The feed stuttered forward again, and again it was impelled by no action I could detect. It settled on a scene in the lab, where Britt, Rauch, and the girl were standing, dwarfed, in front of the Tower, pecking their respective screens. All three wore headsets, which consisted mainly of a pair of bug-eyed goggles designed to detect the slightest presence of the tracer one of the must have queued up, just in case it manifested itself someplace other than a holoscreen. A smattering of hand tools lay scattered at the base of one of the consoles. I checked all the access panels visible from that angle, wondering which they had been working and why. A fourth figure huddled at the secondary station. I looked it up and down, wondering which of them it was. It kind of looked like Miller, but not the Miller I was used to. Its shoulders were so hunched and narrow, and its hair was far too thin.

“It’s him,” the girl’s voice informed. “It had to be, to activate the kill-switch. Britt would have killed to give him a few hours rest, but he was the only one who knew where it was.”

I nodded to myself, keeping my eyes on the screen. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her when her voice was speaking.

“Anything now?” Miller asked. He was scanning through a series of graphics that seemed to map changes in acid strings over time…quite likely the genome mappings Rauch had lamented missing previously.

“Negative,” the girl answered. “No leak detected.”

“Dammit!” He tore his headset off and tossed it on the console with considerably more force than necessary. “I was sure we’d see it this time.” He ran his hands through his hair, grabbing a fistful in frustration. More than a few feathered to the floor when he let the fistful go.

Britt moved to pick up the goggles, but the girl beat him to it. She dusted them off and handed them back to Miller with nothing more than a pleading look. Miller put them on again, likewise without a word.

Rauch snickered from across the room.

“What’re you guys testing for anyways?” It was Charles who broke the silence. He strode in with the usual bounce in his step as the doors both whooshed aside, carrying a steaming thermos in each hand. And, as usual, he was oblivious to the tension he was breaking up.

“Anything,” Miller replied, “and nothing. Just a harmless tracer coded to act like a virus. Its sole purpose for existing is to trigger our detection systems if it gets out into the atmosphere, like the Haggarty somehow did. So far, bubkus.”

“Well, are you sure the detection is working?”

All eyes turned to Rauch, who in turn addressed the console. He made a few strokes on the touch-pad and sat back, waiting. Almost immediately a red bauble appeared on his section of the screen, and the view from the incubation chamber commandeered his feed. The feeds mimicked the wail of a claxon, grinding out its antiquated tone. An inset to the video feed showed a schematic of the bunker, with panels blinking where Rauch had released the tracer. “I’d say.” He undid the strokes. Both the screen and the noise level returned to normal. The suddenness of the peace and quiet was somehow more alarming that the cacophony had been. “Any more brain-waves?”

Charles sipped from one of his thermoses. “Alright, alright, no need to get snippy. I’m just trying to help. Sheesh, I’ve never seen anyone get so upset over not finding a problem before.”

“We did find a problem,” Rauch replied. “We found a big one this morning. Now we need to figure out what our solution is going to look like.” He turned back to the console and swiped through a few of secondary indicators, checking them despite his demonstration a moment ago. “How’s that kill-switch coming, by the way?”

Charles shrugged off the jab. He plopped down in a guest chair next to Miller and handed off the second thermos. “OK hoss,” he said. “What’s next?”

“One second,” Miller flicked away a couple of pop-ups on his holo. They spun down to an empty corner, diminishing in size with every off-center rotation, until they disappeared into the background, never to be seen again. “I want us to get another test going, then we can work on the switch for a while.” And then, in a louder voice, “okay gang, what are we trying next?”

They pondered.

“Well,” Britt reasoned, “If the leak isn’t in any of the primary systems, maybe we should test the secondaries. What about the ventilation network?”

Miller eyed him suspiciously. “Since when is ventilation a secondary system?” He inhaled conspicuously, as if to drive home the point.

“You know what I mean. We’re driving ourselves half to death checking all the designed containment points, but what if the leak happened elsewhere? The ionizers, the oh-two interchange, or someplace else we might not expect?”

Miller considered. “I suppose…but no, that’s impossible. The ventilation network is a separate system from all our containment devices. It has barriers all its own. Even if one of them was flawed, a bug would have to break contain – and trip our sensors in the process – just to get to it.”

Britt cogitated, as if trying to think up some scenario where his suggestion might make sense, but said nothing.

The girl piped up next. “We had the EKG running during the demonstration. Any chance that’s when the leak occurred?”

Miller held a finger in the air, then pointed it at her. “Yeah!” he exclaimed. “I forgot about that. I had to split the receivers to accommodate both subjects, and I had to run the sensors through the airlock. It’s supposed to be able to handle a setup like that no problem, but if everything had worked the way it was supposed to we wouldn’t be talking about it, would we? It’s worth a shot.”

She beamed. “I’ll get the coneys!” She turned and trotted towards their chambers, lab coat billowing behind her. Miller watched her go.