I was standing on the viewing platform, feeling my heart pounding a hard and furious rhythm against my ribs when I saw her sneak off. Angelica Hunt does nothing subtly. So, when she and Tara whispered amongst themselves and then slipped off in the opposite direction of the bathroom—heading toward the launch platform, I followed.

Angelica had not confronted me over my highly unflattering piece when we saw each other today. She’d either not yet seen it, or simply didn’t care, because her eyes raked over my face with only mild surprise and promptly moved on. I’d actually been halfway hoping for some kind of reaction from her, and I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps because my usefulness had elapsed, and she felt she had no need. In all honestly, she looked like she had other things on her mind. I wondered if she’d had genuine feelings for Oleg/Marcus. I couldn’t actually ever recall seeing them speak, let alone be affectionate, but his betrayal can’t have felt good, even if he was merely a friend with benefits.

At a discrete distance, I followed Angelica and Tara down a narrow staircase and several long, twisting hallways. If they were aware of my pursuit, they gave no sign. They were talking together softly during their walk, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. All I could tell was that Tara’s body language was becoming increasingly tense.

Wherever Angelica was heading, it wasn’t anywhere people like us were supposed to be. The pair began passing through doors that should probably have been locked, and the only way I was able to continue my pursuit was by catching them before they latched. Soon, we were well beyond the part of the complex I was familiar with.

The hallways we were passing down changed from being empty to being completely full of official-looking personnel. Before I knew it, I’d lost sight of Angelica and Tara completely. The people swirling around me made me feel vaguely claustrophobic.

“Cecelia,” I cried, when I spotted a familiar face among the strangers in the crowd, “I need to talk to you right now.”

The woman turned and gaped at me, and the force of her furious surprise caused the young man she had been speaking with to back up a step. He melted backward a few more steps and disappeared into the crowd.

“How the hell did you get all the way in here?” She snapped, “This is a secure area.”

“No shit,” I replied, “you really need to work on your rules when it comes to security. I just followed two people from the viewing platform all the way here. Angelica Hunt and her assistant Tara are in here somewhere. I don’t know what they’re doing but I think you’ve got a big problem.”

She stared at me silently, busy people passing around us on both sides. Their curious gazes felt weighty. I shifted uncomfortably under the force of Cecelia’s glowering scrutiny. Cecelia was one intimidating woman.

“Listen,” I finally said, “why would I lie to you? I don’t even like you. But I’m afraid for Nathan. I could have obviously avoided you if I was trying to do something sketchy. Instead I found you.”

She exhaled heavily and then marched over to grab my arm and pull me into one of the rooms lining the hallway. As soon as we were away from prying eyes she turned to face me.

“Explain right now,” she ordered.

I sighed in irritation that I’d have to repeat myself.

“I was on the viewing platform like I was supposed to be,” I snapped, “when I saw Angelica Hunt and her assistant sneaking off. I just did a piece on Angelica Hunt, so I know a bit about her, and she might be up to something bad. She’s an opportunist and a narcissist. Angelica’s probably just trying to get a good selfie from the control room, but I don’t trust her. So, I followed her all the way here.”

“I read your piece on Angelica Hunt,” Cecelia admitted, and I couldn’t be more shocked if she’d just revealed that she was a closet fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. “It was good.”

We smirked at each other, briefly putting aside our mutual distrust over what was clearly a shared dislike of Angelica Hunt.

“Hunt and her assistant shouldn’t be back here,” Cecelia agreed, looking around the room suspiciously like Angelica might be in here with us, “Her badge shouldn’t even be opening the doors. The fact that it’s been reprogrammed is a very bad sign.”

She grabbed my badge off my lapel and pressed it to the card reader on the door to demonstrate. The little device flashed but stayed red.

“What do we do?” I asked, beginning to feel a new level of nervousness. “What if she’s been in league with Oleg? Or messes something up by accident.”

“First,” Cecelia said, beckoning me to follow her, “we have to find her.”

Cecelia led me down several faceless corridors to another faceless room. She badged us in and we were confronted with dozens and dozens of closed circuit security feeds playing on a wall of monitors. The man watching them, a huge, heavy-set guy with a baby face, looked up from his bag of Bugles in surprise when we entered.

“Victor,” Cecelia barked, “this is Zoey. We’ve got two unauthorized visitors in the controlled area. Zoey’s going to find them on the monitors. You can tell us where all of these cameras are, right?”

He nodded and frowned.

“Of course, I can,” he said defensively, “why do you think I’d be doing this myself if I wasn’t capable?”

“Great,” Cecelia said disinterestedly with a wave of her hand. Then to me, “Ok go. Find them.”

I stared into the wall of pictures, watching what had to be a thousand pictures of people swirling in low-resolution images over acres of identical hallways, offices, and other types of rooms. There were just way too many people.

At first, I couldn’t make sense of the images at all. It was like trying to drink from a firehose. Unless I focused in on one single feed at a time, I couldn’t even pick out the facial features of a single person well enough to eliminate them.

But there was no time for any of that. At my side, Cecelia watched me expectantly when she wasn’t urgently mumbling into her little handheld radio. There was a small, vertical line between her eyebrows that probably indicated her stress level—it hadn’t been there in our other interactions. She looked extremely worried. I knew the feeling. If anything happened to Nathan because of Angelica, I would never forgive myself. I had to find her.

Clearing my mind as best I could, I gave up on trying to focus on the pictures in front of me. I let the images wash over me all at once, just jumping from monitor to monitor and hoping that my brain was sufficiently good at pattern-matching to make Angelica or Tara’s face stand out enough from the crowd.

“There!” I nearly shouted, pointing at one of the feeds on the massive monitors, “There’s Angelica.”

“Where is that?” Cecelia asked Victor sharply.

“That’s the upload link-up room,” he replied, and Cecelia went pale. Victor started typing something into his laptop urgently.

“Stay here,” Cecelia barked at me, pulling a second handheld radio from the large bag she had over her shoulder. “Get on channel five.”

She took off running down the hall.