“I don’t know what any of that means.” Darius said impatiently, his hardened tone warning the man to get to the point.
“…No one we looked at has done anything to warrant suspicion.” The security officer said, knowing full well that the chairman wouldn’t be happy with that answer.
“In other words, you’re telling me that you didn’t find the mole.” Darius answered. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement tinged with anger.
“Sir, we don’t know for certain that there is a mole.” Someone else in the security team spoke up, not wanting to leave his colleague to face the storm alone.
“Of course there’s a mole!” Darius bellowed, his temper reigniting, “How else would Jezebel Thorn have known that the Loki facility had gone dark before the rumours came out?”
Again, no one dared to contradict the chairman, especially since his logic actually made some sense this time. Instead, a security technician stepped forward with a flexi-computer and laid it out on the table for the chairman to see.
“We did flag these individuals as warranting extra attention.” He said.
Chairman Darius looked over with interest. Then his interest turned to puzzlement.
“What the fleek is all this supposed to be?” he demanded.
“Bribery and blackmail are the two most common ways to recruit a double agent,” the security technician explained, “so by compiling and cross-referencing information on the personal circumstances and private lives of the staff, we can determine who is most vulnerable to being recruited as a mole.”
“And thereby find out who the mole is.” Darius concluded, sounding encouraged.
The security technician wasn’t actually going to say that, but kept his mouth shut.
The names on the list included, among other things, an applied mathematician who liked to frequent strip clubs, a married junior accountant who was having a lesbian affair, and a metallurgist with medical bills.
“What about this person?” Darius tapped one of the names.
“Dr Lawrence Kane.” The security technician said, “He was the liaison officer for the Loki facility. He’s a loner, likes to drink at bars alone, and occasionally brings home a prostitute. Apparently, he was also diagnosed with some kind of blood disorder five years ago.”
“Pitiful loser.” Darius sneered, “He’d be an easy target.”
“However, he’s been up at the Loki facility for the past few weeks,” the technician continued sceptically, “which means he’s probably dead by now.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a mole when he was alive.” Darius pointed out, “look into him, just in case. Who else is there?”
“There’s also the lead scientist for the reactor project.” The technician said, highlighting her name from the list, “Dr Aster Thorn.”
“‘Thorn’?” Darius growled, his fingers curling into fists at the mention of the name.
“By marriage,” the technician clarified, “it’s not her maiden name.”
“Even so, there’s no fleeking way that’s a coincidence!” the chairman exclaimed with absolute certainty, “Does she tick any other boxes of suspicion?”
“No, she doesn’t.” the technician replied, warily but truthfully, “She’s originally from the colonies, happily married, four kids, no criminal record or history of questionable behaviour, and an excellent credit score. Other than the coincidence of names and her colonial background, her profile gives her the weakest probability of being a mole.”
“Check her again,” Darius ordered, “Do a deep probe of her if you have to. There’s no way that slippery snake Jezebel wouldn’t consider recruiting a family member or an in-law.”
“We can check her workplace activity.” The technician suggested, “See if she’s tried to requisition any equipment or use her personal override code.”
“Do it.” Darius ordered, snapping his fingers commandingly at the other technicians. They nodded and hastily departed the conference room. The technician waited until he was alone with the chairman before continuing.
“We also did a search for this ‘Gabriel’ person.” The technician said.
“What did you find?” Darius demanded.
“This.” The technician answered, opening up a separate file.
It was marked: ‘Access Denied: Tier 2 classification’.
“I see.” Darius said simply, his eagerness for revenge evaporating in an instant, “forget about him. Focus on Kane and Thorn.”
* * *
The squad exited the decontamination chamber and fanned out to secure the area. They found themselves in another atrium, more spacious and high class than the first waiting lounge, and with holographic screens displaying soothing images and sounds from nature.
“Welcome to the Research Labs,” the android receptionist said congenially, “please check in at the front desk before–”
Viker silenced the android with a single headshot. The round punched a hole clean through the robot’s forehead, blowing out the back of its head in the process and spraying shattered electronics against the back wall.
No one questioned Viker’s decision. Any amateur techie could reprogram an android to be hostile. Furthermore, the squad no longer had the element of surprise, and there was no telling what kind of booby-traps might have been rigged in anticipation of their arrival.
There was one detail, however, that arrested the squad’s attention, one which looked decidedly out of place in this otherwise generic corporate lounge. It was a message scrawled on the wall above the front desk in dark red capital letters:
‘KNOWLEDGE SETS YOU FREE’.
Cato climbed up onto the desk and swiped his hand across the bottom part of the right-hand ‘E’. The sensors in his gauntlet confirmed what they suspected.
“Blood. Human.” Cato confirmed grimly, “But not Ogilvy’s, thankfully.”
The letters were enormous, too large for one person to have provided all the blood. That still left open the question of what kind of psychopaths would kill people just to daub giant slogans on the walls in their blood.
“Colonel,” Bale asked, “what exactly are we looking for here?”
“No one goes to this amount of trouble just to kill a prisoner.” Gabriel reasoned, “Whatever they want with Ogilvy, they’ll need to get his armour off first.”
“The medical bay, then?” Cato suggested.
“That’s as good a place to start as any.” Gabriel resolved.
Gabriel took point as the squad proceeded down the eerily deserted corridors, following the signs on the walls towards the medical bay. The whole place resembled a deserted hospital from a classical horror film with perfectly perpendicular walls and floors, and the eerie absence of people; even the lights were flickering to complete the effect.
Perhaps ‘mental asylum’ was a more appropriate metaphor. The walls, ceilings, and floors were covered with disturbing writing; bizarre slogans and phrases crudely daubed in block capitals, and in what was almost certainly also Human blood.
‘TO KNOW GOD IS TO BE GOD’.
‘SUBMISSION MEANS PEACE’.
The sinister invocations of the divine became creepier and creepier as they proceeded through the eerily deserted corridors. Warnings about monsters and demons in the dark, awe-filled references to the ‘Temple’ and the ‘Voice’, and many other pseudo-religious babblings covered virtually every surface.
There was also more esoteric graffiti: long passages of text written in an indecipherable script that the squad’s suit computers didn’t recognise. Alongside these were complicated mathematical and chemical equations scrawled on the walls like devotional art.
The squad turned yet another corner into one last corridor leading towards the medical bay. Painted on the floor, next to the fundamental theorem of calculus, was one piece of writing that was refreshingly straightforward: ‘FUCK THE CORPORATES!’