Devotion (Chosen by the Karal #5)(29)
Those thoughts needed to be ignored. He had work to do. If he wanted Tikki to be able to stay, he needed to find out about the threat to her and Charlie, and the one to Karal, if it did indeed exist.
However, the meeting with the President had left him with deep concerns. He was glad he hadn’t been questioned about that this morning, instead he was expected to compile it into a written report. Each council member would receive a copy and read at their leisure; then the council would meet and discuss their views. Finally, Okil would be called to clarify anything they didn’t understand or agree with. Okil wanted extra time to make his own investigation into the President.
Going to the console, he pressed a button, to wake the sim, but chose not to enable speech mode. Instead, he wanted to pull up surveillance data. The sim held all the information gathered by the probes dotted around Earth; like satellites, they watched everything that happened, and the Karal had the technology to pinpoint any person at any time, thanks to the data. Now he was going to concentrate on Tikki’s apartment.
Inputting the date, he went back to the day Harri visited her. Watching, he saw Tikki leave for work, and then about an hour later, a man came to the door and knocked. There was no answer and so he went away again. Two hours later, he returned. Still no answer.
This carried on throughout the day, until Tikki came home. When the man came again to knock on the door, this time he got an answer. Tikki opened the door and he went in, the door standing ajar. Okil watched them talking and then the man, who he now knew was Harri, came back towards the door. He was surprised, but proud of Tikki, when she pushed him out of her apartment, slamming the door shut in his face.
From further down the corridor another man appeared, shouting at Harri. After a few minutes, Harri left. The corridor was empty for a few minutes and then Tikki appeared with Charlie, only her purse and a small bag in her hands. She shut the door and left. Now he watched.
Tikki hadn’t been gone long before two men came, one of them Harri, and another bigger man, who knocked on the door. When there was no answer, he used something to open it. Okil stared, looking closer at the screen; it looked similar to the technology Karal had. But he couldn’t be sure. No, it wasn’t sophisticated. It looked like a lock pick he had seen in old movies. Okil felt relief: if Karalian technology had found its way into the hands of humans, they were in more danger than he thought.
The two men entered the apartment, shutting the door behind them. He asked the sim to fast-forward the video feed until the men came out. The time stamp told him they were inside her apartment for around half an hour. As the two men came out, he froze the screen on Harri and took a face print of him. The sim was instructed to pull all feeds of him. A light flashed up. Classified.
Several files were accessible, but there were others he didn’t have clearance for. Okil knew that the Hier Commander must have pulled up the same files and stored them. What were they?
Going over the dates of the files, he realised some were from the day Elissa had won the lottery, the day that she had gone to the hospital. Something nagged his memory. He tried to access the data another way. Configuring the data stream, he pulled up an image of himself outside the hospital room where he had stood guard over Elissa. Sure enough, the man who went in to her room was Harri.
So the Hierarchy already knew about Harri.
He switched back to real time and asked the sim to find Harri now. The sim did not respond. He asked again. No face recognition. Okil checked the files. No data feed containing Harri had been logged since the day Tikki had left Earth.
Going back to the feeds, he pulled up the one with the latest time stamp. It showed Harri and the man who had entered Tikki’s apartment going into a bar. It was one of the more upmarket areas of the city, where the pents liked to go. He noted the name, and was about to shut off the feed when he saw a figure he recognised walking in, two men flanking him.
“Well, hello, Mr. President.”
“Okil.” His communicator flashed and Darl’s voice came to him. “I would like to speak to you, please. If you could come to my office at your earliest convenience.”
“Darl, I’m in the middle of something,” he replied. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes. I just have some paperwork for you.” He could tell there was an edge to Darl’s usual light tone. Shutting the sim down, he replied, “I’ll be right there.”
Checking that the last results couldn’t be pulled up, he shut the sim down and made his way up to the doctor’s lab, trying not to draw attention to himself as he hurried along.
“Well, there you are,” Elissa’s voice called out as he went up the stairs. She was walking down with a happy-looking Marin.
“Elissa. You look so well. How is the baby?” Okil asked, unable to ignore Elissa and Marin without it appearing rude and out of character.
“The baby is fine, very healthy, Darl said. Although I must admit the doctor looks a little frazzled. I think he has had a bit of an education at the hands of Reja overnight.”
“Elissa,” Marin said, sounding shocked.
“Sorry. I’m just so excited to have my friend and my sister on Karal. You certainly kept that quiet, Okil.” She beamed happily at him and he wished it were all so easy.
“I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t happen, Elissa. Tikki only agreed to come with me at the last minute,” he said, knowing he had to stick to that story and hoping she wouldn’t ask any further questions.