Box

Chapter 8

"The username 'Hunan' has logged into the Hive!" Box flew up and towards the bed and Aydin, who was dozing on the propped-up pillows. He had fallen asleep fifteen minutes ago, lulled into it by the recordings of the cameras in the Tower. Box's arm came out of its orb and it wrapped its fingers around Aydin's shoulder and squeezed. "Aydin!"

Aydin blinked, and his eyes opened. He sat. "What?"

"Hunan has logged into the Hive system, but considering that Greg Hunan is a field agent specialising in languages, he does not possess access to the Hive."

"Lights on." The lamp on the ceiling turned on. Aydin touched his eyes, yawning. "Where's my eGlass?"

Box passed Aydin the eGlass that it had taken off him when he dozed off.

Aydin put it on.

Box, continuing to maintain its connection with his eGlass, watched Aydin go through the submenus until usernames appeared on the screen. There were two of them: Cain and Hunan. The next thing Aydin did was go to the code and used the search function to see if the programming still mentioned the Helper 335. There were only two mentions; before there had been three.

"Greg has the night shift. Let's see what he's doing right now." Aydin opened a new window, this one displaying the station's main menu. He went to the section with cameras and a few moments later, they saw Greg in the gym, working out.

"Linda has the morning shift," Box commented. "If she's in her room, we can't monitor her activities." Due to privacy regulations, personal areas such as staff bedrooms had to be camera-free.

"I know." Aydin went through the Tower's cameras. "But it also means that she doesn't have an alibi, something that Greg, Suzanne, and Jacob have.

"Nor do Mark, Adele, Simon, and Florence."

"Mark has one." Aydin expanded the footage from the garage, where Mark stood in the workshop corner, bent over a Helper on the counter.

Did that man ever sleep? "He might be typing."

"Not likely." Aydin zoomed in on Mark's hands. One was resting on the arm of the Helper while the other one held a tool similar to a screwdriver with a light on its upper edge with which he was touching the inner parts of the Helper. "We can safely eliminate Mark from our suspect list, and if you're willing to go out, we might be able to eliminate more people from the list. You'll have to hurry, though."

"What action should I take?"

"Put on that black hat of mine."

Black beanie equalled spying. Box rushed to the wardrobe, took out the beanie, and put it on. "To observe them through the windows?"

"You can finally read my mind." Aydin smiled.

"Window open." Box flew towards the window. It reached it just as it opened and it rushed outside. It already knew which rooms belonged to whom and all it had to do was carefully peer inside through windows.

The closest room to Aydin's belonged to Adele. Box flew just under the level of the windowsill. It took off one of its side cameras and carried it up to the window to peer inside. The room was dark, and it had to turn on its night vision to see an outline of a person curled under the cover of the bed. Simon was next. He was also sleeping.

"Check out Linda's room, please," Aydin requested through their connection.

Box lowered to the ground floor and looked inside. A barely visible glow was coming from the back of the room, where the bed was. It zoomed in to see the weak light coming from the eGlass reflection on Linda's face. It wrote to Aydin, 'She's awake.'