Stars Rise

LIII. "Where is Milana Nox?"

Almost three quarters of an hour had gone by and while Cristo had found many things in Justin Marius's office, he had not found Milana Nox.

"Aren't you going to bring in Liao Terra and Liao Tian?" asked Lien.

On the left side of the desk in the second drawer Lien had found a textbook bound in a three ring folder which on first glance seemed to be some business report but stuffed in between the pages were profiles on exactly the people Cristo was looking for. Details were sparse and encoded, but Cristo knew the cases well enough to read between the lines.

These were the targets that were being manipulated. He was scanning those documents with his eyeballs while he answered, "No, not yet. It will only take a minute. Two minutes," he corrected, doubling to account for the second child was about to kidnap.

"You can't really expect to find a paper trail. I'm surprised you even found this much."

"Paper can be burned. And this shit is cryptic. It's here somewhere. Some record of where she is or who knows where she is. A message ordering her abduction. They have a profile on every single target, but the documents are long and full of gibberish, the encoded information buried deep in this nonsense."

"It's not gibberish," Lien said, leaning over to look into the giant textbook's worth of information. "That's the Constellation corporate bylaws manual. Not nonsense, just standard legalese that's apparently way over your head."

"Where is Diana Aemilia's profile? Didn't Marius orchestrate this? Where are the plans, the orders? Everyone else's file is here. Where is hers?"

Most of the other papers Cristo had flipped through were plans for after the takeover: hierarchies, position appointments, promotions, a schedule for policy changes, speeches. He had hidden those away, thinking what these kind of documents might say about Lien's possible compensation, but once he was done looking at the profile pages he would have to go back to digging; he needed a lot more than these brief outlines, and he hadn't found anything to do with Diana and Milana here.

"You should go collect the Liaos. I can keep looking, or if you don't trust me, we can come back later."

"No," said Cristo. "It should be here, but it isn't."

"They wouldn't keep records of a girl's abduction. I'm telling you, it's too incriminating."

No, that wasn't it. Deep in the corporate bylaws folder Marius clearly never expected anyone in a million years to read past the first page were files on Ilan Potestas's assassination attempt, on bribing Exequi Cytheria and then threatening Liao Cytheria when that didn't work, on Calcus Donato and Claudia Solace. Benito Fortunato and Ignatius Varian. There was even a report on the old patriarch of House Dasilva, who was supposedly Nova Dasilva's father and was now dead.

It was encoded; it didn't say he had been murdered, but there wasn't much other reason for Marius to have a file on the man and an account of his death.

It was all here, even the darkest, grittiest, ugliest secrets. It wouldn't say much to someone who didn't already have the context, but Cristo knew exactly what was going on and could read between the lines. Only Milana was nowhere to be found. And he didn't have much more time to devote to a girl he would never find.

"For all I know, she could be locked here somewhere in the Constellation building, but there are thousands of offices. I need a clue where to look and I don't have all day." He shuffled the profiles again, but Diana's didn't appear. "At least you found these," said Cristo, intentionally giving Lien credit.

Lien nodded distractedly, then looked right at Cristo and said, "Wait, you don't think you're taking those papers with us."

"I don't need to bring them with me. All I needed was to see them."