Harrington jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. The technician muttered an apology and left.
“He was just trying to help.” Reese stepped over a clump of destroyed ground.
The colonel screwed up his mouth. “If I want his help, I’ll ask for it.”
“One group moving together and Nash moving the same direction, yet apart.” Reese pointed to where the tracks nearly merged. “I’m pretty sure they were following him rather than walking with him.”
Closer to the house, Nash’s prints transformed into a human foot in less than one stride. A muddy outline of five normal toes stamped the first step of the stairs leading to the back door.
Reese returned to where the colonel stood with his brow furrowed. He said, “Why would they track him?”
“I don’t know.” What reason would they have? Reese found himself staring at the farmhouse again.
Harrington turned, and the light beam stuck Reese in the face; he held up a hand, and the colonel lowered the flashlight. “When the Anubis were sent out in the field how were they tracked?”
Green and red blobs danced in Reese’s vision. “Koda.”
“What if they were too far away?”
Reese blinked to try to clear the spots. “They were never too far away for him to know where they were.” The spots faded.
“Were they ever killed in the field?”
“Yeah.” And Koda’s screams didn’t stop until his voice box shredded. Even afterward, he laid at the bottom of his cell almost unresponsive. His sobs the only thing confirming he lived. And he hadn’t stopped until the betas returned, and they allowed them to be together.
“Could Koda find them when they were dead?” Harrington watched him.
“No.”
“Did New World Genetics retrieve the bodies or leave them in the field?”
“Retrieved them. Even when they went down in an aircraft and it burned to nothing, they sent teams out to collect any pieces.”
“They could have used the EPIRB on an aircraft to get a location. Any other time?”
“There was a building collapse where an I-beam severed the head of a subject.” At least by the second incidence, they’d learned to let Koda be with the betas. Otherwise, he might have broken. “No one knew where they were since they’d split up and traveled about a hundred miles from the drop point on foot following targets.”
“Any personal locating devices?”
“No. They weren’t even wearing clothes.” The look the colonel gave Reese made him laugh. “They Phased as soon as they hit the ground, the clothes would have been pointless.”
“How did they find the remains?”
“The existence of the Anubis affects particles around it enough you can practically see it, and most certainly feel it, and a bend in space-time creates gravity waves. Physics dictates they should have the density of a neutron star, but of course they don’t.” Which was mathematically impossible. But everything about the ichor was impossible. “Echols designed a way to detect the gravity waves using a modified Laser Interferometer.”
“English, please.”
Reese folded his arms over his chest. “We used a gizmo to follow a bunch of invisible ripples.” There, maybe that would be simple enough.
“Where is it?”
Reese pointed upward.
“Who has access to the satellite?”
“It’s not technically a satellite, it’s called a—”
“All I need to know is who has access to it.”