"The blackmailing." She gave a small, shaky-looking smile to Aydin before she pressed her lips together. "I assume you're going to transport me to headquarters."

"Why don't you first explain to us what you meant by 'the blackmailing'?" Aydin shifted closer to the desk.

Box's side camera observed Aydin, trying to read his expression but failing..

A dark shadow flashed on Linda's face for a second and her mouth, already a thin line, thinned even further.

"We can't help you if we don't know what this is all about," Lee said.

"Why were you blackmailed and by whom?" Aydin asked.

"Why would you want to help me?" Linda's eyes lifted to Aydin's.

"Because you're still a member of my team," Aydin said.

Linda took another deep breath. "If I tell you all that I know, can you dismiss, or at least reduce, the charges?"

Aydin looked at Lee.

"It depends on how much you know, how deep your involvement is, and if it would help us to destroy the smuggling ring," Lee said.

"I don't know much about that." Linda lowered her gaze to her hands, frowning.

"You still haven't told us why you were blackmailed," Aydin said.

Linda sighed and after a moment of silence said, "To save my cousin." She fixed her gaze on Aydin. "That's how it began and then when they let her go, they threatened, if I didn't do as I was told, they would give the authorities evidence of my involvement. They also made sure I don't know much about their operation. They probably rightly assumed that if I got anything on them, I would use it against them."

"What happened to your cousin?" Aydin asked, his voice softened.

Lee turned to Aydin "Shouldn't we—"

"No." Aydin put a pleasant, encouraging smile on his face as his attention went back to Linda. His voice was soft when he asked again, "What happened to your cousin?"

Box brought forward Linda's personal file, which listed only her basic information: the academic institutions where she had received her education, her achievements, special features, and hobbies. Using the access granted by Aydin's username, it looked up everything it could find on Linda. There was nothing unusual in the information found, except that her father had entered the U.C.E. at eighteen with a Transition City stipend, which granted him access to U.C.E. universities and apprenticeship programs.

Another moment of silence followed by a short sigh. "She's a daughter of my father's sister. We had planned to get her into Austria via sponsorship. Our families had been saving money and my mother had even found a pastry chef for her apprenticeships as a cook and, in exchange, she needed to study hard and wait until we gathered enough money for her accommodation and insurance." Her face hardened. "But she was too impatient. When she met a member of No Shields who was on holiday there, she was naïve enough to believe his empty promises. He filled her head with lies about how easy it was to get into the U.C.E. illegally. He told her that once she was here, since she's from a fourth-world country, she could apply for asylum and that the U.C.E. would provide for her. She believed him, even when I told her it wasn't true."

Box went to the U.C.E.'s official site and looked at the general law for asylum.

"According to the law, only citizens of the countries that border on the U.C.E. and are at war can get asylum in the U.C.E.," Lee said. "None of the countries are at war."

"I told her that and I even linked her to the government site," Linda said. "But she accused me of not wanting her here, of being selfish and egoistic. That I can't stand to be better off than her, and that I must dislike the notions of her being in the U.C.E. and on the same level as me. She believed because years ago the U.C.E. accepted Swedes who illegally entered when the shield point malfunctioned and gave asylum to children and women since they were from a third-world country, that if she came to the U.C.E. she would be entitled to the same basic income my mother got when she was between jobs." Sharp lines appeared around her mouth and eyes. "The stupid girl, thanks to that activist, started to believe that the U.C.E. owes her that basic income, and all she had to do was to get to the U.C.E. and claim it. Because of that, we weren't that surprised when one day she just disappeared and the money that her parents had saved up for her sponsorship disappeared along with her."

Aydin and Lee exchanged glances before their eyes were back on Linda.

"That friends of hers found some smugglers, but instead of getting her into U.C.E., they took her money and then used her."

"That's why you were so angry at those No Shield members," Lee commented.

"Yes. They are using a onetime incident to incite people to try to enter the U.C.E. illegally, encouraging them to risk their lives and to waste money they don't have. They filled her head with dreams about an easy life that didn't exist and gave her the feeling she was entitled to it." Linda's voice rose. "If not for them, she would have waited until we could sort everything for her legal migration. Instead, she stupidly tried to enter the U.C.E. illegally and ended up in the hands of greedy leeches who took all the organs she wouldn't miss and used her as their sex slave."

Unshed tears glittered in Linda's eyes. "After the smugglers learned that she has a family in the U.C.E., they contacted us and demanded ransom money, a sum that, despite all the savings, we didn't have. Since she also told them that I work for the Border Police, they offered us a deal: They would let her go if I helped them smuggle drugs into the U.C.E." She hung her head and the knuckles of her laced fingers turned white. "I had no choice. I had to do it, or we would never have seen her again."

Aydin asked quietly,"You said they have released her?"

Linda lifted her head. "Yes, they did. She returned home. She cut all connection with us and the last we heard about her is that she now lives on the streets, selling herself. She's broken, just a shell of the girl that she was. There's no joy in her anymore, no future."

"I'm sorry." Lee touched Linda's shoulder.

"I'm sorry too." A sad sigh tore out of Linda's throat. "At least she's alive, even though who knows for how long."

"If she has been released, why are you still working for them?" Aydin asked.

Linda rubbed her temple and cleared her throat before she said, "I already told you, by helping them, I gave them blackmail material on me." She lifted her head. "That's why, in a way, to be found out, it's a relief. I have been under so much pressure, always afraid that –" A sad smile flashed on her face. "It's over now, isn't it? I have finally been found out."

Aydin and Lee exchanged glances again.

"You should have gone to the police as soon as your cousin was safe," Lee said.

"I know, but I was afraid and..." Linda gave Lee a sad twist of her mouth.

Box noticed that Lee, who was sitting sideways on the chair, had her hand resting on the side of the chair so that it was out of Linda's view and that she was moving her fingers as if she were typing. But on its screen, where all three were displayed, it saw that Lee wasn't the only one who was typing. Aydin was subtly moving his fingers, too. Those two were texting each other and doing it without including Box. How impolite! Box was part of their investigation too, a big part, and to shun it like this and keep it out of the loop... It called for at least a four-thousand-word complaint.

Box connected itself with Aydin's display so that it was seeing everything that Aydin saw to encounter a row of clouds containing their texts on the right side of Aydin's screen. In their online conversation, Aydin asked if there was something they could do for her, like offering Linda witness protection in exchange for her cooperation. To which Lee replied that she didn't have the authority to offer that kind of deal and told him that she would consult with her boss.

"What's going to happen to me now?" Linda asked.

"That depends on you," Aydin told her while he typed to Lee, 'What's your boss saying?'

'He said he doesn't have the authorisation to make an offer like that either. He could send a request for it, but with the lack of her inside knowledge about the smuggling operation and without evidence that her life is threatened, he doubts that his request would be approved. The most he could do is to try to lessen the charges,' Lee wrote.

"I can't help much." Linda laced her hands in her lap, her eyebrows pinched together. "I have never met them in person."

"How were they contacting you?" Aydin asked.

"Via emails from fake IP addresses. In the first month, I tried to find out as much about them as possible, hoping that I would find something that I could use to save my cousin and then later make them pay for what they did to her, but there was nothing concrete. There's nothing that I could use or give to the police," Linda said. "I only have a bunch of fake IP addresses and recordings of faceless voices. I even put a camera on their Helper to get the face of the one who was putting drugs inside it, but they seemed to be using jammer devices. But even if I had got a face and found a name to go with it, they are probably just pawns like me."

"You mean Helper 135?" Lee leaned closer to Linda.

"No. The one that has the same code as the Helper 135," Linda said. "The one that belongs to them."

So that's why its surveillance of 135 hadn't given it any results. Box brought up the window, displaying the view of 135's camera in the foreground, and closed it. There was no need for it to continue monitoring 135's movement.

"So that's how they smuggled the narcotics through the shield," Lee commented. "Since the shield doesn't detect drugs, the Helper must have a compartment lined with lead."

"Most likely," Aydin said. "Nobody looks at the Helpers or would notice one wandering around. How do the warehouse Helpers know which container to put the package in?"

"There's an address on the packages with drugs. It's always a PO Box, which changes with every shipment. Just another dead end."

"We have nothing then." Lee looked at Aydin.

"There is something that we could use," Aydin said.

"What?" Lee asked.

What? Box zoomed in on Aydin's face.

"Their Helper."

"How?" Linda shifted to the edge of her chair.

"With your help, of course." A small smile bloomed on Aydin's face.

'My boss has told me that if she helps us catch them, they will take that into consideration as well as the fact that she was blackmailed into it,' Lee wrote.

"Which would be taken into consideration, but I can't promise you anything."

"I understand," Linda said, her jaw tensed and determination flashed in her eyes. "If I can help you catch them, that itself is enough reward for me. What do I need to do?"

"Just pretend that you haven't been caught yet," Aydin said.