“So where are they taking our squad member?”
“Enlightenment takes place in the heart of the Temple.” Teller answered, “You can reach it by passing through the labs.”
‘Temple’ was an odd choice of words; but at least he’d given them a clear answer.
“One last question,” said Gabriel, “J.E. Co. sent one of its security teams to investigate this place, what happened to them?”
“You don’t want to know.” Teller replied with a madman’s grin.
Gabriel made clear what he thought of that answer by giving his combat claws another vicious twist, turning the captive’s grin into another agonised scream.
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked you.” Gabriel said menacingly.
“They were captured and taken to the Temple to be elevated.” Teller replied, starting to lose breath, “they will serve far better…than they could…in life.”
“Is ‘elevation’ different from ‘enlightenment’?”
“…Very…” Teller replied, slurring his words, “…tell Dani…to go frick herself.”
Gabriel want to ask him who ‘Dani’ was, but the prisoner had lost consciousness, so he let the dying man slide off his claws to the floor. Then he relaxed his fists, causing the claws to retract back into their grooves. It was safe to assume the J.E. Co. team was dead.
“Priorities have changed.” Gabriel said over the comm. as he readied his weapon, “We’re heading to the labs, since that’s probably the epicentre of this.”
“Most of the doors on the way to the labs are biometrically sealed.” Doran said.
“No problem,” Gabriel replied, pointing at Teller, “Take off his hand.”
The squad looked at him.
“You heard me,” Gabriel repeated, “take a knife, cut off his hand, and bring it with us.”
The squad hesitated at the bloody-minded order; but it was a direct order, and they could hardly disobey. Besides, there was no love lost for the treacherous Teller.
Doran crouched down and clasped one of Teller’s hands, drawing a combat knife from his shoulder sheath. He flicking a switch with his thumb, and the edge of the dull-grey blade turned a soft orange colour as it was flash-heated and wreathed in a thin cloud of energised plasma. Teller had already passed out, so he didn’t feel the knife touch his skin, severing his hand in one clean slice and instantly cauterising the wound.
Doran deactivated the flash-heated blade and replaced the knife in its sheath, rising to his feet before waving the severed hand in front of the door’s biometric sensor. The door light flashed green and the door unlocked, sliding open in response.
“One more thing: the rules of engagement have changed. If you see anyone other than Ogilvy,” Gabriel fired a single round into Teller’s skull, followed by a second shot through the skull of the other technician. “Shoot to kill.”
THE LABORATORY
Yanking open the biometric scanner beside Lawrence Kane’s office door, Aster uncovered a hidden keypad and punched in her personal override code to bypass the biometric lock. The red light flashed green, and she slipped inside like a thief in the night before anyone noticed. Once the door was sealed behind her, she leaned against the wall and hyperventilated to dispel the panic over what she had just done.
As project-lead, Aster could use her personal override code to access almost any place in the labs, including other people’s offices if necessary. That meant it was a privilege of her position meant only for emergencies, not for snooping around a co-worker’s office. Even though it wasn’t technically a violation of her employment contract, she certainly didn’t have a legitimate reason for doing it.
Felix’s insistence on digging up whatever Lawrence might have found had stoked a dangerous curiosity in her. Part of her did want to know what had happened to their colleagues on Loki, if only to provide some sort of closure. Not to mention, anything she found might help the authorities and thereby clear the cloud of suspicion hanging over everyone else. Of course, Aster had adamantly rejected versions of those arguments only an hour ago. But they had slowly eaten away at her resolve until she could stand it no longer.
Most companies in the high tech sector used the same highly compartmentalised research and development chain. The researchers carried out the basic research with no immediate commercial value in one facility, then passed on their findings to the engineers to develop into a usable product in another facility.
In theory, this was supposed to leave each section free to focus on their respective areas. In practice, it was just legal cover, and everybody knew it. Hardly a year went by without a major corporate scandal being uncovered involving experiments of a legally questionable nature, either due to an industrial accident, or the revelation that corporate espionage was involved. In the event of legal trouble, the research end of the chain was the most likely to be cut loose to save the rest of the company.
Of course, the process couldn’t be completely stovepiped. Lawrence’s job as ‘liaison’ was to observe the research process and ensure at least one point of contact between the two ends of the chain. It also meant that if anyone knew for certain whether the Loki staff had been breaking the law, it had to be Lawrence. He must have had a set of notes about what he saw at the Loki facility, and his office was as good a place to look as any.
The office itself was cramped and austere, and looked like it hadn’t been used in weeks, which it hadn’t, of course. At the back of the office was a stack of crates, and at the front was a simple desk welded to the wall like in any standard office. An automated cleaning drone buzzed back and forth across the floor, silently vacuuming up the dust collecting in the corners. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see.
Aster sat down at the desk, and the holographic computer screen lit up in response to her presence, displaying the computer’s main menu. Everyone had their own locked office, so nobody bothered to password-lock their computers. Besides, if it were code-locked, Aster could use her personal override code to access any project-related files she wanted – another way of abusing her authority as project-lead.
Cycling through the main menu, Aster came across a folder labelled ‘Loki Observation Notes’. That was a little too easy to find. She opened the folder and scrolled through the notes. All of them were second-hand observations of experiments conducted by the Loki team along with Lawrence’s comments. None of it was recent.
Aster kept glancing at the office door, fearing that someone might walk in and catch her looking through someone else’s files. She knew of course that no one would; she was the only one on this floor with a personal override code. But the wrongness of what she was doing and the paranoia of being caught made it hard to concentrate.
Eventually, she stopped scrolling and threw her head back in silent frustration. Of course they were just second-hand observations; that was Lawrence’s whole job. What exactly was she looking for, a written confession of guilt? If he had been kept in the dark, he wouldn’t have known anything worth writing down in the first place; and if he had known, why would he leave behind evidence indicating his own complicity?
Aster got up to look at the collection of boxes stacked at the back. Would he have hidden anything in them? They were standard storage crates with a simple turn lock, not meant for storing anything valuable. She popped open one of the crates without much effort, finding old components and circuit boards inside. There was nothing immediately relevant to the project, let alone anything nefarious.
There were more boxes piled up at the back of the office, and Aster spent the next half hour rummaging through each of them. She found an assortment of worn-out parts, burnt out circuits, spare tools, an extra set of dirty engineer’s overalls, and nothing else.