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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 205: Takano 148
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 357
On Tuesday a pair of inspectors dressed in hazard gear entered the BBS building and examined it for hazards. Both elevators and one stairwell were reportedly taped off as closed for repairs.
On Wednesday, sitting on a bench across the street with a bag lunch she had packed and a soda she got from the pizza place, Tommy confirmed this with the sensory presence skill she had learned from Vashti, and she watched as a small army of fire department investigators poured into the building. Some of these she followed around as a clairsentient projection. One, though, caught her attention. He went into the engineering department and began going through file cabinets. She thought that particularly strange, because if the cabinets themselves hadn t been damaged, how could the files have been? As she watched, he removed files from several and put them in a metal case he had brought with him.
What was he doing? Could she read his mind from here, seeing him only via clairvoyance? It was worth a try--and it worked.
I hope this is what he wants; it doesn t look like he said, but then, I m no expert on this kind of electrical stuff. This is what I ve got--and he d better pay me for it.
That was interesting. The implications were, to her, reasonably obvious: Mordenslice had paid one of the fire investigators to raid the engineering department files, probably looking for the files about the computer design. Why didn t he find them? Oh, right--the first thing Derek had done while he was telling everyone else what to do was put the most recent files in that briefcase of his and have Vashti carry it out. Those must be at the manse.
Would Mordenslice be able to figure that out? There was no reason to believe that the villain knew their secret identities. On the other hand, did he have to? He knew they worked for the BBS engineering department, that they were all relatively new, and he had their address if he could get to employee relations files--a breach of employee rights, but not one that would be an issue for him.
But then, Granville would be the more obvious target. He was the department head, and there would be reason to suspect that he removed the files. He didn t, but since Cutter obviously didn t know they had been removed, he wouldn t know that Granville hadn t done it. On top of that, the four of them had increased the number of engineers to nearly twenty, plus as many secretaries and file clerks, so he had a long list of people to get through if he wanted to find those files.
Still, Granville was probably in danger. She would have to tell the others tonight.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
