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be in touch.” The vid-call en ded, leaving a black screen in its wake.
    A car came up on them fast and zoomed by down the highway. Running away? Sabrina wondered. Maybe they had also been tipped off. But did they know that they might be heading into more of the same? Central Texas was highly concentrated with Silte-controlled ventures, which meant a relatively high number of their employees, recently laid off and turning to violence in their frustration. Many of them would have made their way up to Dallas to join the big fight, but on the other hand she and Jason could be driving into waves of destruction.
    Not to mention, they could both attract the very wrong kind of attention. It was a highly paranoid line of thinking, but if the protesters somehow figured out that she was a Guardian officer, or if someone from the PAC faction knew Jason had ties to their e nemies, things could get bad. She knew firsthand what kind of terrifying information-gathering technology the GPA possessed, and she had no doubt these hacker groups had their own fearsome version that would easily be able to pick either of them out of a crowd. All it took was one angry rioter using a facial-recognition app at the right moment while they were stopped at a charging station, and then their number of pursuers multiplied.
    That was a situation that they must avoid. Anyway, it made no sense to go in blindly at this point; in fact, her experience as an officer would not allow such irrationality. She grabbed J ason’s tablet, opened the television app, and found the live stream for ONN, the 24-hour news channel. Immediately, she saw aerial shots of thousands of people marching down a street, waving flags and long, slender objects in the air.
    “Mainstream media?” Jason said derisively. “We might as well enjoy the quiet. It’s all lies.”
    “Yeah,” Sabrina said. “But lies are better than nothing.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    13
     
    “One more case for you to review today, Mr. Torres.”
    “Thank you, Elle.” His virtual secretary disappeared and a case profile popped up. Mike stared at the middle-aged man named Lorne Adelson on his desk screen. The man was Silte’s appointed Lab Director at OpenLife Biomedical, a research facility just up the highway in North Dallas. Mike guessed this was going to be a long one; it wasn’t just some CEO having second thoughts—this was much worse. A trusted Silte Corp agent showing disloyalty was on par with high treason.
    The recently-promoted administrators had begun their new task of identifying and exami ning cases of potential problems in the Silte hierarchy a few days ago, but Mike had just started getting completed cases for review and approval yesterday. He had been shocked by some of the information his team had dug up. There were scores of senior employees who were either regularly talking to known activists or were openly sympathizing with the movement. The CEO of some smalltime Silicon Valley tech company had recently held a secret board meeting and soon after expelled the Silte representatives at their office. There were even several executives suspected of directly funding the Anti-Corp. None of these, though, were as serious a slight against Silte as the betrayal of one of its own trusted employees, someone whose job it was to make sure things at the other companies ran the way Silte wanted them to. This would be a long one.
    So much for leaving early. He grimaced as he massaged his eyes.
    “Would you like me to help you?” Elle asked, detecting his weariness.
    “Yes, thank you.” Mike would be grateful for the reprieve. “First, why is Adelson up for removal?”
    “Lorne Adelson is designated for removal from his current position and relocation within the Silte Corporation family for aiding through inaction a top-level enemy of Silte Corporation then failing to report this encounter with the enemy, resulting in the theft of invaluable company