“An uncomfortable position indeed,” Sheida frowned. “For reasons that I’ll get into in a moment, don’t discuss that with anyone except myself. If you encounter anyone who knew you before the Fall, tell them that you have definite proof that both of them died during the Fall.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Travante said, his face hard. “They might have.”

“I hope not,” Sheida replied. “We have very few assets in Ropasa or the Briton Isles. I think it unwise, furthermore, to put out any sort of feelers about your wife and daughter. Our intelligence assets have been being… ‘rolled up’ is the term, compromised and just as often interrogated and then Changed, with unfortunate regularity.”

“In that case, ma’am,” the inspector said, “please do not put out any feelers.”

“The unfortunate regularity is what I wish to discuss with you,” Sheida said. “I’m beginning to suspect that while we have not been able to get much intelligence out of New Destiny’s areas, the reverse is not the case.” She summoned a holographic representation of Norau and pointed to a series of red dots.

“While we can prevent Paul’s associates from teleporting into our territory, we cannot prevent communications or avatars,” she said. “But by the same token, since we’ve locked out virtually all programs under pass codes, we can detect when non-Coalition pass codes are being used, and non-Coalition avatars or projections are entering our territory. These are records of all such transmissions over the last six months.”

“That’s… bad,” Travante said, looking at the traces. They dotted the map like pustulant sores and were found wherever there were latter day concentrations of survivors. “This is just the last six months?”

“Yes,” Sheida frowned. “Some of them might be avatars appearing for a look at some occurrence. Paul still has a slight surplus of energy over ours and he is apparently using it for the development of intelligence.”