The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

the Methuselah Project, aimed at learning how to counter—and even reverse—human aging by the middle of the century. It’d never sounded all that crazy to Travis; no crazier, at least, than sending a person to the moon or plugging most of the world’s computers into one another.
    There was no mention of the message the assassin had left behind.
    “The top people at the FBI have already called the best sources they can think of,” Travis said, “including the new president, and they’ve turned up almost nothing. Our safest assumption is that they’re done making progress—that no one in power knows anything about Scalar. No one who wants to help, anyway.”
    “Which means Nellis is probably right: whoever did this left the message just for us, no doubt assuming we’d know what the hell it meant.”
    Travis considered the strangeness of their situation. “Not only don’t we know who we’re playing against, we don’t even know what the game is. We better find out on our terms before we find out on theirs.”
    Paige sank into the couch. “I don’t understand why my father never told me about Scalar.”
    That would be a tricky question to answer. Paige’s father was dead, along with nearly every member of Tangent who’d known him. Paige herself, though only thirty-two years old, was by far the most senior member of the organization, with just over a decade’s involvement. There was a reason for that. Three years ago, the chain of events that’d originally brought Travis to Border Town had also, in the end, brought about the deaths of all but a handful of its inhabitants. The cataclysmic violence responsible still visited Travis’s dreams. Paige’s, too. He woke her from them a few times a month.
    In time new members had been recruited, as quickly as caution afforded. Within a couple years the ranks had been essentially refilled. Then, while Paige and most of the senior personnel were on business in Washington, D.C., they’d come under attack by heavily armed assailants—the opening salvo of a new conflict. Paige alone had survived. From that moment on she’d been the only person in the world capable of leading Tangent. The strongest of the few threads tying its present form to its past.
    “I worked here alongside my father for the bulk of the last decade,” she said. “Him and a hundred others. And most of them had been here since the beginning, which means Scalar happened on their watch. Why wouldn’t a single person have ever spoken of it?”
    “Can’t have been a trust issue,” Travis said.
    “Not a chance. We all trusted each other with everything. With our lives.”
    “What other reason, then?” Travis said. “Embarrassment?”
    Paige glanced at him, visibly uncomfortable at the thought. She shook her head, but Travis thought he saw more uncertainty than refutation in the gesture.
    For thirty seconds neither of them spoke. The just-audible television took the edge off the silence.
    Then Paige’s eyes widened a little and she said, “Blue.”
    The word seemed to surprise her even as it came out. She stood from the couch and crossed to the short hallway leading to the bedroom. Travis stood and followed.
    She had the computer’s monitor switched on by the time he entered the room. The computer itself had already been running.
    “Blue status,” Paige said. She clicked open the file manager and navigated through a series of folders. Travis didn’t even try to keep track of them. “It’s a set of security measures we use for people who retire from Tangent.”
    “I didn’t know anyone ever had retired from Tangent,” Travis said. “Except me, for the time I was gone.”
    “It almost never happens,” Paige said. Her attention stayed with the computer as she spoke. “Three times, total, in thirty-four years. Not counting you.”
    She reached the end of a directory tree, and Travis saw a folder icon that looked identical to all the rest, except that it was tinted blue. Paige clicked it. An input field opened, calling for two distinct passwords. Paige typed them quickly; only the second required any thought.
    A personnel file opened on the screen. The format was familiar enough to Travis. He’d seen his own file and several others during his time here.
    But he’d never seen any of the three names that now appeared on the monitor.
    Rika Sengupta.
    Carrie Holden.
    Bartolo Conti.
    “All three were here from the early days,” Paige said. “My father probably recruited them