The unopened envelopes haunted her. The micro file, hidden between the fabrics of her bra, reminded her of her betrayal. Laura hadn’t looked at anything yet. No crime had been committed.
She tossed and turned in her apartment in Haymarket, Sydney. The time projection on the wall read midday; she’d arrived home from her shift three hours ago. Now she lay in bed, unsure if she should look at the contents of the micro file. She should be dead on her feet, but her body pinged with nervous energy.
What harm could it do to look? It might turn out to be nothing. For the last three hours she’d imagined the worst, whether ESC were remotely monitoring her Light Box, or if Gilchrist had ordered someone to follow her home. She scrapped the last idea on the basis that nobody had shown up. As for the idea of someone monitoring the Light Box, she couldn’t know for sure.
Laura ran her fingers across the unopened envelopes on her bedside table, the ones addressed to Bill Taggart. She brought the paper up to her nose, smelling faint perfume. The handwriting was feminine. She desperately wanted to rip them open and read the letters inside, but instead she looked and wondered. They weren’t meant for her and she sensed they were personal.
Viewing the contents of the micro file didn’t feel as personal, but Sixteen’s warning repeated in her head.
‘These will tell you what’s really going on. Maybe you’ll do the right thing, maybe you won’t.’
She’d never promised to do anything.
For too long she’d listened to Chris and Janine stir up gossip about the terrible things the ESC had done. Laura had chalked that gossip up to boredom, but what if they had been telling the truth? What if she had actual proof of foul play? To look at the micro file would mean no going back, no pretending things were okay. Her chance of a transfer was on the line. But her curiosity ran deeper than whatever punishment Gilchrist might throw at her.
Laura pulled the covers over her head. Maybe if she stayed in bed long enough, her mind would quiet down.
Yeah, right. With a sigh, she got up.
Her apartment on the tenth floor had a clear view of the street below. She checked both the street and the block opposite her, where the rooms were dark and she could see nothing. Laura decreased the tint on her window to the lowest level.
Slipping her robe on, she tied the straps securely around her waist, as though the action might protect her more. She retrieved the micro file from its hiding place and studied it in her palm.
How could something so small be so dangerous?
The Light Box’s virtual display hummed into life when Laura stepped into the living room. It waited for a first command. She prised open the cover to the hardware control unit, below the virtual display, and inserted the file’s tendril into one of six openings. The opening swallowed it and the two temporarily merged into one. The display changed and a new screen filled the wall, illuminating her apartment. On the left-hand side, a yellow icon flashed.
‘Open icon,’ said Laura, and the screen listed the contents of the micro file. There were ten documents, each one identifiable by a security code, followed by the date; the files were arranged in chronological order. The information spanned across several years. Nothing hinted as to what was in each document.
‘Open first document’.
Her heart thumped in her ears as she spoke. She would start at the beginning and work her way through to the last.
The display changed and a report filled the screen. Laura checked over her shoulder—a new habit. She perched on the edge of her dining chair. Its lacquered edge bit into her skin, reminding her not to get too comfortable.
The on-screen report had been issued from Daphne Gilchrist to Charles Deighton. At the time of correspondence, Gilchrist was Head of Operations at the ESC—a position that Suzanne Brett now filled—and was in charge of Level Five. The document centred around the indigenous species on Exilon 5, the same species Laura had read about in one of Bill Taggart’s reports. The report had been written twenty-five years earlier, five years after the controlled explosions that had transformed Exilon 5 into its current state.
Bill Taggart’s reports, containing information about the same events of thirty years ago, had given her a base understanding of what was being discussed. She ventured further into the new report that mentioned experiments on the indigenous race. It wasn’t clear when humans had carried them out exactly, but she assumed it was after they’d discovered the race.
The contents forced her to stop. Nausea made her stomach dance. ‘What the hell is this?’
She looked away from the photos of Indigenes as young as seven receiving shock therapy, and adults, red-eyed and teary, being subjected to bright lights. Her curiosity won out and she turned her attention back to the screen. As she read more, the details of how humans had interfered in the lives of the Indigenes were laid bare for her to see. The recent World Government experiments on them, the planned terraforming, the knowledge of their underground tunnels, but not the precise location.
But something confused her. The photos showing torture were from fifty years ago, before knowledge of Exilon 5 had even been reported.
With a shaky hand, Laura waved the first document closed.
Was this even real? Had the government known about the existence of the Indigenes before the discovery of Exilon 5? If so, the torture would have taken place on Earth. In Earth labs. By Earth doctors.
Laura forced her weak voice to issue the next command.
The second and third documents opened and she read the content. The experiments on the Indigenes weren’t mentioned again until the fourth document—a recent one, just three months old. It tied in with the ongoing investigations on Exilon 5, mentioning the investigator Bill Taggart, who had headed up the mission. The story she knew so far made sense.
But she couldn’t have prepared herself for what she saw next. Around three-quarters of the way into the fourth report, it outlined the reason for the World Government’s obsession with the Indigenes. Enough information explained their motives and exposed their lies and secrets. Then there was the ESC’s involvement. Neither organisation had carried out the experimentations to discover more about the aliens; they already knew everything about them.
Humans had not discovered this race. Humans had placed them on Exilon 5.
When Laura read the fifth document, she gasped.
Her eyes shot over to her bedroom, where she had left the unopened letters addressed to the investigator.