"Rescue."

He raises his eyebrows, but then continues: "With Rescue's help we can actually hear what they're saying and figure it out. You said you'd look into that Doctor Montgomery?"

"I was planning on it, but that's before I knew about you; if you have something better for me to do I can."

She considers, and then adds, "I can listen to a few places at the same time if they're close enough together," and uses the map app to show the roughly five mile radius around them that she can hear conversations in.

"Hmm... I think if you could find if there's a connection between what this Montgomery person is doing and the people following us that would be good, but you should prioritize him if you can't."

Nod, type type type. "Okay. Do you know anything else about them?"

"They were formed some decades ago. Mostly insane people who thought being a Picasso was a swell idea. The Echo cultists had existed for longer, but until the one bust where they were doing some weird ritual to a kid no one was sure this Cult of Bedlam even existed. They got caught, and the Cult disappeared after that. Then recently there were some rumors, some people going cubist without having been to the Sideways before, just spontaneously. And these guys following us, and now what you saw, there."

"Okay."

She takes a moment to think back through everything. "How did you know about the DoS not showing up?"

"A guess. At about the same time the Cult started following us, my daughter and I were apprehended by the department for violation of a red-black zone which had been yellow-black when we left it. The timing seemed very suspicious."

"Do I need to know what red-black and yellow-black mean?"

"Oh, entrances to the Sideways have classifications. Yellow-black just means it's an entrance, you shouldn't go in but if you do it's on you. Red-black means risk of cubism, it's illegal to enter, you're endangering yourself, other people, and the buildings by violating it."

"Okay. I'll be careful of them."

"Is there anything else I should know?"

"Nothing comes to mind, but you keep in touch with Penny, right? She can tell you about anything important."

"Yeah. Okay."

"We should go back."

Nod.

Suits?

Long since stopped following them, waiting just out of sight of the Yates' residence.

Yeah.

"The suits are waiting outside your apartment."

"I thought they'd be. For now, we can just come back and see what they do."

"Okay. I'm not going to let them see me, I'll go with you as far as the exit."

He nods.

And since he probably won't do it: "Thank you very much!"

And off they go. It's not far.

No it isn't! The Yates say their goodbyes and go back home.

The men in suits notice, of course. Three of them keep watch, the fourth goes to a quieter corner and grabs his phone.

Yup. Denice retreats from the exit a bit and waits to hear what he's going to say.

Someone answers, and when she listens through the phone she can "see" it as probably Doctor Montgomery. He's in a small office of some sort, sitting at a table typing into a computer, surrounded by stacks of papers and bookshelves. He doesn't say anything into the phone.

"We found them."

"...found whom?" asks definitely Doctor Montgomery.

"The Yates."

"You had lost them?"

"—uh, yes," the man says, suddenly nervous. "At That Fish Place. They went into the tunnels."

"Did they."