EYE ON YOU: Why are you upset?

  UNDER THE SKIN: I am not upset... I’m scared shitless. Did you rat me out?

  EYE ON YOU: ?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Don’t give me that bullshit. You were the one dropping hints about people coming to visit me. Now I’m up to my ass in government agents and threats to my life…

  EYE ON YOU: ?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Stop that!!!

  EYE ON YOU: So what are you going to do next?

  UNDER THE SKIN: Run. As soon as I clean house, I’m running. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you right now. They’re probably monitoring everything I’m doing.

  EYE ON YOU: If that’s the case, where will you run?

  UNDER THE SKIN: What?

  EYE ON YOU: Where will you run?

  UNDER THE SKIN: I can’t handle prison…

  EYE ON YOU: It’s not that bad.

  The medical examiner’s worst nightmare had come true. The government was out to get him.

  Though, Hoover had described the entire encounter the best. “That little bitch. You don’t know how many times I listened to him go ‘fuck this and fuck that,’ trying to act like a badass. But it’s like I said, people on the internet who talk shit are nothing but pussies.”

  “He may be a pussy,” Foster admitted. “But something strange is going on.”

  “We knew that before we talked to him.”

  “Who’s a pussy?” Mosley took a quick bite of his drive-thru lunch. “And why are we trading one dead deer for a half dozen?”

  Hazardous conditions be damned, Malcolm gunned the Tahoe’s accelerator until they were inches away from the rear bumper of Freddy’s truck. After Justine’s graceless stumble at seduction, Malcolm wasn’t going to risk the kid having second thoughts about leading them into the woods.

  “It’s just a hunch.” Foster looked through the dirty windshield and wondered at what speed a person could survive a wreck. “Hoover thinks it’s important.”

  “Hoover thinks it’s important, huh?” Mosley took another big bite of his chicken sandwich. “You two have one of the oddest relationships ever. Though, I do know a professor at Berkley who would love to know your little program better.”

  “I bet he does.” Diametrically opposed, Hoover tried to be proactive in his disapproval. “Digital rape is a crime.”

  Beside him, Justine finished off the last of her chicken strips without much fanfare. After the episode in the morgue, her pride was looking for anything to draw the attention away from herself. In a fortuitous turn, Malcolm uncharacteristically complained.

  “Why is Ranger Rick leading us there like a madman? I know we have a four-wheel drive, but I just had it washed this morning… thoroughly.”

  Despite, or because of what was just said, Mosley tossed his sandwich wrapper into a paper bag on the floor. “Why don’t you ask the seductress back there? She was the one who ‘persuaded’ the guy into bringing us out here.”

  Even with a mouth full of food, Justine wasn’t about to let that aspersion pass.

  “Foster was the one who wanted the guy’s help, him and his little friend. I was just the person he seemed to have a crush on.” She swallowed the last remnants of lunch then took a sip of diet coke. “Tell them, Foster. Tell them this was your fault.”

  Why did someone always want to blame him for something he hadn’t done?

  “Don’t bring me into that tragedy. You could’ve just as easily threatened him. It worked just fine with the medical examiner.” Not having been particularly hungry when they decided to stop, Foster was content to nurse a large vanilla milkshake. “But I’ve got to admit. Who would have wanted to miss that show?”

  “Was it that bad?” Malcolm smirked at her from the rearview mirror. “She doesn’t look like she would be that bad at seducing someone.”

  “Train wreck,” Mosley sniggered. “I’ve seen broken microscopes do their jobs better.”

  “You should have recorded it,” Malcolm suggested. “I’m sure something that awkward would have gone viral.”

  “There was a security camera set up in the lab,” Hoover offered enthusiastically. “I could stream it to the tablet right now… even post it to her Facebook page.” Tempting as that joke may be, Foster quickly determined it was preferable not to poke the tiger. “Pussy,” Hoover said, as his friend kept his mouth shut. “I’m saving it for later.”

  Justine, on the other hand, was pissed at everyone calling her womanhood into question.

  “I can seduce a guy anytime I want to… easy.” Justine snapped her fingers and fumed. “There was just something creepy about leading him on. My heart wasn’t really in it.”

  “Your heart?” Mosley raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Since when does a woman need to have her heart into it to turn a guy on?”

  “When?” Justine blushed at his insinuation but didn’t back off. “When a woman is looking for more than someone like you can offer, Dr. Mosley.”

  “You have no idea what I have to offer, Agent Rushing.”

  “If it were anything more than a disappointing memory, I would be highly surprised.”

  “And you said I was cruel.” Foster smiled as Mosley disappeared behind the front passenger seat. “She just owned you.”

  Malcolm cleared his throat. He pointed to a spot fifty yards in the distance where Freddy’s truck had ducked off the main road. Still stinging from the rebuttal, Mosley was the first one of them to illuminate the obvious.

  “Why did it have to be in the woods?” He pressed his nose against the frost covered window and was greeted by the sight of impenetrably gnarled pines. “I can’t even see past the first line of trees.”

  Having spent a good deal of her adult life in similar terrain, Justine shrugged off the scientist’s apprehension. “You’re crazy.” For the second time in a week, Justine wondered where her snowboarding equipment was packed away. “This place is awesome.”

  “Well, excuse me if I prefer the comforts of a heated lab to a scene out of The Thing.”

  “The Thing?” Foster couldn’t quite place the reference.

  Hoover’s extensive search algorithms quickly lent a helping hand. “It was a movie from the early eighties starring Kurt Russell. It took place in Antarctica.”

  “Antarctica?” He pushed his face against the glass, trying to imagine life would be like at the South Pole. Foster quickly concluded that Antarctica probably had fewer trees. “Was it any good?”

  Hoover did his best version of a compassionate sigh. “How should I know? I’ve never really watched a movie before. The script was kind of predictable, though.”

  Thirty yards ahead, Malcolm spotted a clearing large enough for the Tahoe. Once he parked, Foster and Samuel warily took their time exiting the vehicle, while Justine bounded to the ground. Free, she paused by the driver’s door and rapped on the glass. Malcolm watched her with suspicious eyes before rolling down his window.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Agent Rushing?”

  “Are you coming with us this time?”

  The dwarf peeked his head out of the window far enough to feel the absence of the climate-controlled interior. The second the chilly wind struck his face, Malcolm shivered violently and ducked back into the warmth.

  “I don’t think so, Mata Hari. I’m just here to drive your ragtag team around… not go on a walk with them.”

  “A babysitter for the babysitters. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.” Without elaborating further, Malcolm rolled the window back up then started fiddling with the radio dial.

  Hating to be ignored, Justine gave a moment’s thought to smashing her fist through the window to see if that would get a rise out of the diminutive driver. But such an act, while cathartic, would only incur more of the Director’s wrath.

  Instead, Justine zipped up her coat and joined the scientists at the front of the vehicle.

  Fifty feet down the road, Freddy stood at the bumper of his truck waving for them to follow. With varying levels of interest, the group slowly trudged forward. Mosley, always a well-dressed man, spent most of the short trek complaining about the state of his shoes. “Do you know how expensive these Timberlands are?”

  Justine wanted to tell him that this wasn’t even the deepest snow she had seen. But to a scientist from Southern California, any snow was heavy snow.

  On the other hand, Foster seemed to be taking most of what was happening to him in stride.

  “Where exactly did you find the dead animals, officer?” He asked when they drew close enough for him to hear.

  Freddy seemed to bristle at the connotation the title officer conveyed. “It’s just Freddy, sir. And I found them about a couple of hundred yards to the east.”

  He pointed in the direction of the tree line and shyly smiled at Justine. This overt act seemed out of place, especially given the way things had been left back at the morgue.

  “Look who’s a glutton for punishment,” Mosley snickered quietly to Foster. “Must not be a lot of eligible women here in the backwoods.”

  Mosley’s words painted quite the hilarious picture of desperation. At least until Justine responded unexpectedly by smiling back. This simple act prompted Foster to react in an equally unexpected way. He felt a spark of anger utterly unrelated to his time at Wilson. A question quickly followed this feeling. Was she only being kind to him, or was she flattered?

  Something unfamiliar began to move around in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hoover,” he said, trying to hide his irritation. “Does the NSA have any Keyhole satellites stationed over us right now?” Out of habit, Foster checked to see how much cloud cover was overhead. Though, with today’s technology, it mattered very little. “Plus or minus ten minutes should be acceptable.”

  “Checking…”

  The Swiss army knives of the NSA vast spying program, Keyhole satellites were famous for being able to do almost anything asked of them. Right now, Foster needed their eyesight to continue with the investigation.

  “No.” While Hoover checked, Samuel replied with a very definitive answer. “We did have a couple of satellites flying over at the time of the signal. But from what the director told me, NASA had them tasked at the last minute to study the great lakes for some water reclamation project. It wasn’t their usual flight paths. It was just luck that the birds were here for the show.”

  “Really?” Foster once again flashed a sly grin and tapped at his earpiece. “Was it only luck?”

  Stunned by the veiled insinuation, Samuel and Justine shared a nervous glance. As the group neared Freddy, neither acknowledged the claim. Though both wondered the same thing: If Foster and Hoover had this much influence on things outside of Wilson’s walls, why had he stayed locked up there for so many years?

  “Freddy,” Foster shook their guide’s hand, making sure to keep their interaction as informal as possible. “You're the expert here. Lead the way."

  “Follow me.” As they walked into the forest, Freddy began to recount the events of that fateful night. “After I lost control of the truck, I noticed a dim light through the trees. There’s a lot of poaching around here, so I decided to check it out.” He halted near the small pine where he had first crouched down upon hearing the engine and seeing those headlights. “I was here when I saw the vehicle escape toward the main road.”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Time and the elements had worn the signs of his presence away. So, he felt the need to reenact the scene just as it happened. When the impromptu scene concluded, Justine found herself wondering how different poachers were from bank robbers and terrorists. “Do you normally have a lot of people run from you?”

  “Sometimes, Agent Rushing. Though they mainly head deeper back into the woods trying to hide. I’ve never had anyone try and speed past me, especially on an icy road.”

  “Did you ever find out who was in the vehicle?” Foster asked.

  Slightly stunned, Freddy couldn’t fathom replying to such an inconsequential question when compared to the events of the last couple of days. “No,” Freddy said. “After everything that happened that night, a couple of poachers didn’t really seem all that important.”

  “You’re probably right.” His face seemed placated by the dead-end answer. But the staccato in his voice betrayed a nagging sense of doubt. “Lead on, Freddy.”

  Quite adept at picking up on verbal clues, Justine stood for a moment to press him on what she saw as doubt. “What is it? Are those poachers important?”

  Foster examined the patch of earth surrounding Freddy’s temporary position. The sparse patches of grass peeking through a thick layer of snow signaled to him that someone had indeed huddled here before. “Can’t say.” A shade of confidence pervaded his voice. “More likely, our mysterious escapees are just another variable.”

  “How much farther, Freddy?” Mosley cried out, stomping his feet against the ground for warmth. “I’m not dressed for frostbite weather.”

  “Just a few more yards.”

  As they moved deeper into the forest, the trees began to twist together into a makeshift barrier. Freddy pushed aside the burgeoning branches to form an alternative path. “Though, we might need to low crawl to reach it.” Upon reaching the upslope, Freddy found something unexpected, a clear view of the depression. “That’s strange. It’s clearer than before.”

  “What?” Mosley asked, desperately trying to keep a stray branch from ruining his designer pants. “What’s clearer?”

  “Nothing,” the park ranger hurriedly said, chalking the discrepancy in perspective to nerves and darkness. Still, even with the sun higher in the sky, how could the well-hidden deer paths now be visible?

  “Well…” Freddy pointed in the direction of the now easily identifiable depression. “Maybe you guys won’t have to bend over at all.” After another few feet, the group pushed through the last line of pines then stepped effortlessly down into their destination.

  “What is the area used for again?” Foster pulled out his tablet and began tapping on the screen. Curious to see the next thing up his sleeve, Mosley huddled close as the two scientists began studying a recent satellite image of the town.

  “Deer bed down here during the night. It’s like their home.”

  Justine was the first in the group to lay eyes on a dead animal. “Is this one of them?”

  Freddy watched as Justine bent over to examine the dead animal’s carcass. To his surprise, there wasn’t any difference between the dead deer then and now. “Yes.”

  Oblivious to all those thoughts, Justine pushed hard against the deer’s stomach. “You said back at the medical examiner’s office that they might have been poisoned?”

  “That was my first thought. My boss also agreed considering the number of dead animals.”

  Out of nowhere, but not totally out of character, Justine punched the deer’s stomach so hard all three men jumped back in guttural sympathy.

  “What the hell was that for?” Mosley said, collapsing on a raised piece of earth as his necrophobia paralyzed his faculties once again.

  “If the animal had been poisoned, it’s stomach would be bloated and rigid. But as you can see,” she punched one more time to drive point home. “This thing’s stomach bends inward pretty easily?”

  “Yes.” Mosley could taste his freshly eaten sandwich teasing an unfortunate return. “So?”

  “That means it wasn’t poison.”

  “Thanks, Woodlands CSI,” Mosley dry heaved once, then twice as the dead deer’s eyes seem to follow his every movement. “I cannot believe I’m out here. I’m a lab guy, not a field agent.”

  Everyone else still on their feet gathered around Justine’s makeshift lab, not the least bit interested in listening to him complain.

  “Bloated stomach.” Freddy pushed the heel of his boot against the deer’s abdomen, and it squished inward like a bag full of frozen jelly. “I don’t know why that never occurred to me.”

  “Maybe because sane people don’t go around punching dead things in the stomach,” Mosley said.

  While all this deduction occurred, Foster had broken off from the group to walk around the outside edge of the depression slowly. Armed with his long sought after upgraded camera built into the tablet, he focused his attention on making a photographic record of everything within the immediate area.

  “Twenty megapixels of death,” he said to himself as a joke. “High definition carnage.”

  For the next ten minutes, Foster covered nearly every square inch of the depression. But it wasn’t until he finished that the subtle differences in the pictures started to raise their heads. In fact, the differences were so minor that he wondered if the R and D guys had used faulty parts. “I thought you told me only cutting-edge optics were going in this thing.”

  “They did. Those lenses were built to the same specifications as the secret prototype Carl Zeiss lenses. They haven’t even gone into production yet.”

  “Really, how did you get those designs?” He regretted asking the question before it had finished coming out of his mouth. Encoded with the ability to crack any database in the world, Hoover’s reach into the realm of secrets was absolute. “Forget I asked that question. Instead, tell me why there’s something wrong with every other picture I take. The green end of the color spectrum is off.”

  “What do you mean… off?”

  Foster pressed the image folder icon and every picture he’d taken over the last few minutes appeared in spreadsheet format. Since Hoover did not see objects with human eyes, the A.I. had to run a unique filtering program to analyze the data. After a couple of seconds, Hoover concurred with Foster’s observation.

  “The level of green in fifteen of the forty-three pictures you took is different.”

  “See,” Foster brought up the picture of a dead possum with its stomach ripped open by some form of scavenger. Disturbingly accurate, he could clearly see that the green in the surrounding pine trees was slightly washed away. “Is it the lenses or the program you’re using?”

  “It’s not the program.” Without an operating system, Hoover managed all the tablet’s programs himself. So the question of its validity stung. “This image capture application you’re using is the latest version available. I checked the code personally before downloading.”

  “Then, it’s the lenses.”

  “It’s neither.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s neither’?” Foster brought up another picture which did not suffer from the washed-out look. By twisting his finger clockwise, both images lined up side-by-side. “How do you explain the difference then?”

  Foster peered across the depression to see the others gathered around the dead deer’s body. Mosley was now squatting on the ground trying to control his stomach, while Justine and Freddy talked to each other. The friendliness on their faces made that thing in his stomach twitch again.

  “Do you have the GPS function activated on the tablet?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one in control of it.”

  “The depression, how close are you to the outside edge?”

  “Maybe five feet,” Foster answered. “Why?”

  “On the inside of the boundary, find a pine tree, and grab some needles.” Without needing further clarification, Foster obeyed his friend. “Now find a pine tree on the extreme outside of the boundary.”

  Foster walked about twenty-five feet outside the depression then stopped by a thick growth of pine. “What now?”

  “Compare what’s in your hand to what’s on the tree.”

  Foster didn’t fully understand the method, but he had learned to trust his program over the years. Dutifully, he compared the two sets of needles.

  “They’re different.” He placed them both up to the sun and checked to see how transparent they were. The outside needles were letting in less light than the inside ones. “I don’t get it. Why would the needles on the inside be lighter than the ones on the outside?”

  “Go ask, Freddy.”

  “Ask Freddy? Why in the hell would I ask Freddy?”

  “He’s the woodland expert, isn’t he? Plus, it would tear him away from her.”

  Without knowing it, the mystery of the needles had taken his mind away from wondering about Freddy and Justine. Now though, as he watched them conversing, Hoover’s reasoning started to make perfect sense. In a dead sprint, Foster crossed the distance between them, and he didn’t stop until he was close enough to shove the needles into Freddy’s face.

  “What the hell?” The startled game warden jumped back with his fists clenched.

  “Look at these pine needles!” Excited to hear his explanation, Foster tried to use his mood to deflect the young man’s anger. “Is there a difference between them?”

  Freddy looked to Justine for how to proceed. The FBI agent merely shrugged her shoulders. After all, Foster getting excited about pine needles was probably the least weird thing she’d seen him do.

  Taking strength from her lack of concern, the wildlife officer scrutinized each needle before reaching Foster’s initial conclusion. “No.”

  “I didn’t see it at first, either. Another question, do they come from the same type of tree?”

  Freddy surveyed the area around the depression for any oddball trees. A minute later, he was more than satisfied that this area held only one kind of pine. “Yes.” The color in his face started to retreat. “Everything here is white pine.”

  “Then, why is their color different?”

  “They’re not different, Mr. Evers.” Not wanting to get involved in another blue pipe incident, Freddy didn’t even bother looking at them again. “Besides, I thought you wanted to come out here because you were interested in the animals.”

  Foster’s face still presented the same manic look. The gears of his mind repeatedly turned over in quick procession, and he was close to the answer. But more verification was required to continue. “Put both sets of needles in one hand, and then look again.”

  “What is this, Agent Rushing. A joke?” Freddy clenched his fist around the needles while staring suspiciously at him. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Just humor him, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine.” For her sake, he gave them one more look. Only to find that with the needles in one hand, the contrast between them was more pronounced. Reluctantly, he admitted. “They are different. Why are the colors different?”

  “Exactly!” Foster snapped his fingers. “Why are the colors different?”

  “Well,” Freddy thought back to his high school agriculture classes. “Normally, a pine tree starts to lose its color when it's sick or dying. The chlorophyll will dissipate, and the needles will slowly turn brown. Did you get this off one of the rooted-up trees?”

  “No.” Foster reached out and pulled a handful of needles from the nearest pine tree. “I got them from the pine trees inside the depression. They’re all dying.”

  In a sort of trance, Freddy studied the needles again. Had someone poisoned this area? Have they salted the earth? No. If poison had been involved, this place would be full of new dead animals. And from what he could see, the count was the same as yesterday.

  He was about to radio back to Rosie when Justine had a thought. “Everything inside the depression is dead? Birds, animals, trees… everything?”

  Foster nodded, yes.

  “What would cause that?”

  “Radiation?” Mosley’s thought process usually began with the simplest answer that fit all the facts. After all, the team was brought here because of a massive EM spike. “A high enough dose of radiation would kill every living thing around here almost immediately.”

  Instantly, Freddy’s face turned a ghostly shade of white from thoughts of that night and that mysterious light.

  “Officer,” Foster hurriedly said. “At the time of the incident, there was a Mark 12 keyhole satellite orbiting above this town. If there had been radiation in the amounts Dr. Mosley is suggesting, half the government would have descended upon your little town, not just us.”

  “Is that true?” Freddy’s words were slow and mumbled. “Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Foster felt like he was back at Wilson walking Mouse through a feline induced panic attack. “Do you think I would still be standing here if it was radiation? Do I look crazy to you?”

  “That’s debatable.” Mosley parsed his next words given the events of the last 48 hours. “But if radiation didn’t kill everything in this area. What did?”

  “Hoover.” Once again, Foster was elbow deep in his satchel, and immediately Justine wondered what the next fantastic piece of technology would be. These hopes were quickly dashed though as he pulled out the scanning ball from the morgue.

  The sight of the device made Freddy jump back. “You’re not going to scan me with that thing… are you?”

  “No.” Given his military records, Foster wondered why the young officer was so jumpy. Hoover’s background check placed him deep in the Middle East for the past three years. His experiences in that place should have hardened his heart, not softened it. “Back at the morgue, I scanned the deer pretty thoroughly. Things like residual radiation would have popped immediately.”

  With little thought, he placed the PDS in his right hand and began to shake it in a matter consistent with Justine’s earlier 8-ball comparison. “Were they able to get this thing to come straight down consistently?” Foster asked. “I know they were having some problems with drift.”

  In a slight panic, Freddy took a step back. “Who’s he talking to?” He had wanted to ask that question ever since they left the vehicles. Mosley and Justine didn’t have a believable answer, so they responded simultaneously with “tech support

  “Eighty percent of the time,” Hoover responded. “For the government, that’s actually pretty good.”

  “Not when you’re part of the twenty. How long before you can reroute the keyhole?”

  “At least twelve hours, the one we need is on the other side of the planet right now… in a different orbit.”

  “It’s always something with you, isn’t it?” Foster shook the ball with even greater force than before. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Justine shifting her feet trying to get a better look. Dying to see something new and different, he did his best to oblige the young agent. “Eighty percent will just have to do.”

  Like a kid bouncing a rubber ball against a wall, he slammed the PDS onto the frozen ground with all his might. In response, the 8-ball practically exploded off the ground like a rocket without the slightest bit of consideration for gravity. Confused, everyone in the group watched it fly skyward.

  Except for Foster, his attention stayed firmly on the tablet and the pixelated satellite image from before.

  “Let’s run a thermal package, Hoover. Even during the winter, these plants should be giving off heat.”

  “Wow,” Justine squinted against the noonday sun trying to track the ball as it rose higher and higher into the sky.

  Mosley, relying less on his eyes and more on physics threw his arms over his head to shield himself for the inevitable landing. While Freddy just stood there motionless, wondering if he was still passed out at Millie’s party, dreaming all this nonsense. “What kind of government agents are you people?”

  “Foster,” Justine said cautiously with one eye glued to the sky. The corners of her mouth were almost touching her eyelids. “Why hasn’t the ball come back down yet?”

  Even Mosley pulled his arms away long enough to look upward. “Yeah, nobody’s that strong.”

  “Have you guys already forgotten? I was in prison.” He pretended to flex his nonexistent arm muscles. “I was pumping up.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of prison, Foster. And even if it was…” Two hundred feet in the air, Mosley finally caught sight of a tiny black spot hovering stationary above them. The mere sight of it caused the scientist to shake in disbelief. “A few push-ups wouldn’t make that possible.”

  Foster stayed glued to his tablet while everyone pointed and sighed. When he finally answered Mosley, his response was in the form of a question. “Have you ever heard of quantum levitation?”

  Mosley tried to place the concept, but his mind came up wanting. “No.”

  Without looking, Foster pointed in the direction of the hovering ball. “That’s a good example of it.”

  Offering little else in the way of an explanation, he went back to fiddling with his tablet, and Mosley slowly began to understand he was no longer the smartest man on the team anymore.

  “He was in prison?” Freddy’s thoughts raced away in a hundred different directions. All leading to the same inescapable question. A question that he didn’t want to know the answer to. “Why was he in prison?!”

  “He was a guard.” Which was a lie, but Justine knew it was the only explanation that wouldn’t send the park ranger running for the hills. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Foster, looking intently down at the tablet. “I’m not going to ask how you’re doing that… yet. But I would like to know what you’re looking for.”

  Foster turned to her grinning face. For the first time since meeting her, he realized that she had soft, hazel green eyes. “I’m scanning the area for thermal images.” He quickly pointed to the image with a shaky finger. “You see these four red masses? Their us.”

  “Is that the depression?” Justine saw the four masses of red inside a giant grey circle surrounded by a sea of blue. She touched the tablet’s screen and pointed to the grey area. “That little toy of yours can read changes in the topography?”

  “Yes and no,” Foster said with concern in his voice. “The grey area is the depression. But I’m only running the device’s infrared package. You see the blue area?” Justine nodded. “The blue area is the surrounding plant life. Even in the winter, plants give off a slight amount of radiant heat from simple photosynthesis. This program reads those variations then assigns a corresponding color. The hotter the subject area, the brighter the color.”

  “So why is the depression reading grey?” she asked.

  “Areas of zero heat is represented by the color grey. If the program sees this area as grey, it can mean only one thing. There is nothing alive in the depression.”

  “What could kill everything inside the depression without using radiation?”

  Foster wasn’t sure.

  He knew that whatever caused this destruction happened on the molecular level. But besides that insight, he was confident of very little. And that nagging uncertainty scared him. “I wish I knew.”