“Blue Squadron found the island,” Colonel Noon said.

General Groves and Noon were in a skiff in Building 800 which was in the military base on the Loneskum-Alexander campus: a secure area within a secure area within a secure area within a fairly secure area.

“They’re ahead of schedule,” Groves said, as he sat down at the conference table. He hadn’t had dinner and his stomach was rumbling, but there was no food and drink allowed in the skiffs.

“Yes, but unfortunately they are in a holding pattern right now,” Noon admitted.

“I don’t think I want to hear this.”

“There’s not too much more to hear, sir. That was the last transmission we got. An hour ago.”

“So that’s it?”

“We have no geospatial, no comms there. It’s all HUMINT. Or simulated HUMINT. Whatever you want to call it. Slow going. That’s for sure, sir.”

“But it’s working?”

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“So far. We know that the controller gave Blue Squadron the alternative quest. It must trust them to some degree.”

“Who else has it? Do we know?” Groves asked.

Noon shook his head. “Other than that one fellowship, we have no idea.”

There was a knock at the door. Noon checked the video screen and then unlocked the door. Brigadier General Anthony Basato entered and nodded at Groves and then Noon.

“Severine just filed her report,” he said. “Tomorrow morning her targets will be out of the game. Permanently.”

“We were just talking about them,” Noon said.

Groves stood up. “Okay, then. Two pieces of good news.”

“I’m going to make your day, chief. I’ve got one more for you.”

“Really, Basato? What next? Are you going to tell me you found a backdoor into the controller and we can just pull the plug on it without going through all this gaming bullshit?”

“Almost as good. No, this is about Margolin.”

“Do tell.”

“One of his guys found the glitch. You know, the one that didn’t exist.”

“He found it already? That asshole was angling for two weeks. Tell me everything.”

“We got in there as soon as Margolin pulled the guy out. We’ll have the thing documented by end-of-day, but I wanted to give you a heads up that Margolin is now trying to manufacture evidence of human error on the med-tech side.”

“Of course he is. The little shit.”

“What’s our timetable on pulling the plug, sir?” Noon asked.

“I’ll give Margolin his six days. I want everything documented. The Loneskum-Alexander board is not going to be happy when we terminate their contract. We’ve got to be real careful here. There are a lot of fingers in this pie.”

He got up to leave. “Nice work, gentlemen.”