A few days later, Brad found himself sitting in his office ruminating on everything that had happened up to this point. Rami had brokered a deal that, for the time being, Mikhail and Captain Matsumoto would leave the three of them alone as they were now, albeit unofficially, on the same side. In the meantime the three of them were granted some time to sort out problems that had arisen due to the investigation into the deaths of Vince and Jill Cortez. Naturally, part of this involved a professional deep-cleaning of Brad’s office and the installation of a new door and lock system, which Brad had to be around to supervise.

Supervise being a bit of an exaggeration since these were professionals. Which meant a lot of time seated at his desk bored out of his mind, once any mandatory report writing for the sake of his business had concluded. And naturally, with boredom comes unwelcome self reflection.

The presence of an actual alien creature made this entire operation much more complicated than it needed to be, as far as Brad was concerned. Suddenly, not only was he trying to solve a murder, not only was his relationship with his father forever changed (putting it lightly and as positively as possible), not only was this whole conspiracy getting much bigger than he wanted to deal with, but now suddenly there was at least one, most likely multiple literal aliens beneath the surface of Deimos that apparently could read people’s emotions and influence them to varying degrees. This raised more questions than Brad was comfortable facing. How did they end up there? How many of this species were there? What were they going to do once they found the answers to the first two questions? How were they going to keep this information from getting out to the general populace? Could this information even be trusted in the hands of the government?

Though to be honest, it couldn’t be much worse off in the hands of the government than it was right now in the hands of people trying to make a quick buck off the research they were already conducting on the creature.

Brad looked at his communicator. It would be so easy to just call in an anonymous tip. Certainly, nobody but Rami actually wanted to go along with his little charade here, right? Rami would have no idea who called it in.

It would definitely look good for him as a private investigator as well. He’d done the legwork in uncovering corruption between the local police and a private mining company, or at least enough of a conflict of interests that would open the doors for a full blown investigation by proper authorities. Understanding the breadth of his own jurisdiction would show humility that could only help him in later cases. It would certainly make the authorities more willing to work with him, if she showed willingness to let them handle the big stuff, right?

On the other hand, what if those he contacted opted to side with his father, seeing his perspective. Ethics aside, he had a point about the possibilities attached to the project, if that creature’s power over empathy could be harnessed, for good or for ill. He might be more receptive to it if it weren’t for all the secrecy. By the same token he understood the need for discretion here, considering humanity’s own historical debate on things like animal rights, balancing ethical treatment of chattel animals with the need for an easily renewable source of protein-dense food, for humans as well as obligate carnivore animals kept as pets or other companions.

Brad scowled. I’m thinking way too much about this. I gotta talk to someone.

The door repairs were almost finished. Perhaps once that was over he’d see if he could meet Elaine and Jolene to talk things over. In an official sense, the two of them were suspended with pay from their jobs as police officers for the duration of the “official investigation”, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to meet up with them somewhere to chat.

No, the real challenge would be finding a place to chat that wasn’t under surveillance.

They hadn’t made too much effort to hide themselves, so Brad was able to figure out pretty early on in his little “hiatus” that he was being tailed by Rami’s lackeys. Brad surmised that their “official” responsibility was for his protection, but their actual responsibility was to make sure that he didn’t do anything suspicious. He wasn’t sure to what degree this surveillance would be conducted, but he felt safe to assume that text and voice communication among them would be audited, considering that their communicators were provided by Rami’s company.

Well, two of the three, anyway. That may be something Brad could use in his favor.

He quickly sent out a casual, yet clear message.

Hey guys, I’m bored and my door’s almost taken care of. Wanna get lunch?