Box

Chapter 9

"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."