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Mishka was frustrating, but it was still a chase. Violet couldn’t muster the obsessive hatred of Wulfgar that Vibs had for her nemesis, only an active vicious hatred that for the last year, had been dwindling from starvation. He was out there somewhere, but what of it? There was no trace of him. There was no murmur of activity, no hint of a gang reforming, not a single whisper on Earth that he was still alive. It was possible that he wasn’t. Dr. Niide couldn’t guess the damage done to his brain from the glimpse they caught of his head. It was entirely possible and, given the lack of developments, more and more likely that whoever stole his corpse couldn’t repair it.
    Violet had watched for medical logs, newly grown jaws, crushed corpses, and the like without leads. Unless he had elected to stay broken and faceless, he wasn’t awake.
    Vibeke snapped out of the net and sat up, reorienting herself to being in bed. Violet nodded to let her know how she got there, and Vibs nodded back. Violet was trying to come up with a subtle way to ask what Vibeke had found, but Veikko beat her to it.
    â€œWhat news of the one-eyed monster?”
    Vibeke link dumped the answer to her team. Her escape via capture, the stolen eye, all the peripheral notes. Violet took some time to look over it, all solid notes but nothing useful for finding her again. Violet was half-relieved at that. She wanted Mishka caught or dead but hated Vibeke’s distance and cold bitter demeanor when they were on her trail. It was like all sense of fun got sucked out of her. Project Omfavnet was in Varg’s opinion one of the most enjoyable cat and mouse games the Valkyries ever played, but for Vibeke and, by proxy, Violet, it was something like the road rash segment of injury training. It just grated and grated away. And it was coming again.
    The door opened. Varg entered and jumped over Vibeke onto his bunk.
    â€œThat link dump came a second before I did, ruined everything.”
    â€œSorry, Varg.”
    â€œMy heart will go on…. So what’s the point, though?” he ruminated. “We knew where she was, and she’s not going to stick around Darjeeling.”
    â€œDidn’t you see the link encryptions?”
    Violet hadn’t. Varg shook his head as well. All four dove back into the net and reviewed the logs. Vibeke scooped up a folder.
    â€œSee this? She hacked into the Dome’s cameras when she went after the eye. Darjeeling’s nets are so old that she could cream the security systems, but the security systems had no self-repair contingencies. They’re still broken right now. They’ll have to be reinstalled.”
    Violet didn’t see the significance, but Varg caught it. “Her footprints are still there?”
    Vibeke replied quickly, “She covered her tracks and deleted the providers, but you can see the routing they came from.”
    â€œThe routing?” asked Veikko. “She was there in person. What’s the point?”
    Vibeke enlarged the coding prints for them to see. “Mishka was in prison. Her link was jammed. When she got out, it didn’t hook into the Bharat nets. It went back to the last place she was logged into before she was caught.”
    Violet was amazed by the leaps and bounds of logic Vibs took for granted. She was only just grasping the train of thought when Varg derailed it to another track. He took the files and enlarged them further, looking over lines of code and text that she couldn’t make out.
    â€œAnd it’s all black, Vibs. There’s no code at all. It even lacked—” Varg’s eyes lit up. “It had no contact barriers!”
    Veikko seemed to understand it. All three were in on something, but Violet had no clue. She’d suffer the indignity of having to ask. Nothing new.
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œThere’s only one place that has no barriers.”
    And then Violet understood. In their