Basher watched the video recording of Claire receiving her injection in the medical room... again. There he was in the doorway while his partner led her into the room. Basher watched his digital self hang back in the doorway, visibly reluctant to enter.

She answered questions, getting angry at him and going off about the foods she remembered from her childhood.

He watched it carefully. The angle of the feed wasn’t great for getting her facial expression, but he was wondering if she'd known then about the escape plan. He watched her hands flutter for a second when he asked about her family. He watched her eyes dart back and forth between him and his partner while the syringe was slowly filled.

Nothing.

He switched to the video of the cell she’d been in. It had no audio, because the Rik never said anything worthwhile so the Spo didn’t bother. They just didn’t see the value in continual surveillance the way humans did. Basher had already pointed out that it was just such a situation as this that a continuous recording would be useful for, but there was no point in berating his partner again. In their defense, this was the first escape they’d had.

After the lights went off in the cell the recording was no good. He could barely see anything, and of course, he couldn’t hear anything either. He went back to the moment when she’d been brought into the cell. The other Rik had been doing yoga or meditation or something and she’d sat uncertainly on the empty bed watching them.

He watched the whole thing at high speed, only slowing whenever someone spoke. He’d watched this before, but now he watched their lips, doing his best to try lip reading.

It was no good. Half the time they were turned away from the lens, and the other time... he just couldn’t tell what they were saying. He slapped his palms on the table.

“I just can’t believe it has been a week, and we still can’t get a location on them. A week!” Basher said to Akemi.

He knew she could hear and see him through his computer. He’d given her access to it, and at first he'd been self-conscious that she kept the tiny video recorder going non-stop, but he’d gotten used to it. He felt bad for her, trapped in a computer with only a few visual outlets. It was still hard for him to grasp that she was only a computer. Having never met her before, he kept picturing a real girl, stuck in her room, bored out of her mind, texting everybody she knew.

He’d gotten used to her presence, and even started to enjoy bouncing ideas off of her. He had not gotten used to her reorganization of all his files and programs, but she insisted her way was better and he learned it was easier to let her have her own way.

Sorry.Akemi printed in a small text box on his screen.

She really hasn’t given me much to work with.

“I would go stir-crazy stuck in a tiny little apartment above a tiny little restaurant for so many days,” Basher said. “Why doesn’t she leave?”

She’s used to confinement. And she’s happy, mostly.

“Don’t even get me started on that,” Basher said. “They’re Rik.”

But they look human. It’s more than she’s had in a while.

“So you don’t think she’s going to leave any time soon?”

I can’t be sure. She COULD take a walk tomorrow, but I doubt it. :-(

“Hmm.”

Nothing new from the videos?

Basher rolled his eyes. "No. And don't say 'I told you so,' because I'm not in the mood."

He should have known that if Akemi got nothing useful from analyzing the video of their escape, he wouldn't either, but it hadn't stopped him from trying. Akemi seemed like a nice girl and all, but he wasn't about to let a sixteen year old girl (computer or not) take over his investigation. In fact, Basher had planned to independently confirm Akemi's diagnosis of Claire's fever at the time she'd left the embassy. He hadn’t gotten around to it yet, so he might as well do the work now. It made Basher feel marginally better to have something concrete to do.

The cells were climate controlled, of course. All of Selta was climate controlled, because if there was a breach to the exterior of the planet and cold vacuum started pouring in, people wanted systems in place to notice and lock down before all their air escaped. Conversely, the mining processes in the center of Selta generated an incredible amount of heat. All of the habitable portions of Selta were heated from this excess, and a good bit of geothermal energy was gleaned from it. But if those systems of heat distribution broke down, the heat could build catastrophically in small pockets, and destroy whole sections of Selta.

Which was all to say, the temperature of every dwelling, business, and bathroom on Selta was rigorously monitored.

With a little digging, and a call to his partner for an access code, Basher got the heating logs for the cells of the Spo embassy. The data was raw, a confusing mess of a Spo spreadsheet, and it took him close to half an hour to make certain he’d found the right cell information for the right time. Then he used a simple program to figure out the average heat output to maintain that cell. He did the other cells while he was at it, just to make sure he was getting good numbers. Then he counterchecked the figures to determine how much the heating/cooling changed when an occupant was added to a cell. That took a while, the numbers being so slight... but he had months worth of data on the cells, and all he had to do was cross reference his own records that showed how many people had been in each cell on any given night.

Eventually he had it, with a statistical reliability of .89... Each additional human in a cell caused the heating output to go down .015%. Give or take .003%.

So, if Claire had a fever that took her from 98 degrees, to say, 103, would that make a difference? The math took him a while, and he even broke down and ran it by his partner (although that was kind of embarrassing).

But the equations worked out. The output in their cell had gone down more than it should have for one additional person. He ran the equation the other way and pursed his lips in a silent whistle. If he’d done this right, she was running a fever of 106 or 107 by midnight when they’d escaped.

Basher’s partner tapped the screen with one clawed finger.

“This changes something?” he asked. “Didn’t you already believe she was human?”

Basher rubbed his eyes and saw the afterimage of all those lines of data. “I did... but I wanted to prove it to myself.”

The Spo colored faintly. “Your diligence is rewarded then. But I already thought she was human.”

Basher stared at him. “You did? Why didn’t you say so?”

He shrugged. “You’re in charge of identifying Rik, I am not. I am certainly not an expert in humans. That was just my... hunch.” He’d picked up the word from Basher and was starting to like it.

Basher groaned. “That was my hunch too, sort of. I wish I’d gone with it.”

"Speaking of hunches," his partner said, "I.. uh, had another."

His partner carried a cloth satchel, as many Spo did, and now he unfastened it from his torso. He washed a vague color, somewhere between pink and peach that Basher had never seen on him before.

When the Spo released the catch on the bag, the lemur sprang out of it. It chittered happily and jumped onto one of the Spo's knees.

Basher laughed in surprise, and his partner turned a deeper pink. "It is only that I felt... perhaps it requires company." He looked sheepish. "Walking past it every day, I had a feeling - like - " he struggled for words, "like a father who is ignoring the youngest of his litter."

Basher stared at the alien. He'd been his partner for two years and he just learned more about him in one sentence than he had in all that time.

Just then Sam appeared in the open doorway, knocking perfunctorily on the door frame. “Cute animal,” he said, rubbing the lemur. “We just got a tip from a Seltan constable. Coming with us?”

Basher stood and pushed in his chair. “Of course, let’s go.” He’d wasted most of his morning. The real investigation he should be worrying about was the sabotage of the space station.So far they had made little headway, but he had not expected it to be easy. They had confirmed that the ship of Rik diplomats who had visited the space station just prior to the explosion had come to Selta.

The ship had remained only one shift before departing, and so far they had not been able to confirm whether the Rik got off or continued on. If they had remained in Upper Selta, Basher certainly hadn’t seen them, but Upper Selta was a large city. It was entirely possible that they were here but keeping a low profile.

It was also entirely possible that they’d stopped briefly on Selta and then continued on wherever they were going and all this was a waste of time. However, that was seeming less and less likely as neither the Spo nor the Rik government had been able to contact any of the diplomats from that ship. It had been nearly a month since the explosion and that was a long time for anyone to be unreachable.

“So what tip did you get?” Basher asked Sam. He was marginally annoyed that a Seltan officer had seen fit to contact Sam instead of himself, but it didn’t really matter as long as the information found its way to them.

“Apparently they found an apartment full of dead Rik,” Sam said. “And since we’d asked them to let us know if there was any strange Rik activity... they sent me a message. They really should have sent it to you,” Sam said frankly. “But you don’t seem very popular with them.”

Basher laughed. “You’re right. The Seltan constables don’t appreciate that I’m allowed to walk around with a weapon and arrest people while they have to get permission to wipe spit off their shoes.”

“Well, that would be annoying. Do people spit on them often?”

“It’s a metaphor. More or less. Is Nat coming with us?”

“Um, no. She’s dealt with enough dead Rik, she doesn’t have any desire to see more.”

“Has she?”

“She had to kill three Rik when she was trying to get to the trial. They were still in their original form, not human, and the memory still gets to her.”

Basher nodded, not needing to hear more about that. He knew they’d both been through some rough stuff, but Nat had a perpetually haunted look in her eyes. She’d clearly been through too much.

“Shara wanted to come,” Sam added. “She was already out, so she’ll meet us there.”

Basher clenched his jaw as he and Sam left the main entrance of the embassy. He knew that Shara was a ‘turned’ Rik, one of those who’d sworn allegiance to humanity and supposedly proved their usefulness, but he still didn’t like working with her.

They waited while one of the Spo guards went to bring Basher’s car around.

“If you ignore her flirting, she won’t bother you so much,” Sam said. “She does that to everyone.”

 “I don’t care about that,” Basher said, which was actually true, though he admitted to some relief that she was beginning to pick up on his dislike of her. “The problem is investigating a Rik conspiracy with a Rik. It’s a conflict of interest. Plus, Nat can hardly stand her. Why did you bring her?”

“Believe it or not, it was Nat’s idea. Akemi and Shara are friends, and Nat will do anything for Akemi.” Sam laughed, a little darkly. “In fact, if you ever see Nat do something irrational or insane, you can bet it’s about Akemi.”

Sam paused and put a hand to his glasses. “Now Akemi’s chewing me out,” he explained to Basher.“Akemi - No, you know it’s true, I’m just explaining to Basher. No, don’t tell Nat I said that... Oh, fine.”

Sam shrugged as the Spo stopped the car in front of them. “Let’s go see some dead aliens.”