The wall did not comply.
Somebody had managed to salvage some… Sloane wouldn’t call it music, per se, but it passed the time in the temporary workspace. If she had to guess, they’d ripped some mixed techno beat from the Citadel’s Flux and brought it along for nostalgia.
Six centuries old nostalgia, to be sure, and of the sort best left behind. Why would anyone want to remember anything that had gone on inside the walls of Flux?
It’s not like the techs were partying to it. Inside the still-gutted room, the heavy bass beat thudded in tandem to the focused silence of the Nexus crew working there. Only one looked up when she stepped inside. A human she didn’t know. Sloane sliced through niceties with a brusque nod and a gesture.
“Hate to interrupt but I need a minute of your time.”
The man hurried over, running a broad hand over the tired lines of his dusky features. “What can I help you with, Director?” He pitched his deep voice low. The music oontz’ed.
An unapologetic yawn followed his question, but as a few techs looked up behind him, Sloane noted they seemed a touch more settled than they were even a week ago. They’d found a groove.
“Falarn,” she said crisply. “He here?”
The tech shook his head. “He’s off shift right now. Last I heard, he was going to sleep until the next emergency.”
“Must be nice. Where?”
“Wherever he can find a space,” the tech said with a shrug. “Like most of us.”
Yeah, take a number. “In commons? Maybe one of the hangars?”
He thought about it. Glanced back at his team, who also shrugged. “Most of us just crash under one of the desks in HQ2.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a room across the hall.” He became defensive when she raised an eyebrow. “No one else was using it, and we were sick of walking all the way back to our temp quarters in the hangar.”
“Whoa, slow down. It’s fine.” Sloane jerked a thumb back to the hall. “And Falarn, that’s where he sleeps? You’ve seen him?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Sorry.”
Figured. “Thanks. As you were.”
“Ma’am,” he replied, and returned to his team. She didn’t miss the subtle shrug he gave one of the other techs.
Sloane left, already writing the script in her head. Yes, I know you were sleeping, sorry for waking you, I just have a few questions about…
About what, exactly? Suspicious activity. Sloane grimaced, trying to recall why she’d agreed to this.
Maybe to do some actual security work for once. Not that it was going to amount to anything. People of all departments were accessing terminals. If anything she should investigate Spender for wasting her damned time.
The temporary quarters were indeed just across the corridor, in a room that had been earmarked for some other purpose. Sloane wasn’t sure what—something more technical and undoubtedly more redundant than necessary.
She manually keyed in the access code. The sensors still flaked out from time to time, leaving the doors stuck wide open or stubbornly closed. Manual remained the most reliable method of entry without risking bruised pride and a nosebleed.
Sloane cursed her tired brain. How was she supposed to run an investigation like this? Not that it was entirely Spender’s fault. She’d made it abundantly clear that she wanted to vet anything suspicious, anyone skirting that line. He’d been right to flag it.
But she didn’t like running blind, either.
The converted room was dark, lights dimmed to a level acceptable to sleep in. It was also, she noted from inside the open frame of the door, empty. Cots had been set up in rows, blankets folded neatly, pillows in place for those species who wanted or needed them.
No sleeping salarian.
No one at all.
She tilted her head. All right. So, maybe he’d be at the residency hangar. With each shuttle having its own life-support system, they made for good emergency housing. Finding which one Farlarn had been assigned would be a hassle, but nothing she couldn’t manage.
Except nobody she contacted could find him. His bunkmate thought he was back in Ops. The guy she spoke to there suggested he could be at the common area. Nobody had actually seen him.
Maybe he was having a tryst, and they were all covering for him. Did salarians tryst?
“I guess with an asari,” she muttered, earning a sideways look from a human she passed on the way to the next locale. By the time Sloane’s instincts had caught up with her, she’d walked several laps of the operational bits of the Nexus. Even her sec team hadn’t located him.
Great.
When her comm crackled to life, she had just enough civility left in her to growl, “This better be good news.”
“No promises.” Calix’s now-familiar voice drawled the words across the channel. “Did you authorize some info-sec goon to access my systems?”
“Access, as in…?”
“As in, did somebody in security drop a forged stasis authorization into my queue? Maybe someone was testing procedures and protocols?”
“Hell no—” She stopped herself short, pausing in the hallway to activate the display on her omni-tool. “Shit. Give me a sec.”
“You don’t know?”
“Shut up,” she muttered, earning one of the turian’s dry chuckles. Calix understood the mess caused by red tape, especially when it involved Addison and Tann. That didn’t protect her from his good-natured bullshit, though.
She scrolled rapidly through the latest communications. “No,” she said slowly. “Nothing even remotely like that. The fact that you’re asking this isn’t making my gut happy, Calix.”
“Wonderful.” Dry as Tuchanka dust. “Then you should know that I’ve had about nine pods unsealed under a false work order. Sending you the list now.”
“Who unsealed them?”
“I did, because they had Director Addison’s approval.”
Sloane grit her teeth. “But she didn’t actually approve them.”
“No. A confirmation made its way back to her and, luckily, she caught it.”
“And you checked with Kesh? Is it possible she—”
“She didn’t.”
She grimaced. “I had to make sure.” She scanned the list Calix sent. “Commerce? Customs? None of these people are critical.”
“My thinking exactly,” Calix replied. “I’ve got log-time about two standard hours back.”
“Just enough time to acclimate,” she noted. “How convenient.”
“Yeah.” She could hear the turian’s shrug in his voice. “And time enough to be anywhere by now. Whatever their purpose, I just thought you might like to know. I’m leaving this in your capable hands, Sloane.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She quickly turned around to half-jog through the corridor. The first things people needed coming out of stasis were food and warmth.
She dialed up Kandros. “Find me every recent access log from Priote Falarn and Foster Addison,” she said before he even had a chance to greet her.
“Who the hell is Priote Falarn?”
“Just do it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied smartly.
She signed off to contact Addison. The faces she jogged past followed her trail, but she ignored their idle curiosity in favor of dodging the occasional construction tangle.
The comm link connected. “I was just trying to reach you,” Addison said. Hurried words, very tense.
“We have a problem,” Sloane said.
“We have more than one,” the woman replied, and for the first time in a long time, Sloane heard a bit of steel in her voice. But there was something else, too. Something focused. Worried.