handcuffs Enez was half-expecting to already be around her wrists. “Ready to work your magic?”

Enez hopped off the bed onto her feet, turned around and crossed her wrists behind her back. “I am if you are.”

“Alright. I just hope this works,” Officer Heynes mum-bled as he clasped the handcuffs around Enez’s wrists.