The woman who hired me had a face like a clenched fist and a voice like gravel. She sat in my office chair without asking, legs crossed, cigarette smoke curling up past the ceiling fan like a question no one wanted to answer.

I need you to find my husband, she said. His name is Dr. Arthur Voss. He works at the Apollo facility in White Sands.

I dont do missing persons, I said. Especially not government people.

Its not a missing persons case. She reached into her purse and withdrew an envelope, thick enough to buy my rent for three months. He has been investigating irregularities at the facility. Financial irregularities, classified materials, things that dont match the public record. Three weeks ago, he called me from a payphone in El Paso and told me hed found something. Something about the Apollo Program that the government doesnt want anyone to know. Then he hung up and never came home.

I lit a cigarette. The ash fell on my desk, grey and useless. What do you want me to do?

Find him. Find out what he found. And if hes dead, find out who killed him.

I took the case. Not for the money, though the money was good, but because I recognised the look in her eyes. It was the look of someone who already knew the answer and needed someone else to confirm it.

I started at the Apollo facility's public relations office. The secretary on duty, a young man with a tie too tight around his neck, told me that Dr. Voss was on a routine field assignment and would return shortly. He wouldnt look me in the eye.

I went to Dr. Voss's apartment. It had been ransacked with care, papers everywhere, drawers pulled open, cushions slashed, but nothing taken. Not the television, not the watch on the nightstand, not the wallet in the top drawer. Someone looking for information, not money.

On his desk, behind a stack of unpaid bills, I found a folder. Inside were documents: financial records from the Apollo Program showing payments to shell corporations registered in Delaware. Mine contracts in territory that didnt appear on any public map. And a list of names, astronomers, engineers, technicians, who had transferred to other facilities within ninety days of signing the original contracts.

The last page was a handwritten note in Dr. Voss's hand: Theyre not looking for moon rocks. Theyre mining something else. Something that isnt on Earth. And the government knows.

I took the folder and walked out into the Los Angeles night. The city was bright and careless and full of people who believed the world was exactly what they were told it was.

I didnt believe that anymore. I put the folder in my glove compartment and drove to a diner on Santa Monica Boulevard, where I sat in a booth with a cracked vinyl seat and read the documents by the light of a neon sign that buzzed like a trapped fly. The financial records were extensive. Millions of dollars flowing through accounts that led nowhere, to no one who could be identified. The mine contracts were even more disturbing. They referenced mineral deposits in the Mariana Trench, in the Atlantic Ridge, in locations that did not appear on any government chart. And the list of names, forty-three of them, was a graveyard of careers.

I called Dr. Voss's phone. It went straight to voicemail. I left a message: Arthur, its Mercer. I found the folder. Call me.

It didnt ring. The phone went dead by morning, disconnected for non-payment, I was told when I called again. Dr. Voss was gone.

--- OTMES-v2-5E8A3C-078-M0-225-8R5410-0F56 E_total: 7.8 | Dominant: M0 | Angle: 225-deg | Rank: 8 M_vector: [6, 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6, 0, 3, 4] | N: [0.4, 0.6] | K: [0.3, 0.7]

--- OTMES v2.0 Objective Tensor Code: OTMES-v2-B22C22-079-M1-022-1R924-D005 Variant: V-07 Style: F: Psychological Thriller Dominant Angle: 225° Dominant Mode: 1 Energy: 7.90 N Vector: [0.10, 0.XX] Tensor Transformation: Original θ=255° → Variant θ=225° M1 (Power): 2.0 | M4 (Emotion): 5.0 | M6 (Social): 1.0 | M10 (Mission): 1.0