Page 43 of Centurion

>Sending microfiche next.Will send in batches. Much slower.

>>Copy.Getting up to speed on this end.

“Yeah, I bet you are.”Con sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Okay, the microfiche won’t be as easy.” He glanced at Ronnie. “Could you bring it here? We’ll do it in a processing line.”

Ronnie brought over the boxful of small sheets of plastic. “How is anyone going to read this? I mean, it will basically be a picture of a negative.”

“Yeah, that’s an issue, but if we get a picture, and it’s good, I can blow it up after it’s scanned in. Put the first one on the flatbed, would you?”

Ronnie did as he asked, and he sent the command to scan the picture. He enlarged it and narrowed his eyes. “Turn it over. We have a reverse image here.”

She flipped the film over, and he scanned it again. “Okay, we’ve got a tiny photo.” He enlarged the image until it was pixelated to a degree the letters were blurred. “Hold on.” He called up one of the photo programs he’d worked with in the past. He wouldn’t use AI on that one. It called for old-schoolmanipulation. He used his program to clip out each of the fifty pages miniaturized on the film.

“What are you doing?” Ronnie leaned over, looking at his computer screen. Her long, dark hair fell in a curtain over his shoulder.

“I’m basically walking uphill with each picture. I’m using bicubic interpolation to enlarge the image. It’s a repetitive enlargement in measured amounts, so not much detail is lost. Then I’m using a noise reduction program to reduce the artifacts in the image to make it sharper.”

“Why not use the AI program you used with the photographs?”

“Because of the severity of what this document could mean. The text needs to be exact. If AI changed something as minuscule as the wordisto the wordas, the meaning of the entire document could change.”

He did four or five of the pages before she tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I can do that. You have to work on that book and then help Jewell.”

“Okay. You know where to save them?”

Ronnie nodded. “This folder on the shared drive.” She pushed him a bit. “Move. If I have any questions, I’ll ask for help.”

Con relinquished the chair behind the desk and walked out to the library to retrieve his computer. He sat down on the wheeled chair and walked-rolled himself, his computer, the book, and his chair into the node. There, he sat up his computer and the book on the other side of the desk and started work.

Con continued to check on her progress and was impressed with how quickly she caught on. “That really helps,” he said, pulling her attention away from the screen.

“What, this? It isn’t much.”

“That’s where you are wrong. Fifty percent of my time is spent doing routine things. Things that someone with your level of competency could do, but due to clearance issues, we can’t have assigned.”

She stopped and looked at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Yep. See, my life is glamorous.” He laughed and turned his attention back to the work he was doing.

He was lost in the pages of the journal when he heard the doorbell ring. “That’s Malice,” he muttered as he put down the pen in his hand.

“I’ll get it. I need to uncross my eyes,” Ronnie said and stood up from where she was working. Con went back to his work until he heard that voice. Holy shit.TheSaint. He was there. The man was a legend in Guardian. He was called Gabriel, and that was all Con had ever been able to find out about the man, well, except he was chosen by the one and only reclusive almost trillionaire David Xavier to run Guardian Security, which he still did. Archangel held the everyday reins, but everyone in the organization knew Saint was the ultimate authority in the chain of command. Con stood up and, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, brushed off his T-shirt. He swallowed hard.Damn. He was nervous. Like to the core nervous. Saint was a legend, and he was going to meet him.

Ronnie walked into the room between two people. The man had salt and pepper hair and an impressive physique for someone who was … sixty? Maybe a bit older? Normally, he could peg a person’s age, but with that guy, not so much. The woman was … Holy hell. His eyes darted from the woman to Ronnie to the man and back to Ronnie again. Their eyes. Ronnie had the exact same eyes as the man, and in every other fashion, she was a picture-perfect image of the woman standing beside her. Holy hell. Ronnie was Saint’s kid. No wonder he couldn’t find a damn thing about her.

“Well, now it all makes sense,” Con said, placing his hands on his hips. “That’s why I couldn’t find you.”

The man stopped and extended his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you finally.”

“You’re her dad. I’m happy to meet you, too.” Con took the man’s extended hand and shook it. “And her mom. Mrs.—”

“My name is Anna.” The woman smiled at him as he shook her hand. Con released Anna’s hand and then rubbed his neck. “I feel like a fool right now.”

“For what?” Anna asked.

“I thought I could circumnavigate the system to find her.” Con nodded toward Ronnie.

Saint cocked his head as his brows furrowed, and he asked, “And why would you want to do that?”

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