Charles Stantz stood with his hands flat on the desk, leaning forward. The command trailer was quiet but for the hum of computer fans and the soft crackle of voices over the headset draped around his neck. He’d stopped paying attention to the comms more than an hour ago — not long after he’d sent everyone, Fairborough included, outside. They were only getting in his way. Fairborough’s team could find the pieces, but they were no help in putting those pieces together to solve the puzzle.

Without taking his eyes off the monitors, he reached up, loosened his tie further, and plucked the cigarette out of the corner of his mouth. He flicked the ashes from its tip onto the floor and tucked the filter between his lips for another long drag. His lungs burned. A looming cough tickled his throat.

He hadn’t smoked in ten years.

Blowing out a lungful of stinking smoke, he shifted his eyes between the screens. The nicotine dulled the edge on his nerves.

It had become increasingly troubling that Stantz’s imminent success — the recapture of the Fox and the subsequent reverse engineering of its alien technology — would be credited to the director’s leadership of the Organization.

Stantz left the cigarette to dangle between his lips and returned his hand to the desk.

The pieces: one escaped EBE — extraterrestrial biological entity — one twenty-seven-year-old Caucasian woman, five dead bodies, an injured police officer, and a growing trail of sightings. There was evidence in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Kansas, and rumors from at least six other states.

A picture of Weston and Specimen Ten outside a Kansas rest stop. A stolen car with Colorado plates, reported missing in Vail on the day of the infamous video, found on a Kansas City backstreet. A small string of electronic terminals hacked from Colorado Springs to Indianapolis — four gas pumps and an ATM, the latter of which was in Kansas City, not far from the stolen car.

He slid a mouse and keyboard closer and pinpointed the events and sightings on the map, from the Mojave to the Midwest. The Fox had slunk eastward since escaping. The trail seemed too perfect now, too obvious, for Stantz not to have guessed sooner. He’d have to commend the tech who’d discovered the small chain of hacked electronics, when this was all done.

Stantz’s gaze flowed across the map. Ohio, next. They’d be in Ohio, and then…

The cigarette fell from his mouth as he grinned. He didn’t notice the ash burning his hand. His phone rang, and he ignored it.

Within five minutes, Stantz got Fairborough and all the techs back into the trailer and at their posts. He looked them over; they were a disheveled bunch, wearing their exhaustion openly, but they’d done decent work.

They listened as he gave them their orders, and they dutifully set to their tasks. Only Fairborough hesitated, wearing that damnably judgmental look.

“What about the woman?” Fairborough asked.

“The woman doesn’t matter, beyond holding some kind of significance for my specimen,” Stantz replied. “Her presence will slow him down, but we can’t take special precautions for her sake, especially after she’s betrayed her country and her species. If she dies, at least her life will have contributed to the realization of something meaningful. If she lives, that’ll be one more subject to study.”

“Sir, that’s…”

“Necessary. A few deaths are meaningless compared to what we stand to gain from this.” Stantz placed a hand on Fairborough’s shoulder and squeezed. “Now do your job and round up those helicopters.”

Fairborough’s throat bobbed nervously, but he nodded and walked to his station.

The Fox was priority one, and Stantz knew where he was heading now. They’d get the specimen, shut the director up, and push forward on their research with renewed energy and inspiration.

Stantz glanced at Fairborough.

And then a few assets that were incapable of comprehending the grand vision could be retired.