The sound of heels clacking across the tiled floor rang out into the neat office building, drawing the eyes of several employees, but when they saw who it was making the din, they hurriedly looked back towards their tasks. No matter who was listening, they could all tell that she was in a rush, like she was late for something or had forgotten something important. In any case, no one could work up the courage to ask her or even call out to her in passing. She was that woman after all.

The environment was fairly quiet despite the fact that there were over a hundred people working on this research floor alone. The faint rustle of papers and the muffled clicking of keyboards drifting out from open doors produced a background noise that seemed to drone like a hive, only interrupted by barely audible, indistinct clinks as researchers handled glassware at their work stations.

The pair of heels belonged to a middle-aged lady with sour brown eyes and the most common of looks. She was plump, a normal problem for anyone when they have to work from behind a desk in an administrative position most of the day. That soft look served to equally lessen the stress that was emitted from her body like a poisonous gas. Nothing seemed ferocious about her at first, but the obvious avoidance of the other workers hurriedly passing from one room to the next gave the impression of a shark swimming through a school of fish.

After a short zigzag route down corridors and a few flights of stairs, she arrived at a central hallway. On each side, long windows provided for a view that looked into a laboratory, equipped with all of the latest equipment and staffed with around forty researchers and assistants. Striding towards one of the windows, she spotted her target and brusquely rapped on the window, startling the entire room. She pointed and then beckoned with her index finger. Fearful gazes flitted back and forth, but as soon as they saw her target, they acted like they didn’t see her and continued on with their work.

A greying gentleman in a lab coat didn’t share this sense of trepidation towards the woman. He lazily looked up from the culture he was pouring over under a microscope and frowned behind his face mask, the sentiment reflected into his eyes as he ill-temperedly took of his latex gloves and threw them on the lab bench. Touching an assistant on the shoulder, the woman saw him whisper a few words to the tech before he strode over and exited the room via an airlock that isolated the lab space.

He arrived in front of her, saying sarcastically, “Well if it isn’t the wicked witch of the West, what can your flying monkeys do for you today?”

“Can it, George. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with your nonsense today. This is about Valerie,” she finished seriously.

A look of alertness flashed across his face, his eyes scanning their surroundings for any eavesdroppers. Seeing none, it was obvious he was still cautious because he waved a hand towards her, grimacing as he walked towards a corner office that was right beside the lab room.

Only after closing the door and closing the blinds did George turn and speak again slowly. “Alright, Marjorie, you have my attention. What’s happened with her? Has she been caught?”

“I honestly don’t know.” She shook her head anxiously as she leaned back against his desk. “I got an email from the Vice Director this morning that said he received a report from local law enforcement in Syracuse. Someone bombed our lab there, or at least that’s what it looks like.”

His eyes went wide before he violently cursed, “Fuck!” George walked around and then sat down heavily into his leatherback office chair. A spotted hand reached up to tug at his whiskers. He turned his eyes back towards her as he grimly said, “You do realize that was the only facility we had that was working on the telomere modification, right?”

“Of course I know that,” she snapped, moving to a guest chair facing him. “It was the two of us that worked to get it funded under a different project title after all with Mr. Waters’ help. But that’s not even half of the issue.”

He looked at for a moment before recognition flashed in his eyes. “Valerie.”

“Right, Valerie,” she agreed seriously. “After I got the email, I called Roy who was on guard duty last night. He said that Valerie was also in the building before he was knocked out by whoever snuck into the building.”

A ringing telephone suddenly lit up on George’s desk startling the both of them. After a split second, the caller’s ID read V.D. Waters and they both grimaced at the same time.

George reached over a hand to put it on speaker and answered crisply, “This is George. I’ve got Marjorie here with me as well.”

“Good, I’m glad I didn’t have to spend too much time tracking down the both of you.” Waters’ voice was pleasant and charismatic, but they could both tell that a dangerous edge was hidden beneath the gilded exterior this morning. “I just got another call from the Syracuse PD... They pulled a female body from the wreckage about fifteen minutes ago. The preliminary coroner’s report says that she died by gunshot to the head.”

A sharp exhale sounded out in the room as Marjorie leaned back in her chair with a shell-shocked expression. She couldn’t quite believe it, but it was almost guaranteed that the woman was Valerie - a girl she’d nurtured since she graduated college. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Marjorie taught her everything she knew about the corporate world.

He continued, “I know this won’t be easy for you Marj, but I need you to put aside your emotions for a moment.”

She croaked out a “Yes sir” and then lapsed back into silence.

“Alright. Where to begin?” The voice mused. “Both of you know that she was acting as our mole into the government division responsible for research into the Hayflick limit. I don’t know how, but it looks like knowledge of this got out somehow. I can’t think of any other reason that someone would torch a lab, kill only the spy that had been stealing information, and leave the rest of the guards alive. It had to have been the government. It just doesn’t make any sense otherwise.”

“Since when does the government kill its own citizens and workers?” Marjorie exclaimed hysterically.

George shook his head behind the desk and shot her a look that said calm down. “This is the key to immortality we’re talking about here, Marjorie. Is there anything more valuable in this world than that?”

“In any case, we have to look to the future on how to deal with this. We can speculate later.” Waters interrupted in a tone filled with gravity. “Back when I signed off on the cover project, I used Tony’s signature and made sure the process was as vague as possible. Nothing can be traced back to us that I can think of - any ideas?”

George once again shook his head, his brows creasing in consternation. “No,” he finally said. “I have no ties with that lab beyond recommending a few transfers to go work for the project, but that’s normal bureaucratic work and the fields of the techs and researchers I assigned all fit the requirements of the cover study.”

“None for me. Well... beyond Valerie, that is.” Marjorie added tremulously.

They both heard a relatively silent groan come through the speaker. “Marj, you’re obviously in the most danger. Be thinking of an alibi that can cover all your bases. It’s unavoidable that the FBI will come knocking once they figure out who Valerie was and the discrepancy over where she died versus where she was working. The whole thing is too suspicious, so distance yourselves as much as possible. The only way we can weather this storm is by being as quiet as possible while they investigate Biolink. If you feel that they’re getting close, let me know.”

“Alright.” “Yes sir.” The two replied back, fear and anxiety twisting in their gut.

“Okay, get back to work and pretend that nothing happened.” George ended the call and the two stared at one another for a moment, looking at the expressions on each other’s face. Their research into immortality was destroyed, a protege was dead, and now they might soon be facing charges of espionage and treason by stealing information from the U.S. government.

Life sucks.

***

Adrian awoke with a gasp, greedily gulping at the sweet tasting air around him.

His entire body quickly notified him of a strange ache that seemed to radiate from the core of his being. Everything felt... strange. It wasn’t overly painful, instead the sensation was akin to that feeling one has after their muscles have almost recuperated from a hard workout. It was both painful and pleasant at the same time, a dichotomous perception that he was well-versed in after his months of training.

Mentally, his world snapped together almost instantly. There was no grogginess beyond the confusion he felt, there was only his apartment displayed in heightened colors and sounds that knit themselves together into a wondrous tapestry that was beyond anything Adrian had ever experienced before. Everything was more vivid, entrancing to a mind that had never experienced such detail because it lacked the ability to process it so… completely.

Eyes wide, he looked around quickly, trying to find sight of Rich. In the process, he felt a slight lag between reality and the rate at which is mind processed the environmental information. The conclusion that he came to was that his brain was processing information more quickly than it had before and also in larger quantities. He almost gave himself whiplash too, because the muscle memory inscribed into a motion just as simple as a turn of the head was not calibrated to his new normative nerve signal speed.

Gingerly turning his head another direction, he soon found his friend curled up in a corner, shirtless and surrounded by nine beer bottles. Adrian started with a chuckle before he almost ended up crying, he was laughing so hard and silently. He survived! After a moment more though, his voice suddenly choked.

Flashes of memories came back to him, reminding him of all the pain he’d gone through. It was then that he found out that his senses were not the only thing to receive upgrades. The crippling pain, the soul-tearing agony that had wracked his body for the two days since their lab raid came back in vivid detail, gleaned from brief moments of lucidity between phases. It felt like he was still experiencing it, even though his mind told him it was only a recollection.

Suppressing it the best he could, he looked back over to see his friend stirring from sleep. Groggily, Rich suddenly bolted upright, holding a roll of gauze in one hand while wiping his bleary eyes with the other. “Ah! Huh?... Bearcat?” He blinked his eyes furiously as he looked back towards Adrian confusedly.

His friend served as a big enough distraction that Adrian was finally able to push down the gruesome memories that had been flooding him. Cracking a grin as he recovered control, he started peeling off the pads and tape that was plastered all over his body.

Chuckling morbidly, he held up a blood-soaked wound dressing and said to Rich sardonically, “It looks like I bled a little during this.”

“Bitch, did you just say a little? Fuck you, I’m going back to sleep.” Rich abruptly plopped back down on the couch, covering himself with a blanket.

“Don’t be like that, you little drama queen. Tell me what happened while I was out.”

“I kept your ass alive is what happened,” he replied gruffly, coming back out from under the blanket.

“Thank you for that.” Adrian smiled at him and scratched his head before unceremoniously dropping the blood-soaked bandages he’d collected into a trashcan.

“You’re welcome,” came back a stiff acknowledgement, followed by a light sigh as he scratched his hairy chest. “Bro, you almost bit the dust several times. I think it was yesterday around lunch that your skin started splitting and cracking like you were a snake shedding your skin. The problem was that the process was happening so quickly that there were still rends in the new skin underneath, making you bleed like a stuck pig when pieces of old skin over places like that came off.”

“I kinda got that feeling,” Adrian said as he stood up, stretching out his arms and back. Right away, he felt something was off again. Looking around, he finally realized that he’d grown a few inches taller. By imperial measurements, he was now around 5’10” or approximately 178 centimeters. Sure, it was only a small gain, but guys almost universally enjoyed being taller if they’d lived a life belonging to the short crowd.

When he got up to the view, he was again reminded that his senses had changed completely. He saw everything. All the imperceptible things that a normal human skips over in their day to day life. Heat wafted off of the carpet where the sun’s rays rested. He saw the cold air pouring out from vents in the ceiling, gushing down as if it were water from a pipe, swirling as it smashed into the carpet below where it then spread out over surface of the floor. Outside for about a distance of 100 m, he could see a faint outline of the wind as it blew through the trees.

“Welcome back, sir. Enjoy your trip to paradise?” Raide materialized his face in a corner monitor that was level with Adrian’s face.

Raking his eyes over the image that appeared, he said, “I think you need to go back and read your religious texts again. Your interpretation of paradise is disturbing to say the least.” Grumbling, he moved himself away from the makeshift triage, his muscles subtly protesting the action.

The A.I. only smiled in response, waiting until Adrian had gotten situated in his favorite chair before continuing. “You have, no doubt, by now seen the differences with your environment. Allow me to explain,” Raide diligently said. He brought up several articles and molecules to the screen along with the a digital rendering of the human eye.

“When researching ways to improve your ocular function, I found that the eyes themselves were limited in their own right in the ways they could perceive light. A normal person’s eyes can handle light waves in the range of 400-700 nm, that’s where your color rainbow scheme comes from - violet to red. When you start trying to expand that range though, I saw that it was impossible due to the inherent structure of the organ. An area of fluid blocks the photoreceptors in your eye making it impossible for you to see anything much higher than that 700 nm maximum. This is because water absorbs light. Anything much higher than the max is absorbed so it never makes it to the receptors.

“Here’s where your gifted creativity manifested itself in me. Instead of choosing to alter your eyes extensively, except for increasing your overall visual acuity, I altered your skin to perceive temperature differentials much more effectively. You are seeing the heat off of the carpet now because your body feels it in some small way. It then converts this information for your brain to process which then integrates it, with its knowledge of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics which you learned in school, into your normal perception of the surroundings. Your brain is literally using knowledge that you studied in school to make itself better.

“It also does this with visual cues. You can probably see the wind moving through the trees out on the street, right? That’s your brain utilizing the trees’ fluttering as a gauge to figure out the direction and intensity of the flow. You see it going around the cars? That’s because your brain can now predict how the air will behave on those surfaces based on the information you gleaned from the trees. As for the thermal addition, we just had to change the skin to accommodate the new functionality - the range on that is much lower, maybe 6 meters at best. Speaking of your brain though, that’s probably the greatest triumph that we gleaned from this risky endeavor.”

The A.I. paused for a moment before wiping the screen and replaced the contents with a scan of Adrian’s brain. He said, “I do have a small confession to make. I had Rich take you by the ER on your way back to Georgia.” Seeing Adrian’s eyes grow wide, “Don’t worry it wasn’t an official visit. We snuck you in complete with the classic ‘Rich looking like a doctor while wheeling you around’ bit. I hacked the security feeds via wi-fi to ensure we weren’t seen or remembered later. All of it was to obtain... this.”

A file of Adrian’s brain activity began playing. A fearsome display of lights displayed from the screen, firing off in each section of the brain. Next to it, Raide brought up a smaller window with a scan of a brain that had far less activity firing across the neural synapses.

“We needed the data, as well as several drugs to keep your mind under anaesthesia. The third and fourth states were way more brutal than I anticipated. In any case, we managed to obtain this scan as well as a few others that I hacked from their database. See the difference? I’ve gone through 25 states since then and I haven’t been able to find one brain that was significantly more active than this one on the right.”

The A.I. smirked and shook his head and then concluded, “Adrian, yours has almost triple the activity!”

He knew what Raide was driving at. A normal IQ ranged from 100-120. Tripling that would come out to a number of 360. Or double of what his previous IQ had been at 180. There had always been conjectures thrown around about what this level of intellect would bring, but now that he had it, it all felt a little absurd.

“But how? My head doesn’t feel much heavier. I assume that you would have to achieve this by increasing my neuron density and count, or expand the size of my brain. Maybe increasing the synaptic connections, but all of those would have an impact on the mass stuffed into my skull. Not to mention, I don’t feel the intellect that would accompany an IQ of 360. Everything does have more clarity and I don’t feel as easily distracted as before, but I can’t feel what I’d assume would accompany such an increase.”

“You’re thinking about this from the wrong angle,” Raide replied patiently. “I did increase your neuron count, but I didn’t program their sequences to simply double up on the already present function your brain serves, or in the same location. No, I added a ‘shadow’ brain layered along the inside of your spine up until it connects with your cerebellum. No, stop it. Don’t imagine a big brain going down your spine. It’s more like a fibrous web that lines the internal organ side of your spine. Think of it as a long backup drive that hooks into the main PC of your mind. Go ahead and try to recall something. It’ll take some practice to get used to it.”

Following Raide’s prompting, Adrian reached back into the depths of his memory to one of his design classes in his second year. Images flew by before he mentally arrived before a page from one of his textbooks. “Huh.” He grunted, amused. Grabbing a pencil and paper, he perfectly rendered the blueprint example within a matter of minutes.

“Cool, right? During that first phase while your subconscious was safely locked in your mind palace, the serum relocated all of your memory data and ‘RAM,’ so to speak, into the newly formed neurons along your spine. The speed of recall is even faster due to an enhanced connection between the main processing brain and the neural backup. In fact, every single one of your now 160 billion neurons have improved and reinforced synaptic connections.

“You probably noticed the difference right when you woke up, but the feeling has faded right? That’s because your mind has already started acclimating to the new norm. I hypothesize that, with training, you will be able to not only alter your perception of time passage due to the increased allocation of processing power, but also be able to consciously control the inner workings of your body, i.e. metabolism, adrenaline release, sleep cycles… you’ll even have the ability to control muscle decay. All of this with time and effort.

“The greatest of the improvements though, is undoubtedly the eradication of what I call memory bleed. This refers to the predisposition of the human brain to forget or relocate information. It’s why you forget how to do something or take several attempts at an activity to get it down. Since you now have perfect recall and translation, you have the ability to learn, well, anything. Any skill can be yours. Mastery will still take repetitions, but the learning time will be drastically reduced. I’m interested to see what you do with this since, you know, you now have an additional 2.5 petabytes of storage space to play with.” Smiling broadly, he continued, “Okay, last thing, I promise.”

A diagram of his body now dominated the screen. “Just like with your brain, I took this opportunity to reforge your body. We increased fiber density in your muscles and tendons while increasing their elasticity and resiliency. The same goes with your bones. They’re now the carbon equivalent of steel. Your organs are all much more resilient and efficient in their function. Since we inherited the previous goal from our… benefactors… your body’s cellular replication process has been reinforced, preventing the loss of data when telomeres are copied. Congratulations, you are now biologically immortal. It’s nothing like Wolverine, but you’re still a lot hardier and more resilient than the average human.

“On top of all this, I estimate an automatic gain of approximately 80% across the board in your stats. Thus, I’ll be switching to a relativistic stat model. Here.” Raide ended his monologue and brought the familiar stat distribution to the screen, albeit with a few modifications.

Adrian Pierce Avg. Human (U.S.) Old Body - Max (achieved) Re-Engineered Body - Current (Max unknown yet) Vitality 60 100 180 Agility 30 100 180 Strength 30 100 180 Intelligence 50 100 180 Charisma 50 100 180 Perception 30 100 180

This is insane. He’s what, 6x stronger and faster than the average human now?

Rich sighed in the corner, “I hate to break up this little victory party, but there’s something else I want to ask about...” Looking between Raide on the screen and Adrian standing off to the side flexing, he exploded, “Can one of you tell me how the fuck a woman slipped past you? I thought he had his hooks in the entire lab’s systems. I had to kill an innocent woman for you, you ungrateful bastard.”

Adrian pursed his lips after dropping his arms to rest at his sides. “Nobody said I wasn’t grateful.” Adding his gaze to Raide’s face on the screen, he seconded Rich’s thoughts, “Want to give us your assessment of her unfortunate timing?”

Raide nodded obediently and accessed the video footage he copied from that night. He’d understood that some questions would surface about the event, so he made a copy of just that 3 minute segment to compare with their reconnaissance leading up to the raid. Raide materialized a digital body that seemed to be modeled off of Adrian’s, though slightly more robotic and, thankfully, genderless.

He strode onto the video pointing at a closed door as he began speaking. “See this closed door directly across the hall from the lab? This is the employee break room. 95% of the lab has video coverage, except for this room and the bathrooms. I can only assume that the lab workers raised privacy concerns and had them avoid those rooms when they set up the network.

“As to why I didn’t know she was in the building at all, it’s because she’s not technically an employee of Biolink anymore after quitting almost six years ago. I ran her face and got a hit for one Valerie Womack. I’ve researched her connections as best as possible and I’ve found out from text correspondence that she has a mentee/mentor relationship with Marjorie Wilder, a woman who has worked for Biolink for the past 25 years. The weird thing, though, is of course the fact that she was in a restricted facility for a company that she no longer worked for.”

Bringing up the footage of that day, Raide pointed at a white delivery van backed up to the entrance. “She had to have sat in the back of this van and walked straight into the entrance from the opened doors. I’m sorry Rich, I believed that my analysis was perfect so I didn’t consider the possibility of a random element like her. The probability of a human being offloaded from that vehicle was astronomically low.”

Adrian’s mind downplayed the importance of this whole last segment, and instead was racing over the other things said. Honestly, since he woke up at the lab after that first phase, he hasn’t felt anything when it came to the concept of death. At this point, he was more curious than anything because the woman being there just didn’t line up.

Leaning in, he spoke towards the A.I. and Rich. “While it sucks that she died, the truth of the matter is that what’s done is done. I’m concerned about who she is. Raide, are you sure she doesn’t work for anybody else at the moment?”

Raide stroked his chin and then whipped out a deerstalker cap, worn by a famous British character, flipping it onto the top of his head as he spoke, “Actually, that’s what I’m having a hard time rationalizing. She get’s a large dividend check from a hedge fund every month that honestly doesn’t have a portfolio capable of those kinds of returns. An interesting fact is that the manager of that fund is a former government official.”

Adrian groaned. “Oh hell. If I’m not just being paranoid, I think she was working for the government.”

Raide looked at him bemused. “You mean that the government might be using a hedge fund to give a legitimate cover for her income by making it look like dividend checks?”

“Well, yeah. They’re the ones that regulate everything. It would be a small matter for them to just to leave out that company on the IRS side.”

The A.I. nodded. “Dangerous, but possible since they’re the ones who check things like that. They could dump the blame on the fund if anything went sideways.”

“That means that she must have been working somewhere off the books. Man, this makes me uneasy. Raide, watch the FBI extra-carefully during their investigation into the destruction of the Biolink lab. They’ll probably be out for blood and we need a better idea of what happened.”

“Got it.” Reading the mood, Raide inquired to Adrian after a moment’s pause, “So what’s the next step, oh mighty chieftain?”

“Well, now that we’ve secured the genetics side of things, we need manpower, equipment, and…” He gave a cursory glance over the apartment. “Better accommodations.” Thinking for a moment, Adrian continued, “Raide, run a search on construction companies prided for their discretion. Someone who will build something for us and won’t leak it to anyone else. Rich, I need all your old textbooks and notes.”

“Bearcat, I sold most of those man.”

Adrian groaned. “Fine. You know what, just stay here and chill out. You’ve worked hard for the past few days and we’ve still got quite some time until we make another move in the real world. If you want, you can help me on the advanced armor prototype that I have on the desk over there. I couldn’t use it for the mission because it wasn’t ready yet, so I stuck with the energy armor.”

Looking back to Raide, he said after a deep breath. “Raide, to actually progress with my designs, I need you to start investigating the most wealthy CEOs and politicians. I know that some of them are honest businessmen and women, but it’s a fact that the 1% have grown exponentially wealthier over the past two decades at the expense of others. All those that fit the model of succumbing to greed over their social responsibility, I want you to compile into a list for me.”

Rich perked up to the side. He gave his friend a suspicious look. “And what would you do with a list like that?”

Adrian shook his head, a moment’s confusion coming over him. Previously, when he’d gone to have coffee with Nova, he’d had an idea that went down this route. He could secretly purge the government of corrupted politicians and business leaders and then rebuild everything to his liking further on down the road when he came onto the political scene. The problem was that such an idea was… savage. He’d always been a moral person, but now he found himself struggling less and less with the concept of such a scheme.

Under it all, he felt this simmering anger that was directed towards the government. He had zero faith in it. It was to the point that he started to seriously considered the purification route. It was murder, but then again it was also for the betterment of society, right? Could he really afford to put off the greater good in favor of allowing a few evil men and women to live?

His lips twitching, Adrian replied back to Rich misleadingly. “I just want to get an idea of what the real world is like… that’s all.”

In the next moment, only Raide caught the minor flash of crimson that floated across his irises.

***

The atmosphere was quiet. Several suits were filing into a conference room to hear about some new event that had occurred. Each of them were gripping their coffee like it was their lifeblood. Bradley was the same. Normally, he’d be taking a nap on his desk down in the analyst’s section of the FBI headquarters right now, not frolicking around with a bunch of showy detectives. The dark, strong tasting liquid in his cup was the only thing keeping him awake right now.

Sitting down around a conference table, a balding, older man strode in and positioned himself at the head.

“Good evening, I am detective Raymond Walters and I’ll be heading up this task force. We’ll go over your names and specialties later. What do we know about this attack on Biolink?”

A small woman by the name of Amy spoke up two seats down. Her voice contrasted her young, petite frame as her voice rang out with a smooth strength. She looked like one of those Ivy league school recruits, the kind that the FBI coaxed in with dreams of protecting freedom and the American way. Bradley silently sneered into his cup as he took a sip.

“An attack was carried out on a lab owned by a genetics research company by the name of Biolink under the cover of a blackout. There was one casualty and four stunned, but unharmed guards. From what their representatives have told us when they reported the event, as well as reports from local law enforcement, the lab was purportedly researching a cure for Alzheimer's Disease.”

A murmur swept around the table. She waited until the chatter stopped.

“The only eyewitnesses we’ve been able to discover are the guards themselves. They were completely blindsided by this. By their account, during the blackout, a single man in a mask was able to surprise and stun them via some unknown method in his clothing. One guard said that by simply touching the guy’s arm, he was electrocuted and lost consciousness. This same guard went on to say that this man was extremely fast and well-trained. There were no identifying marks observed since there was no skin visible. It is unclear if he was the only one on the premises.”

“How were they able to force a blackout? And were they after the research?” inquired Walters.

“The blackouts seem to be the result of a hacking job, but our analysts are having a hard time putting a finger on where it came from or who did it. It was confirmed to be externally orchestrated though.

“Their research is where it gets dicey. The woman who died in the fire was actually found to have been shot in the head. Yesterday, she was identified as Valerie Womack, a researcher who works for the government on a black site geared towards genetic modification and telomere enhancement. They were researching this thing called the Hayflick limit that, in simple terms, explains why our bodies get older. In other words, they are researching immortality.”

Everyone at the table got even more quiet, their eyes growing large and round. Walters ran a hand over his vest, flattening it against his body with an unbelieving look on his face. Slowly, he said tiredly, “Oh hell. We let a spy weasel her way into a black site that just so happened to be looking for the fountain of youth? God, sometimes I hate our government. Espionage, huh?”

Amy nodded, a noticeable amount of excitement apparent on her young features despite her best efforts to keep it reigned in. She was a young girl that miraculously got to work on a case like this after all. If she wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of middle-aged agents, Bradley was sure she’d be jumping up and down and squealing like a little spoiled brat who just got her own pony. For Bradley though, he was just getting a headache for each new detail he heard. Another swig of coffee went down his throat.

“Yes sir.”

Detective Walters shook his head disapprovingly. “The NSA are going to want to be in on this.”

Bradley couldn’t take it anymore. He was so bored. “I’m sorry, can we talk about the third party now?” A dozen eyes came screeching to a halt on his immaculate appearance and light blue eyes. He was originally military twenty years ago when he got his start out at West Point. In fact, it was his performance there that had inevitably landed him this job. He was gifted with a tactical mind, but when there’s no real war to utilize a talent like his, where do you go? So, he ended up at the FBI, a move he thought was a good one until he actually got here.

Despite his dissatisfaction with the bureau, he did maintain his old military training habits, however. The result was that he cut an impressive figure in the eyes of all these suits, even if they didn’t recognize him.

The detective at the head of the table shot him a look as well. “What? If you have something to add, then say it.”

Bradley cocked his head to the side with a lazy expression. “She was probably about to say this, but I find the third party in all this the most fascinating.”

“How do you mean?”

“The group that burned down Biolink seemed to know something that we didn’t. It obviously wasn’t us, right?” Seeing the look on Walter’s face, he continued, “Okay, I’ll revise that to it probably wasn’t us. What if Valerie was stealing information from the black site in order to give it to Biolink for them to reverse engineer the results, but then someone managed to find out what they were working on in the lab?”

A couple heads started nodding around the table as they started to visualize how it might have all happened.

“In this case, we have three separate angles to investigate. We need to find out who it was that Valerie was reporting to inside Biolink, how far they’d managed to get compared to our black site, and also who murdered Valerie Womack, stole or destroyed the research, and blew up the lab.”

Walters chuckled. “Concisely put. What’s your name?”

Ah shit. “Ah… Bradley Hunt, sir. I’m an analyst from the second floor.” Just like he expected, he saw several eyes narrow for a split second before going back to normal.

“Okay, good points, Bradley. How about this, everyone. There are possibilities that the people who carried out this attack are not American, so if any of you have contacts in foreign nations, I’d like you to reach out to them. Hopefully, we can rule that out. Bradley and Amy, I want the two of you to go and visit Biolink. See if you can get any leads on who was corresponding with Womack. Cyber will continue to work on the hacking side of the blackout. Dunn and Roberts, the two of you will start surveying the town to see if anyone suspicious was around. Any questions?”

Bradley was cussing up a storm mentally. He was paired with Barbie? His luck couldn’t get any worse. Wait, why were they even sending him out into the field. He should have just kept his big, fat mouth shut. It was useless to try and talk his way out of it. Walters was an infamous stick in the mud when it came to decisions he’d made.

“No? Alright then, dismissed.” His drumming fingers stopped and then slapped on the table. On cue, everyone got up and filed out to start on their tasks.