Hi again anon, glad you're liking this. Yes, I think you are the only one reviewing right now. I'm not complaining though, I'm getting my second-highest hit count for this fic.

(Author's note) The Grid is FFVIII's version of our own international computer network, the Web. But there are differences with our world's network. The Grid developed first as separate regional networks, which meshed imperfectly into one planetary one. This was partly the result of the disappearance, then reappearance of Esthar, and partly due to the communications disruption at the end of the war against Adel. Global communications were badly damaged by her use of the Universal Spectrum Jammer at the end of the first war. Different governments and private Combines have since proved reluctant to merge their different root servers (The dictionaries of the Grid), leading to several levels of networking.

The searchers were electrified. Even Squall managed a satisfied curve of his lips. Laguna made his Mannequin punch the air. He flipped up one of the eye-caps on his V-goggles and yelled for a technician, only just remembering to hit his gauntlet's mute button first. An aide appeared, looking nervously round the door.

"Mr President?" he asked nervously.

"Call up a satellite map of all areas of Esthar under snowfall in the last thirty-six hours," Laguna told him urgently, "Cross-check it with derelict buildings, cult holdings, uh, any sites logged on the police database as suspicious-posting-"

"That's 'suspicious-pattern-activities' Mr President," said a kindly voice behind him. Surprised, Laguna glanced away from the agitated aide and saw both Kiros and Frederyck Forsith had flipped their caps up and joined him. A glance through his 'live' left eye at its row of virtual icons told him they too had cut the speaker circuits to their Mannequins. It was the urbane FSB chairman who'd corrected him, the pendant. Kiros would have made a joke out of it.

"The transcript of the debriefing itself is already being shared through the Grid between Garden and competent FSB teams," the spy chief said.

"Competent for what?" Laguna asked rather sharply.

"Oh, to be trusted with a high enough security clearance to know this information," Frederyck replied steadily, "And not leak it to the media," he added as an afterthought.

Kiros put his arm round Laguna's shoulders.

"Relax," the dark man told him, "You're at the centre of a high-tech, professional operation here. If anything needs doing we'll think of it. You don't have to be so hands-on."

Laguna smiled tightly, but he let Kiros divert him to keep the peace. If he wasn't mistaken, the intelligence chief had started this informal chat to rein him in before 'the boss' got over-excited by the breakthrough. Laguna often clashed with his spies' territorial instincts. Relations between the Palace and the intelligence services were strained since the kidnapping.

"Well, here's to finding the bastards who took Ellone with this hi-tech operation I have," he said to his friend, who winked at him. "At least we know they're still in the country. They can't have got over the mountains into Trabia. I know the Dragon range."

There was at last the satisfaction of starting the hunt to bury himself into.

"It's difficult to know where to start I'm afraid," Frederyck sounded genuinely pained this time, "They haven't given us a name or a motive. We don't know their resources, if they're locals or foreign, if they have sympathisers in the population..."

"Irvine says the kidnappers spoke Estharian. They're where there's snow and ice," Laguna said implacably, "Mr Forsith, must I draw you a map? We both know the north was Adel's heartland. There wasn't any love of the central government there even before the civil war. The outback is crawling with antigovernment militias, cults, nativists and ex-Party fugitives. Hyne knows, we trained enough of their shady types to fight the Cry."

"We'll wait and sift the evidence gathered at the kidnap scene," Kiros said, "I don't care how good they were, they'll have left some trace we can match to a database."

Frederyck blinked rapidly at them; spies had an ingrained dislike for being pinned down to one explanation for anything. Mostly because there wasn't always just one. He proffered his wrist-comp to Laguna apologetically.

"I took the liberty of having the preliminary reports, including the lab-work ones, forwarded to my account automatically," he said.

Laguna's eyebrows rose.

"It would all have reached you eventually Mr President," the FSB chairman assured him hastily, "They just passed across my desk first."

"I'm sure they did," Kiros snapped at him, "Well, did they find anything?"

"Hmph. The analysis of the grenade fragments found in the Speaker's car would fit your theory," Frederyck murmured reluctantly, "It was Estharian-made; a Wheelan Industries Mark IV plasma grenade to be precise."

"Aren't they obsolete nowadays?" Laguna asked curiously. He knew that make; he'd had them thrown at him.

"Yes Mr President. This one was near the end of its shelf-life; very unstable, risky using it. There aren't many about anymore- but most of the old stocks were handed out to defence teams during the Cry. Some undoubtedly ended up in private hands."

"That's a militia weapon if I ever saw one," Kiros muttered, "Only an idiot or a fanatic would hold on to unstable explosives."

"Yes," Frederyck told them, "But Mr President, it just doesn't fit. Our different branches monitor more then three hundred different groups, cults, cells and individuals. No intercepts or informants gave any sign anything on this scale was being planned."

He held up a palm to hold off Kiros; "Oh, I'm not denying these fringe groups can't be dangerous, we raid a different compound every year. But this is out their range. They just don't have the, the-"

"Brains?" suggested Kiros.

"-Finesse," said the spymaster, "A Red Knight or a Free Federalist wouldn't have set up an operation like the people that snatched your daughter. They'd just have planted a, a really big bomb."

"Go on," Laguna told him, fascinated by the switch to certainty in the man's manner.

"This whole operation just reeks of outside interference sir. The electronic footprint around it is enormous," Frederyck began to tick off the steps of the investigation on his fingers;

"The crash programs used in the attacks were traced back to a fifteen year-old messing around in the City's traffic division systems. The money to pay him came through a re-routed account in Windhill. We traced the money but not where the account was set up from."

He shook his head sadly.

"The money trail lead us to the funding; an automated car-theft ring. The cars' Interactive Programs were crashed and ordered to write themselves off. Then they were sold to smart scrap-yards for the value of the metal. The writer of that program is in a federal prison… and can't tell us who commissioned him to write it. It was all done through constructs over the Grid."

Laguna shifted his weight on his feet as his leg twinged uneasily. He wasn't a man who loved the elaborate, convoluted world of intelligence. His brain worked in a more linear way, and he liked people too much to spend his professional life lying to them. But he'd also had twenty-six years of leading Esthar through upheaval, and his instincts were telling him the spymaster was onto something. Why hadn't there been any kind of demands by the kidnappers?

"Anyone can use a computer," Kiros pointed out, "The Winhill account used to launder the money could have been set up by locals right here in Esthar."

"There's more," said Frederyck, "We've run hundreds of hours of satellite footage through recognition programs in the last two days. We've even studied the footage manually for Hyne's sake. There's no sign of the kidnappers, or any escape vehicle. Or forensic traces at the crime scene."

"That's impossible," Laguna said.

"No finger prints, no DNA, no clothes fibres, no soil," Frederyck told them firmly, "Nothing except sewage and dirt traced back to the creek bed at the drain entrance they used to enter and leave the Ramp. Oh, they'll have taken traces of the attack with them, but that doesn't help find them. Mr President, either this group is the luckiest, most careful group of terrorists in existence, or they have access to suspiciously sophisticated technology."

"Such as…?" Laguna trailed his question off deliberately.

"Mr President, in the professional opinion of my scientific colleagues, the kidnappers used a solid holofield generator, probably portable, and were most certainly wearing skinsuits."

Laguna blinked. Skinsuits were an off-shoot from the early days of Esthar's space technologies. Having learnt the hard way how to hermetically seal someone against vacuum, scientists had tinkered with a range of space suits. Covering one with tiny light-reflective beads, and studding it with mirco-cameras to project what was in front of the wearer onto the back of the suit, and vice versa, they'd hoped to come up with a stealth suit that would allow a moon landing.

Laguna had had the good sense to stop that mission, but computer processing upgrades since had allowed the suit, now modified for ground work, to even project a small range of clothing onto its wearer.And a vacuum-proof suit let nothing in, or out. It was perfect for discrete practical spying. Or avoiding leaving incriminating evidence for the police. As for holofields, their 'solid' three-D projections had been an integral part of the separation barrier he'd pulled Esthar behind after the First Sorcery War. The latest models could be run off a car-battery.

"That would indicate a considerably higher level of technology then we know any known group or country possesses outside Esthar," he said carefully. Inside though, he couldn't have been more surprised if Forsith had just declared Galbadia had built a fully armed and operational moonbase without anyone noticing. Skinsuits!

But they'd had a time-dream generator too…

"Not perhaps any group," Frederyck said softly, and he tapped his muted microphone carefully with one long finger.

The silence which followed his words glowed. Even the spymaster looked a little flushed at what he'd implied. A flabbergasted Laguna was momentarily robbed of speech. Kiros though, was a study in outraged loyalty. The voices of the pair rose, two streams of words blending in and out of each other incoherently.

"-don't know what they sacrificed for this country! Suggesting-"

"Nothing! Perhaps rogue elements-"

"Quiet!"

Laguna still had his squad leader voice when he needed it. He looked at the lined face of the FSB chairman, with its sharp grey eyes going watery with age.

"They're not monsters," he said softly, "They're not Adel or Ultimecia, or poor Edea."

"Mr President?"

"Mr Loire. I know my son, Chairman. I know his organisation- I helped found it. And my daughter-in-law agreed to let herself be frozen in the depths of space rather then let herself be used," his voice shook slightly, "Against people she loved. So. There'll be no more discussion on this. Do your job and find the people who took my daughter, or I'll replace you with someone who will. Understand?"

"Perfectly, Mr President," the old chairman said quietly.

"Laguna. Laguna? Laguna!"

Laguna jerked his head upright and realised he'd been staring at the projection table broodingly for the last ten minutes. Well, Squall must get it from somewhere.

He flipped his goggles back down and turned his mike back on.

"I'm here," he said.

Squall was staring at his Mannequin, alongside Rinoa and a small dark woman with a stuffy expression Laguna remembered as belonging to Xu, Balamb Garden's Mission Controller. She was holding a slick-looking data-pad, and there was an air of suppressed excitement about the group. Squall especially looked restless.

"Where were you?" he asked. Laguna suppressed a sigh. Time and Rinoa had worked on the boy, but deep down he didn't trust Laguna not to act like a frivolous buffoon. First impressions stick.

Laguna shook the Mannequin's head through the uplink;

"Reading the preliminary police reports from what was left on the Ramp," he lied, "But there was nothing new."

"Well, we may have a fresh lead for you," Squall paused expectantly.

"Really?" Laguna felt his interest in the conversation sharpen, "What have you found?"

"It's a bit of a long shot," Squall admitted, "CASCADE generated it when we fed all the background data from Irvine's mission into it."

Laguna raised his eyebrows: CASCADE was the name for the joint SeeD-Esthar super-computer network; it processed the entire input of data from the pair's satellites, spies, drones and listening stations. The machines used data-mining programs to sweep the sea of information for seemingly unrelated actions, and built up hidden patterns of activity.

Squall gestured at Xu, who passed the data-pad to the claw Laguna clumsily extended. He zoomed the 'bot's focus down to the little screen, and scrolled carefully down through the data it displayed. Part of him was left uneasy at how simple it seemed to just pull someone out of the information oceans. The rest of him read voraciously; they might have a face and a name. After Frederyck, it gave him his drive back.

The pad's screen held a fifteen-digit Galbadian citizen file, complete with picture, of an angry girl. In the picture he held, her face stared upwards at him; pretty but not sweet. She had broad cheeks and a snub nose, with a scattering of freckles across them. Mousey blonde hair, sheered back, topped severe black-ink eyes. The stare matched the body; medium height, with a runner's build, encased in a field-grey trenchcoat.

"Sasha Maria Bennett," he read out when he had finished absorbing the text, "Age twenty-one, served two tours in District-D- ah, a Dingo Desert vet then. Un-huh, un-huh. Captured during Operation Quail, held eight months, released six months ago. That's interesting: no fixed abode, no job listed either."

He looked shrewdly through the Mannequin at the SeeDs.

"A military background, a bad defeat, no job or address listed. Homeless vets aren't new in Galbadia. But no criminal record, no drugs, no head problems reported? That is rare. Not what she seems, this girl. But why am I looking at her?"

"She put together the mercenary unit that Irvine fought in Centra," Squall said, "The mercenary captain there was her old commanding officer from District-D. They call it Malisa there these days."

Xu spoke; "Sasha Bennett is a fixer and information-broker for the National Resistance Army. They're a paramilitary group started up after the riots in Deling City three years ago. You know the city's full of ethnic Galbadian refugees from successor states like Timber. They want to return the favour with Galbadia's minorities," she said with a sad smile.

Squall snorted.

"The NRA is close to parts of the Galbadian military and intelligence services," Rinoa said suddenly, "Mostly people who want Victor Deling to return to his father's 'Greater Galbadia' policies. I recognised some of the names Xu showed me. Even Father thought they were mad."

"The question was, why Irvine?" Squall said intently, "Out of all of us, who would you send a time-dream to? Irvine was in the middle of the desert. No portable coverage, radio silence, and he had hundreds of miles to cross to get back to us. Lots of delay for us before we could analyse the message. Convenient if you're the kidnappers. Gives you time to move Ellie again."

Xu tapped the data-pad Laguna was holding; "Irvine's original mission- when the hostage crisis blew up- was training up the Four Fingers security forces. It was a public mission. Bennett must have known he was there."

Laguna sighed; "Her and everyone else who happened to glance at the SeeD gridsite listings," he said heavily.

Xu shook her head; "Sasha's old boss, Merton- the mercenary leader that Selphie's team got in the rescue- when he realised what a hole he was in on that jet, he started making calls on his portable. Her number was one of them. We checked."

Laguna's lips moved as he tried to work it out; "She could have guessed Irvine was leading the rescue effort," he said at last.

"Yeah," Squall nodded, "The Centrans threatened Merton with a SeeD attack. They wanted him good and scared. And that name the kidnappers used… in the time-dream they said 'Rafale says he's seen enough' remember? It's actually a word in Malisan, uh, the Dingo Desert dialect?"

"Where Bennett served," Laguna nodded thoughtfully, "What does it mean?"

"'Hail of bullets'," said Squall succinctly.

Laguna winced. Rinoa gave her husband a look, then reached up and took a claw.

"We can't be sure she knows anything," she said, "But it's worth picking her up. And if she does, I'll know. We'll get Ellie back for you, I promise."

Squall shuffled uncomfortably at his wife's words. Laguna moved the Mannequin's head to the data-pad and back.

"How soon can you get going?" he asked.

Rinoa and Squall turned to look at Xu.

"I had Ragnarok refuelled as soon as Irvine got here," she said.