Power(68)

“Foreman’s called a meeting in five minutes.”

“Good, because we have many important things to discuss and questions to answer.” I yawned and stretched, putting my arms over my head. “The first of which is, ‘Will there will be coffee’?”

“There’s coffee,” Scott said. “I heard a rumor he even had breakfast catered in.”

“Ooh,” I said and headed toward the conference room without bothering to say anything else.

There was breakfast, and it had been catered in by the local bagel chain. I had no complaints as I spread blueberry cream cheese over my bagel. Li was already there, trying to spread his cream cheese with one hand. The plate kept slipping away from him, but he didn’t look up to register my amusement, thankfully. A better person than I might have offered to help; I wisely kept my distance, figuring that offering him assistance would be taken as an insult or something.

Kat and Janus wandered in about five minutes later, Janus leaving heavily on his girlfriend. The sight of the two of them together still gave me gut-level heebie-jeebies, and I could tell from Gavrikov’s veritable rippling in my head that he was still none too pleased. I got the sense that he and Janus had been more than casual acquaintances, and that he viewed the fact that Janus was sleeping with his sister as something of an insult or treading on his guy territory or something testosterone related. I just viewed it as icky.

Reed and Scott breezed in a few minutes later, followed by Ariadne. She seemed like the odd man out, a little distant as the two of them took their seats. Foreman was the last to arrive; he had Harper and a new guy in his wake. The new guy did not look happy.

He was a touch under six feet, had jet-black hair with a hint of some sort of gel in it to hold the parts in place in a wave over his forehead. He was olive-skinned and serious, but his lips made him look like he’d held onto a taste of something very sour.

Foreman didn’t waste moments. He went straight to the head of the table. With a frown, he asked, “Where’s Zollers?”

“Sleeping,” I answered for him. It was a reasonable guess. “With Sovereign in the building, I’ve got him on telepathic watch to keep any mental break-ins from happening.”

Foreman gave me a grunt of acknowledgment. “And with me and Janus lurking, he won’t be needed in the short term.”

“Hence the sleep,” I said.

“All right, well,” Foreman said, and clapped his hands together, “you’ve already met Ms. Harper. This is Mr. Rocha, from the National Security Agency.”

“NSA?” Scott asked as a slight buzz of energy ran through the room. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why is the NSA here?”

“Because you need help intercepting and decoding your enemy’s transmissions,” Rocha said. His voice was thin and light, and he kept whatever displeasure he was feeling out of his voice. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but we have a program or two for that.”

“PRISM?” Reed said with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t even need to say it again, do I?”

“We’re all ignoring you by now,” Scott said. “This could be useful.”

“Oh, yeah, invading privacy of massive numbers of people is super-useful,” Reed said acidly. “To anyone who’s actually got control over the data. Those of us whose privacy is being compromised—”

“No one gives a crap about your browser history,” Scott said, waving him off. He paused then glanced slightly nervously at Kat. “Although … man, I hope they’re not reading our old text messages. And the photos…” He grimaced and Kat gave him a quizzical look.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “We’ve had access to PRISM intercepts for a while. What’s new?”

Rocha smiled, looking a little pained. “Now you’ve got me combing through it for you, and I know a lot more about how the system works than your resident tech geek.”

I shrugged. “Can’t hurt. If nothing else, J.J. will be thrilled to have you on his staff.”

Rocha’s smile died. “Excuse me?”

Foreman buried his face in a palm while Scott and Reed exchanged a giggle, like the twelve-year-olds they were. “Not what I meant,” I corrected. Man, I had to watch out for that one in the future.

Rocha gave me a look that was pure disdain. “If you’ll allow me to set up on one of your computers, I can start working immediately.”

“Sure,” I said. “Scott, set him up, will you? You know, if you’re done chortling.”

“Man, where the hell was all this help six months ago, when we were stumbling in the dark?” Scott muttered as he headed to the door, Rocha following just slightly after him.