Page 133 of Black to Light

“Yes…” she said, still staring down at the screen. “One moment.” I saw her fingers skate over the top of the tablet. “I’ve only got the one angle,” she added. “I saved it as a clip.”

Black came to a stop once he received the link.

Without me having to ask, she sent it to me, too, and probably to every one of us, given how many in the group stopped and appeared to stare into space.

Cowboy and Angel came to a stop, too.

We could all see the girl walking across the busy street, wearing a dark backpack.

She looked almost comically young in wine-colored jeans and a white sailor top with a dark red tie. Metallic pink heart earrings dangled from her ears. On her feet were brand new sneakers I doubt she or Dalejem had paid for, and she had a brand new designer watch wrapped around her wrist. Everything she wore looked very new and very French.

“The backpack,” Black said. “Can we get eyes inside?”

Alisha sounded doubtful.

“After the fact? Sorry, boss. There’s nothing on this street that would be using X-rays, or even infrared to look for heat signatures. They’ve probably got laws about that in a non-law-enforcement situation. Is it possible some of your people could I.D. the contents through a different means? Yarli, maybe?”

We all knew what she meant.

She meant via the Barrier.

Unfortunately, Black sounded as doubtful as Alisha had. “It’s likely Jem is blocking her, but I’ll pass it on to Yarli and see what they can do.”

I saw Black give a longer look to Alisha as he finished speaking.

I saw him measuring her with his eyes in that stare, like he was trying to determine how she was doing. She’d been on his team for years now, but the thirty-something, ex-C.I.A. tech analyst and programmer wasn’t usually out in the field. She wasn’t used to dead bodies and bombs and being shot at and panicking crowds.

We normally used Jem for field operations.

I’d always liked Alisha, and felt like I’d gotten to know her pretty well.

Despite her time with the C.I.A. at Langley, she’d always struck me as kind of a quintessential San Francisco tech nerd. Even now, her blond hair was twisted in knots on either side of her head, one dyed sky blue, the other bubblegum pink. She wore nondescript clothing like the rest of us, but a Transformers watch wrapped around her thin left wrist, and she had blue Doc Martens on her feet.

“You’re doing good work,” Black said, after his assessment of her. “Really good work, Alisha. You deserve a raise. And I’m going to find someone to spend more time teaching you the theory and design of organic machines.”

She blinked at him in open surprise, but he’d already looked away.

His eyes found Ace and Mika next.

“All right,” he said. “I want us to split up. Mika, you and Dex head up the team at the bomb site. I want you to I.D. as many of the dead as you can… especially the shooting victims, and by that, I mean the ones he clearly hit on purpose.” Black’s jaw tightened. “See if you can determine if there were specific victims this… terrorist attack… was targeting, or if it was more of a generalized mayhem and blood type thing.”

I felt my throat close.

Black practically choked on the word “terrorist” in reference to Jem, but he managed to spit it out. Still, I had a feeling we knew the answer to his question already. Black was right; we needed proof, we needed names, we needed to know for sure.

But I strongly suspected this hadn’t been random.

“Take Alisha with you,” Black added. “She can ID them a lot faster.” He turned to the human with the round, pink and blue buns on either side of her head. “Ping my headset if they show up on the street. I know it’ll slow things down, but keep the scans going in the background while you run ID checks for the team. I want to know the second they resurface. Got it?”

“Yes, boss.” She still looked a little pink from his compliment earlier.

“Oh,” Black added to her. “And see if you can use the cameras to ID any fragment of that backpack she was wearing.”

Angel frowned. “Quentin––”

“You go with them, too,” Black said, without looking directly at Angel. His voice grew a touch harder. “We’ll try not to leave you down here for long. If you can’t deal with the dead bodies, then don’t… I mean it. I’m leading the team up to the shooter’s nest. You can sit this one out, Ange. We won’t be long.”

“I’m coming for that,” Cowboy said. “The upstairs.”

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