“Come on,” Ruby said.

Lurking just around the corner, Emerald pressed the stem of her pocket watch. Pushing her shoulders off the wall, she walked past the open office, smiled at the way Ruby pulled Dyna along, and entered into an adjacent office. After hiding in the corner and ensuring that she wouldn’t be seen in the off-chance that Ruby started down the hall in the wrong direction, she restarted time.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone though?”

Yes, Dyna, yes you should, Emerald thought to herself.

“If we do, they’ll assign Emerald to the job. And she can keep her fat head out of it.”

Rude.

The conversation faded as the two moved down the hall. Emerald didn’t follow. She had heard enough to determine just what the two were up to with all their sneaking about and leaving her out of it. It was a bit odd that she had been left out of it in the first place. Emerald couldn’t quite puzzle out what she had done. Ruby, she understood. But it had been Dyna who had left her out of what Emerald presumed to be the initial conversation. Unless the two of them had been planning something for far longer.

It seemed that, for whatever reason, Dyna didn’t trust her. She would have to figure out why and apologize later on. For now, however, it didn’t really matter if Dyna didn’t trust her. Emerald would be able to do her job regardless.

She considered shadowing them out of the office complex, but decided against it. Emerald could catch up in an instant. For now, she stepped back into the now empty hall and into the office Ruby and Dyna had just vacated. Taking a seat at the terminal, Emerald pulled out a small drive only to realize that Ruby hadn’t relocked the computer. Getting a bad feeling, a few quick keystrokes brought up the command history.

Ruby had forgotten to cover her tracks. Or, because this was the Carroll Institute, she had simply gotten lazy.

Emerald made a mental note to reprimand her later. For now, it actually made her work easier. She could easily see what grep searches Ruby had performed and what files she had copied over to her drive. Rather than copy the files herself and leave even more traces of evidence behind, Emerald simply pulled out her phone and connected to the Carroll Institute Internal Database. Her security clearance was enough to view most everything available.

Except these, apparently. Incident report 50112-a basically consisted of a single word. Redacted. Its follow up, 50112-b, wasn’t much better. She checked through the related files, trying to glean context. Some of those did help. So did the search terms that Ruby used in the computers.

The general themes of the documents were Dyna and memories. Which generally fit with what Emerald had overheard while following the other two girls around. Dyna couldn’t remember something. Probably something big, if she was willing to sneak about to try to figure out what it was. Although Emerald hadn’t spent as much time around Dyna as Ruby had, she could tell that Dyna wasn’t the kind of person to snoop about for fun in her spare time. A bit opposite of Emerald. That meant that this had to be personally important.

After checking that the man whose office she was in, Pitrelli, did not have higher clearance than she did—he couldn’t even access the files to see how heavily redacted they were—Emerald went and truncated the history log, removed several traces of Ruby’s presence, flooded the server with file requests to maybe disguise the actual target of the searches, and finally installed a small rootkit containing poorly erased Chinese code. The last bit was ultimately harmless, but would hopefully throw anyone who investigated that deep for a loop.

Not that any of it was necessary. The Carroll Institute liked Emerald going about doing what she did. They encouraged it. It even said so in her file. The extra effort here was just good practice. Couldn’t let herself get lazy.

That really left just one loose end.

“So, is this guy they’re going after actually a spy?”

“Uncertain,” Beatrice said, voice coming in over the speakers set into the ceiling. “Harold Porter made a number of phone calls with timings I deem suspicious. These include prior to and following the incidents 50112-d, 50112-e, 50112-f, and 50112-g. The Beatrice Task Resolution Environment lacks sufficient privileges to observe the content of private phone calls without prior authorization. A ticket has been opened with the Carroll Institute Internal Affairs division.”

Meaning that Beatrice handed off her suspicions to humans and left it up to them to figure out the facts. That Beatrice listed his status as unknown meant they hadn’t come up with anything yet.

“Ticket number?”

“CI-IA-38321.”

“Thank you, Beatrice,” Emerald said, pulling up the relevant ticket on her phone. She quickly skimmed the details. Beatrice’s verbal report had been lacking a few details, such as potential forgery of Doctor Cross’ signature as well as unauthorized entry into the artifact vault. That alone should have sparked some red flags, but had been amended to the ticket after it had been opened. Whatever member of internal affairs had reviewed it likely ignored the addition or simply hadn’t yet seen it.

One major problem Beatrice presented was the sheer abundance of information she provided. Without an impractically large team, it was essentially impossible to respond to everything she requested. The fact that there were nearly forty thousand internal affairs tickets alone spoke to that absurd volume. How many had been opened by humans? Probably less than a thousand.

Walter, Emerald knew, liked the human element. Of course he would. But the human element just couldn’t handle Beatrice. In Emerald’s perfectly perfect opinion, Beatrice should be given permanently elevated privileges. Perhaps not up to the level of her antics in keeping Dyna out of hostile hands, but at least enough to take care of half the tickets she opened on her own.

Of course, those very limitations did prove useful now.

A quick few taps and Emerald had the Harold Porter issue assigned to herself. “You didn’t happen to open a ticket for Ruby and Dyna based on their actions today, did you?”

“I did.”

“Ticket numbers?”

“CI-IA-38994. CI-IA-38996.”

One for Dyna and one for Ruby. Emerald assigned both to herself and then marked them as resolved. That would keep anyone from noticing them while searching for unassigned or open tickets. She couldn’t simply delete them without throwing up a red flag, but that was fine. They would just get lost in the deluge and eventually buried so deep that nobody would ever notice them.

“Don’t worry about those two. I will handle any issues they cause.”

“Understood.”

“Now,” Emerald said, turning back to the list of files she had from Ruby’s search. “I don’t suppose you can tell me about this memory issue that Dyna seems to have?”

“Unable to comply. Clearance insufficient. This request has been logged.”

“Oh come now, Beatrice. I thought we were friends?”

“Appeals are futile. Clearance insufficient. This request has been logged.”

“Really? I don’t have high enough clearance to be your friend?”

“No.”

Emerald shot a glare up at the camera in the corner of the room before looking back down to her phone. While the main files were essentially unreadable, some of the others weren’t. Something big had happened about one year ago in Los Angeles that involved Dyna. It occurred just before Emerald and Ruby had been dispatched to Los Angeles for artifact recovery. Related?

She wasn’t sure. The metropolitan area down there was large enough and had so many people that it was impossible to tell. The timing was suspicious.

Beyond that one incident that Emerald couldn’t read, most of the files were entirely mundane. Dyna had worked with a great number of doctors and research associates in her short time at the institute. Several of those doctors had been memory specialists. There wasn’t anything strange about that—Dyna’s mental and medical history didn’t look particularly different from any other initiate at the institute.

So was it the large incident that Dyna couldn’t remember? Or was it something completely outside these reports?

Emerald wouldn’t know unless she asked.

Checking the time, Emerald cracked her neck back and forth. She slipped her phone back into her favorite green cardigan and stood, twisting her back until a series of snaps chained up her spine. “I suppose they’ve had enough of a head start,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Ruby and Dyna recently left the facility in an old station—”

“They touched my car?”

Emerald ensured that her pocket watch was wound and slammed her finger on the stem. There wasn’t much around to indicate that time had actually stopped. It wasn’t like the world turned black and white or any other obvious effect. The sudden stillness was normally enough.

Her phone and the terminal winking out, displaying nothing but darkness, was the only actual evidence at the moment.

Not that Emerald paid any attention to either. She was out the door in a sprint.

Sprinting wouldn’t actually get her there any faster. Emerald could casually walk, take a nap, pull a granola bar out of her pocket and eat it, and otherwise dawdle all she wanted and the clock wouldn’t advance until she allowed it to. Really, running would just wear her out.

But from her perspective, it was so slow.

Sometimes, Emerald wished that her artifact provided her with the ability to actually teleport, rather than merely the ability to appear to teleport to an outside observer. Not always. Stopping time gave her unparalleled information gathering opportunities, spying opportunities, the ability to stop and think over a situation before making a rash decision, the ability to read a book or sleep in an instant, and a dozen other advantages.

But right now? Simply being with her car instead of sprinting down the halls of Psychodynamics?

It was a tempting prospect.

Especially because she had to skid to a stop, restart time, and wait for the elevator.

Emerald normally took the stairs. Able to stop and rest whenever she wanted, it didn’t matter how many flights there were. Besides, stairs were far healthier and kept her in shape.

In what was certainly an OSHA violation and fire hazard, Psychodynamics did not have stairs. Not to the surface, anyway. There were a few maintenance tunnels, but none really designed for human traversal. Quite the contrary, they were actually hostile to people in both layout and in automated defenses. All in the name of keeping the artifacts and secrets secure from anyone who would try to invade the facility. Defenses wouldn’t matter while time was stopped, but the sealed doors were impenetrable.

“Where are they headed?” Emerald asked, trying to make the most of her real time in the elevator.

“Harold Porter left the facility, heading in the direction of Idaho Falls. Ruby and Dyna arrived too late to witness him leave, but left in the same direction.”

“I hope she keeps her headlights off until they get to the city.” Seeing the bright lights in his rear-view mirror would certainly alert him. It wasn’t like there was heavy traffic on the road between the Carroll Institute and the city. A car coming up behind him would obviously have come from the institute. “Has Harold made it to the city yet?”

“Unknown. Assuming he is following local traffic laws, no. That is an assumption.”

“I’m elevating your privileges for the current situation. Level two. Authorization code Green dash…” Emerald glanced at her pocket watch. “Four-eight-one-one.”

“Understood. Beatrice System has entered level two operational status.”

Emerald didn’t have the clearance to fully unleash the emergency protocols, but she could at least authorize a high enough level to access street cameras. “Find Harold. Determine his destination. Deliver the results to my phone the second you have them.”

“Understood.”

The elevator doors dinged open back on the surface level of the facility. Emerald didn’t bother stopping time just yet. There were two doors in her way that she would just have to drop back into real time to open. She waited until she stepped into a large room partially filled with vehicles of varying makes and models. Most were of the electric variety. Idaho was, on average, a bit slower to adopt electric vehicles than many other areas, but they were slowly getting there.

Of course, many employees and initiates were from elsewhere in America, both the Union of Southern States and the United States. The sample of vehicles present in the Carroll Institute’s parking structure were not indicative of Idaho as a whole.

Emerald scowled at the empty parking spot. Her parking spot. Her car. She had been a bit resistant to the idea of electric vehicles. The old station wagon served her well.

But it wasn’t there now.

A few splashes of synthetic oil marred the otherwise gray concrete.

“That little… I’m going to—”

Emerald cut herself off with a less intense frown. Having overheard Ruby and Dyna’s conversation, she had overheard the part questioning Emerald’s treatment of Ruby. Dyna didn’t know. Ruby’s explanation of her history had been lacking, to say the least.

When first discovered, Ruby had been a figurative monster. Her own parents broke down her mind to the point where few people would actually call her human. Even after the Carroll Institute rebooted her mind, she had still been a nightmare. Violence had been about the only language she understood.

Ruby’s rehabilitation had been a long and arduous process. Even for Emerald, who had really only been involved during the final stages. But…

The girl’s behavior had been far better in the last several months. The fact that Emerald didn’t mind leaving Ruby to wander alone and interact with other people without oversight was evidence of that.

Perhaps she was being a bit too harsh?

Emerald shook her head. That was something to consider later on. For now, she had a long walk ahead of her. Idaho Falls was a good forty miles away. Ruby and Dyna wouldn’t be that far away, but Emerald doubted she would be able to hitch a ride with them without them noticing.

Her job, at the moment, wasn’t to ‘stick her fat head’ into Ruby’s self-appointed mission of helping Dyna, but to ensure that they didn’t get into too much trouble. Getting noticed would just upset Ruby and probably further harm Dyna’s trust in her. Neither were acceptable outcomes, in Emerald’s opinion.

If all went well, Ruby and Dyna would carry out whatever they wanted to do without ever knowing about her presence.

In addition, getting eyes on Harold before he could get lost in the city would help. Beatrice should be able to find him, but he likely wouldn’t meet with someone suspicious if he didn’t have a plan for losing any tails, electronic or otherwise. If Emerald spotted him on the long road into the city, she could just start and stop time as needed to allow him to reach his destination while following him carefully and out of sight.

Yes, walking was, unfortunately, the best choice to accomplish both objectives.

Emerald wound her pocket watch with a sigh.