The adults went inside the house. After Nai checked to ensure that there were no spy biots in the area, she drew close to Robert and Ellie. “The police interrogated me again last night,” she whispered to her friends. “I’m starting to believe there may be some truth in the rumor.”

“Which rumor?” Ellie said. “There are so many.”

“One of the women who works at our factory,” Nai said, “has a brother in Nakamura’s special service. He told her, one night after he had been drinking, that when the police showed up at Nicole’s cell on the morning of the execution, the cell was empty. A Garcia biot had signed her out. They mink it was the same Garcia that was reportedly destroyed in that explosion outside the munitions factory.”

Ellie smiled, but her eyes said nothing in response to the intense, inquiring gaze from her friend. “The police have also questioned me, Nai,” she said matter-of-factly. “Several different times. According to them, the questions are all designed to clear up what they call the ‘irregularities’ in Mother’s case. Even Katie has had a visit from the police. She dropped by unexpectedly last week and remarked that the postponement of Mother’s execution was certainly peculiar.”

“My friend’s brother,” Nai said after a short silence, “says that Nakamura suspects a conspiracy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Robert scoffed. “There is no active opposition to the government anywhere in the colony.”

Nai drew even closer to Ellie. “So what do you think is really happening?” she whispered. “Do you think your mother has actually escaped? Or did Nakamura change his mind and execute her in private to stop her from becoming a public martyr?”

Ellie looked first at her husband and then at her friend. “I have no idea,” Ellie forced herself to answer. “I have, of course, considered all the possibilities you have mentioned. As well as a few others. But we have no way of knowing… Even though I am certainly not what you would call a religious person, I have been praying in my own way that Mother is all right”