“So?” Ash said as he entered her room and closed the door.
“Over here,” she told him.
She stepped over to the pile of journals on her bed. As Ash sat down beside her, she picked up a journal that had been sitting by itself and began rifling through the pages.
“I missed it the first time,” she said, speaking rapidly. “I don’t know why. I should have seen it. When I finished everything, I decided to go through them all again. I guess that’s why I caught it the second time. I could see the—”
Ash put a hand on the journal, stopping her. “Have you been up all night?”
“What time is it?” she said.
“It’s after seven thirty.”
“I guess I have been.”
“You didn’t realize everyone was eating breakfast when you found me?”
“I wasn’t paying attention. I went to your room, but you weren’t there, then I heard voices coming from the cafeteria so I checked there. If you hadn’t been there, I would have—”
“Chloe, take a breath.”
So this is how you get the stoic Chloe White to babble — just deprive her of sleep, he realized.
She took a couple of deep, long breaths. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. You’re kind of fun this way.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He removed his hand from the book. “What did you find?”
At a more deliberate pace, she flipped through the pages until she arrived at one marked with a piece of string.
“This is from seven years ago.”
She turned the journal so it was facing Ash, and pointed at what she wanted him to read.
March 19th
Recruitment: 14 NA, 23 EUR, 33 AFR, 17 ASIA, 2 AUS
Check-ins today: C2, C7, and C8. Sched unchanged. Inq re: ds has come up zero. C8 starting to express ser. doubt. Order: contin invest until prove one way or another.
General notes: Structural add at the Bluff should be complete 8 days. GA fac. still a mess. May have to visit. Billy req add med equip should arrive Fri.
Like many of the other entries, it ended in a series of numbers.
00091 56 1226 0783 21274 5 1008
Ash had barely finished reading it when Chloe twisted the journal back around and tapped her finger in the middle of the page.
“It’s right there. See?” She began to read, “‘Inquiry re: ds has come up zero.’ DS. Dream sky.”
“Maybe,” Ash said. He had noted the initials when he read it. “Could also be a million other things. Like, I don’t know, deadlines? Or maybe it’s someone’s initials. Could be the d stands for doctor and the s stands for a last name.”
“Then how do you explain these?” She pulled two more journals forward and opened to pages also marked by strings. “‘The ds loc still unknown,’” she read from one, and picked up the other. “This says ‘7 potential locs ruled out. C8 thinks goose chase, no ds.’ And here.” She turned to another page in the same book. “‘C7 thinks knows where to find info ds.’ And this from two days later. ‘C7 missed con twice.’” She flipped several pages again. “And finally, ‘C8 confirm C7 term.’” She looked at Ash. “Do you see now? The ds location still unknown. You don’t write the Dr. Smith or the Daniel Stone. It’s not a person. It’s a place. A place important enough that Matt was having his inside contacts search for it. According to this, C7 was on to something, but must have been killed trying to access it.”
“Yes, apparently something was going on,” he said. “But it’s a weak connection at best. What about an A for Augustine? That’s not there. And besides, it might not be a place at all.”
“I realize that,” she said. “But how many other potential leads have we found?”
He thought about it then shook his head.
“Exactly,” she said. “At least this is something we can look into. Maybe it won’t lead us anywhere, but what else are we going to do?”
“You’re right,” he admitted.
“We should make contact with Matt’s people inside the Project. C7 is dead, and as far as we know, C8 is, too.” C8 had been the inside man at the New Mexico facility Matt had destroyed right before he died. “But C2 should be around. I also found references for a C9 and an H5. The only question is, how do we get ahold of them?”
It was possible Matt had taken that answer with him to the grave, but if someone did know, Ash had a pretty good guess who it would be.
“I’ll talk to Rachel,” he said.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Absolutely not. You’ll stay here and sleep.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll sleep later.”
As she started to stand, her hand caught the edge of a stack of journals, sending several of them toppling to the floor.
“Oh, yeah. You’re fine,” he said. “Get some sleep. I need you sharp.”
She frowned, but nodded in resignation. “Promise me if you find out anything, you won’t act on it until you talk to me.”
“I promise.”
It took five knocks before Rachel answered her door.
“May I come in?” Ash asked.
She stared at him for a moment before moving out of the way.
He was pretty sure she hadn’t left the room since he’d brought her there after the funeral, but he wasn’t about to ask her.
“I won’t keep you. I just have a couple of questions I was hoping you could help me with.”
“I’ll answer what I can,” she said with very little enthusiasm.
“Do you know how to reach our contacts inside Project Eden?”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“If we’re going to take advantage of the disruption Matt started, we need to get as much intel from the inside as possible.”
“Of course,” she said, her nod ending with a shrug. “But I don’t know how he did it.”
“You don’t?” he said. “I can’t believe he didn’t leave some kind of instructions.”
“If he did, he didn’t leave them with me.”
“Then who would he have left them with?”
“If anyone, my guess would be Pax.”
“I’ll ask him,” he said. “One more question. Have you ever heard the initials DS before?”
Again she looked confused. “In what regards?”
“I’m not really sure.”
After a moment, she shook her head. “Nothing comes to mind.”
The communications room was packed when Ash reached the door. He counted nine people inside a room designed to comfortably hold less than half that number. In addition to Crystal, Leon, and Paul at the comm stations, three others appeared to be dealing with some cables that ran out the room and down the length of the hallway. Two more people were hunched over the back of Leon’s station. And presiding over the whole mess was Caleb Matthews.
The Mumbai survival station, Ash realized. He’d almost forgotten all about it.
He squeezed inside and made his way over to Crystal’s desk. He nodded toward Caleb and asked Crystal in a low voice, “What’s the status?”
“Caleb’s trying to get things wired so he can control things in Mumbai without the people there having to do anything,” she said. “He’s running everything out to one of the communication trailers we used on the trip down from the Ranch. Been a few glitches, but I think he’s got things mostly worked out now.”
“Has anyone actually tried tapping into their equipment yet?”
“Not yet. Caleb spent a lot of time having Arjun — that’s the main guy in Mumbai right now — describe everything in the room so Caleb could figure out what he was dealing with first. Since then, they’ve been working on this wiring thing. He wants it all in place before they flip any switches.”