2175 C.E.

IV: Comes the Hurricane

At 10:18 that morning, she obeyed the urge and requested an escort outside of the hospital. She traveled, aimlessly at first, into the downtown of Kinshasa. Eventually, she reached the capital building and entered it. She says she felt that this was the place that she had been drawn to, but once she entered it, she was no longer sure why she had been drawn. She waited in the lower rotunda for several minutes while government officials and visitors from the countryside filtered past.

Eventually, she was approached by Damien Troy, who of course was in town on business. None of the Troy family have been located for comment, since their line of work requires a certain degree of privacy. He greeted her after she had waited in the rotunda for around five minutes.

"I suppose he must have noticed how uncertain and nervous I looked and got it into his head to cheer me up or try and help in some way. He was very nice at least and seemed only interested in putting me at ease."

"I don't suppose you're the girl from Montana?" he asked first of all.

Cynthia was wary of this greeting at first, since she wasn't sure how many people were supposed to know about her presence. She wasn't entirely sure about Troy either, since he looked "very rough." But he guessed this quickly.

"Don't worry," he said. "My name is Damien Troy. You met my sister a couple of days ago, and she told me about you. Or at least, she said that there was a boy and a blond girl here from Montana with valuable intelligence. I don't even know what you brought, and I don't want to know. I guessed you were her because, well, Kinshasa has a shortage of blonds. So, what's your name?"

Cynthia decided to introduce herself since she had no real reason to mistrust him. Damien Troy offered to give her a tour of the Kinshasa capital building, and she accepted, not having anything better to do at the time.

"I knew that I had to be in that building, but I couldn't tell why, so I was glad to have someone around to distract me from that."

Damien led her on a shortened tour around the Congolese capital. He admitted to her that he didn't know the building very well, but then, that wasn't what he was paid to do at that moment. When asked what he was paid for, his answer was circuitous.

The tour concluded an hour later in the rotunda where it had begun. By coincidence, Theresa Mwangi, Arya Kumar and Ambassador Dumarith had just left one of the main conference rooms. They were accompanied by Gennady Semyonov. Mwangi had recently concluded a meeting with the two men and as they walked they planned for the confrontation with the Hegemony that they feared was imminent. Semyonov had just been briefed on the arrival of Billy and Cynthia and the dissident plans to send the black ship to Yveran. Mwangi noticed Cynthia and greeted her, offering to introduce her to Semyonov.

When Cynthia noticed Semyonov, it was as if everything suddenly fell into place.

"It was really just a moment, but I saw his eyes turn red for just a second. It was like he had contacts on that were red and then took them back off again. So...I didn't know what to do. I just screamed and drew back like he was a snake." At that point, she said, "I knew that it was here...the other Zaha-Katchem."

She explained her reaction as best she could through her fear. Mwangi did her best to understand, but Cynthia was a bit incoherent.

"All the poor dear could say was 'it's here! It's in him!' She was absolutely terrified. After a moment, she could start to explain."

Semyonov's eyes had turned the same color as Zaha-Katchem eyes for that moment. Only she had noticed, though, and so it was a moment before they believed her.

"Semyonov had been acting strangely for the past few weeks, at least in public, but, he didn't have an Interlink, so we were inclined to be a bit less suspicious of him than we probably should have been. And he seemed so reasonable, and poor Cynthia was so distressed," Mwangi recalls.