Jonah sat confidently in a chair directly in front of Keegan, who stood leaning his shoulder against the glass barrier.
“So,” Jonah began, “what has she told you about the experiment?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s clear to me that the two of you are hiding something. She visited her uncle —your boss— shortly after the accident. That fact alone is enough to get you both in hot water.”
“But that’s just a coincidence, you said so yourself.”
“The relation, maybe, but the visit?”
“Isn’t she allowed to see her family?”
“Yes, well… what if her computer was compromised, encryption doesn’t do much good if we know every word she’s typed.”
Keegan stared at him with a look of surprise and horror that slowly turned to confusion.
“Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. If she was communicating with someone and you knew you would’ve followed that thread long before now.”
“Our employees do a lot of typing, often we won’t find anything unless we’re looking. Which is fortunate for you, because currently I’m the only one who knows she leaked anything. Cooperate and I can keep her from getting in trouble.”
Starting to pace in the small space given to him, Keegan thought aloud. “No… No either you’re bluffing —trying to get me to incriminate her— or… You’re covering this up. There’s something else going on.”
“Look, I didn’t come here to listen to you rambling about—”
He was interrupted by a loud crack splitting the air, which was followed by the blaring of alarms. Jonah stood up.
“I have to go see what that was about. Don’t talk to anyone or do anything stupid while I’m gone.” He rushed from the room, and the door locked behind him.
Selena sat in her room, content that her actions had, for the time being at least, proven her value to the Initiative. She sat, ready to drift off, to let her thoughts carry her away from the world. But her actions had filled Site 09 with activity, with noise, with chaos. She could not stay here; she had to leave. If she went deep enough, she could be back before anyone even noticed she was gone. She powered up the slipspace generator…
Jonah stormed into the site’s operation center. “What’s happening?”
“We had another dimensional breach within the facility, sir,” an assistant answered. “It sounds like that lost test subject came back through this one…”
“You mean the kid that vanished?”
“Yeah, wait… he says there’s two of them now?”
“What?”
The assistant shrugged. “That’s what he told me.”
“Where’s Ernhardt?”
“Selena? Um… I don’t have anything.”
“Where was her last location?”
“Looks like… she entered her personal quarters about twelve minutes ago.”
“So no camera. Can we get audio?”
The assistant pulled up the audio recording from when she entered the room. Grabbing a headset, Jonah listened as a door opened and Selena could be heard walking.
“Scrub to twenty seconds before the breach.”
Once the assistant did so, Jonah heard a charging sound leading up to the loud crack.
“I thought we had that disabled.”
“The records show that it was disabled, sir.”
“Get a team down there.”
Woo, crossover stuff! Also it’s the two-year anniversary of posting Year 1, Part 0, so that’s cool.
-David
chipgw.com 