Chapter 3

"Where were you last shift?" Kern demanded. The man was hovering over Qi as he sat at his desk. He had only been seated a minute and he hadn't had time to hit the power switch on the desk comp. "You disappeared into the dark for 17 minutes last night. Now where the hell were you?"

"I can't remember," Qi said with fake confusion on his face. "Was I spewing dinner out my backside or was I jerking off? Seventeen minutes you say? I never take that long to jerk off. I'm an old pro at it by this point in my life. Of course, I'm sure you would know nothing about masturbating in the dark. You're a company guy, after all."

Kern had no reply to Qi's monologue. Red faced, the TSC supervisor stormed out the door.

"Stoo-pid," Qi said to the camera he was sure was positioned immediately over his head monitoring every keystroke.

He tasked his desk comp to compiling years-worth of inventory records for the facility and left the statistics package running the background, analyzing the data for patterns. Qi didn't expect to find any one thing; he expected to keep the security monitors busy trying to figure out what he was doing.

He slipped his hand comp under the desk in his lap and switched to his new, alternate mode. DeeDee's account showed the subtle signs of ransacking by security. He was impressed by her body measurements though. All in all, there was nothing of interest in her files.

Arturo's files were more interesting. There were the same clumsy markers of repeated data scanning, but there were also minute gaps where no data was present. Those minute gaps should not have been there. Someone had been his account and had removed their traces. Such high level intrusion and extraction was beyond the TSC security. Only the faint ghostly wisps of stolen gluons remained to tell the tale.

His desk comp rang like a frickin' earth phone again. "Hello?"

"This is Dickson with security," the voice said because there was no visual to go with the audio. "You wanted a tour of our security perimeter. No go. It's in the reports."

"What I want isn't in the reports," Qi said, but that was all that he got out.

"Who the fuck do you think you are? Those reports are to the letter, full and accurate, asshole," Dickson screamed.

"Yeah, they are. You proved how no one could get in to the facility," Qi said, only to make peace because he didn't believe it. "There are no theories of how any inventory of size or weight could be smuggled through the security screens the other way."

"Oh."

"Care to take a ride out to the perimeter?" Qi asked.

"Are you TSC certified to take a walk?" Dickson asked.

"No?" Qi said, wondering what he was admitting to with his answer.

"Certification course is four hours long and the test is another two. Someone will be by in, oh, two hours. When they offer you the diaper, don't turn it down," Dickson said and then the line went dead.

"Two people have called me an asshole in less than a week," Qi said to the ceiling again. "I've got to work on my people skills because I'm way behind my asshole quota for this job."

Unfortunately Qi wasn't feeling near as cocky as he sounded. He was isolated with no one he could trust, not really. Even the lusciously figured fitness instructor only wanted confirmation that her name was clear. She pleaded her case and never once asked the welfare of her boyfriend.

Second, anything that required a diaper had to be bad. Qi had no desire to acquire the experience of the cliche "scaring the shit outta' me". He had done spacewalks before but only as a tourist. Those tethered, kindergarten-safe trips probably had little resemblance to workers in a vacuum storage yard. He had been hoping for one of those two seater putter carts with a driver.

His deepest fear was the constant TSC paranoia whose core element was a lack of professionalism. The reports were written in an obvious style with strict formatting, precise grammar and distinct forms of presentation. The content behind the presentations were on an amateur level at best. Qi was a troubleshooter, adept at deciphering scrambled information and teasing out missing data; however, these missing components were on an entirely different level of trouble. Military Intelligence should be sitting at his desk instead of an independent, young, though admittedly expert, forensic data killer. He was willing to bet the sum total of his contract credits that the Tagway-Shinar Corporation hadn't informed the Marine Corps of the thefts.

No wonder Kern was shitting bricks. If Qi couldn't find the missing items, Kern would be the offered sacrifice to the military when they were informed. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy, Qi concluded.

He tucked his fears away, and he dug into his pocket to pull out the data drive that was a part of his traveling kit. He plugged it into his desk comp and waited for his personal prompt to come up on the screen.

Qi laughed out loud when the screen finally resolved itself. Looking up he said, "You guys had this drive for five months and you couldn't get past the first screen? Shame on you."