Harold sighed. He took out his clearance card and ran it through the keypad. He punched in his code and a little green light lit up. He pushed the door open and picked up a photo frame resting on his desk.
The phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Honey."
Harold swallowed. "Hi, Mary. I was just looking at your picture."
There was a laugh on the other end. "I had a feeling you were looking at me."
"Are we still going for lunch?" He asked nervously.
"Of course." She said. "Why wouldn't I want to see my husband?"
Harold smiled. "See you then, honey."
"I'll see you." She said.
***
"I don't see anything." Cade said.
"Neither do I. Eddie, are you sure there's useful information?" She asked. "It all looks like a bunch of numbers."
"There was a tip given that the Gua had established a small division in Capital Pharmaceuticals devoted to experimental weaponry." Eddie said.
"This obviously can't be good. " Jordan said. "I can't find anything."
"It's there." Eddie said. "Are you sure you can't see anything?"
"Wait." Cade said. Jordan stopped. "Check under Projects and Developments."
"What for?" Jordan asked. "They're not going to put it in plain sight."
"Sometimes the best place to hide is right in the open." Cade said.
"Wait, what's this?" Jordan asked. A window popped up, prompting a password.
"What's Division 4?" Cade asked. "Eddie, can you get us in?"
"If I could, don't you think you'd be looking from behind my shoulder instead of getting into the building?" Eddie said. "Security is really tough there. I could barely get you the security job, Foster."
Suddenly, a window popped up.
"What the-"
WARNING: SECURITY BREACH ON LEVEL 9. CONTAMINATION PROBABLE. EVACUATE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY.
A red siren light above the door started to flash and Cade and Jordan were basked in red light.
"We have to get out of here." Cade said.
"What's going on?" Eddie asked, sitting up.
"I don't know, Eddie." Jordan said as she exited the system and pulled out a disc from the drive. They quickly joined the end of an evacuating crowd.
"What's going on?" Jordan asked a woman.
"Level 9 has been breached." She said hurriedly. "They're taking everyone out. Someone said that the CDC is coming."
"CDC?" Cade asked. "Why?"
He had shed his security shirt and his ID card said he was Robert Blake, software engineer.
There was no reply.
Jordan and Cade followed the crowd out the front doors, where there were already a large mass of people. They had gathered far from the building, and some of them had even run up the hill next to the parking lot. Almost everyone was on the other side of the street.
They untangled themselves from the rest of the people and wove through the cars until they found the SUV they had come in.
"Eddie, are the cameras taken care of?" Cade asked.
"Of course. There was a technical glitch and from 8:30 onward, there was no feed." Eddie happily said.
"Nice." Jordan said. "There's the CDC."
"Why would the company have contamination?" Cade asked. "They deal with vitamins and antihistamines."
"Unless there's something on Level 9." Jordan said.
"Or there wasn't any breach or contamination." Eddie said.
"What do you mean?" Jordan asked, watching the white van pull up to the building. Four figures in haz-mat suits jumped out.
"Well, I have bugs in some systems, just to see what they've been doing. The one I have in the CDC access panel is completely silent. Nothing even remotely like this has happened in the past week." Eddie said. "According to the CDC computer, no one called about an outbreak of anything."
"So either the computer is wrong or-"
"Or that's not the CDC." Cade finished.
"So who are they?" Eddie asked.
***
"Hurry!" Aaron shouted. The other three men clad in protective suits picked up the pace as they carried equipment inside.
They were watched by several people who were still making their way out of the building.
"Are we contaminated?" One hysterical man shouted.
"We're going to die, aren't we?" A woman asked and grabbed Aaron's sleeve.
"Ma'am, calm down." One of the other men started to pull the crying woman off Aaron.
"We don't have time for this, Jared." Aaron said and pulled out a gun from the case he was carrying.
The woman's eyes grew big.
Aaron raised the gun and the woman slumped down, a trail of red leaving from her chest.
"You didn't need to do that." The other man said angrily.
Aaron looked around at the three other people. He shook his head.
"I'm sorry." He said, and shot all three.
"That wasn't needed, Aaron." Doran said as Aaron as he and Jared entered the elevator. "You just slowed us down."
"They were in the way." He stated.
"No they weren't." Jared said angrily. "All you had to do was ignore them."
"Well, it's too late now, isn't it?" Aaron shot back. "And what's four humans compared to what Mabus will do? " He said, smiling.
***
"We have to get inside." Cade said.
"But what if there really is a contagion loose?" Jordan asked. "They might not be CDC, but I'm betting they're Gua. And we were looking for evidence of weapons, remember?"
"She's right, Foster." Eddie said. "This could be the real deal. It's too much of a risk to go in."
"There isn't anyone in the van." Cade said. "If we can't go in, we can at least find out what they're doing."
Jordan and Cade left the car and started to walk towards the van. The attention of the crowd was riveted to the silent and empty building.
Jordan pulled the back door open and she got inside. Cade shut the door as she rummaged in the dark. A sliver of light illuminated her direction as she looked at piece after piece of information.
"What do you see?" Eddie asked.
"It looks normal CDC information." She said.
"Foster, what's the plate number?" Eddie asked.
Cade quickly glanced at the back of the van. "THG 5931"
In his trailer, Eddie typed the number in. "it's a legitimate CDC vehicle." He said. He shook his head. "The CDC computer says it's still docked though. They must've covered up the computer."
"Yeah I'm sure there's Gua in the CDC." Jordan said. "I don't think they left anything in here. Just standard CDC equipment. Nothing alien."
***
"Quick, grab it." Aaron instructed as Jared took out a stack of discs from a safe. He stashed them into a case and did the same with several papers that were also in the safe.
"We're almost done." Doran said, carefully placing several vials of yellow liquid into a padded container.
"Let's get out of here." Aaron commanded as Jared locked up the case and Doran picked up his container.
***
"Jordan they're coming back out." Cade said, quickly running up to the crowd. He drifted to the side, so he would be obscured.
Jordan Radcliffe shoved a case shut and hastily locked it. She gingerly stepped through the middle and opened the driver's door. She jumped out and gently shut the door. It closed with a small click. She met Cade's eyes and slipped into the crowd as the four Gua left with their equipment.
They loaded their equipment and left without a word, leaving the puzzled employees without an explanation.
"What's going on?" A voice in the crowd asked.
There was a murmuring of confusion. No one knew.
"Guys, there's a call coming in to the CDC." Eddie said. "It's coming from your area."
"Look for anyone using a cell phone." Cade said and he and Jordan spread out, watching.
"Oh man." Eddie said. "It's coming from directly inside Capital Pharmaceuticals."
"There's someone still inside." Cade said.
"They must have hid. I doubt the Gua would leave anyone alone if they saw them."
"Eddie, can you pick up the call?"
Eddie was frantically typing. Windows popped up and disappeared. "You'll hear it."
"Please-please help."
Jordan arched her eyebrow. "That's Harold Donaldson, the director of operations."
"Help. The men-they shot-" There was nothing.
"The CDC computer is-what?!?" Eddie said, baffled.
"What is it?" Jordan said urgently.
"The CDC computer is refuting the call. It's passive, like nothing is registering." Eddie shook his head. "As soon as the call was picked up by the CDC, the computer erased the call log and hung up."
"What's it doing now?" Jordan asked, looking at Cade.
"I'm not sure." Eddie blinked. "But I think it's restarting itself and reprogramming. It's going back to normal, deleting any log that would show any evidence of any call that came in from Capital Pharmaceuticals."
"The Gua are smart. They're going to make it so nothing happened." Cade said, gazing at the hollow building. "And no one knows there are people inside."
"Eddie, replay the call." Jordan said.
Harold's strained voice came across again.
"There." Jordan said. "They shot. The Gua must have shot some people that were still in the building."
"Then how are they going to cover that up?" Cade asked.
"Probably claiming that one of them went on a psychotic rampage and shot his co-workers." Eddie said. "The Gua do have a flair for what the public hates to hear."
"So no one knows what to do." Jordan watched the multitude talk amongst themselves, wondering what to do. "And they don't know there are people injured inside."
"I don't think there's any contagion." Cade said. "There's something inside that they wanted to get."
"Why did they want to evacuate the building then?" Jordan asked, shaking her head. "It doesn't make sense."
"What if the Gua wanted to take something, but they needed to have protective gear? From what I've gathered, Level 9 isn't anything that requires protection, but who knows what the Gua are doing behind the cover?" Eddie said.
"That's true." Cade said.
By this time, the crowds has grown restless and several people had started to walk back inside. A few had pulled out their cell phones, talking to police, who were surely baffled.
"I think it's time to go inside and-"
A rush of energy knocked everyone backwards as in the matter of seconds, the building was engulfed in a ball of fire. The force and flame put everyone down to the ground and many screamed. Rubble flew from the building, pelting them. Glass was incinerated and flames dove down like the angels of the heavens. Cade and Jordan shielded themselves from the explosion by running to a nearby car.
In his trailer, Eddie scrambled to pull his headset off his head as static invaded his ears.
"Eddie?" Cade shouted among the confusion.
The building had blown. Into a cinder it now laid, a reminder of nothing.
Nothing and no evidence. No Harold. No traces of Gua.
"Eddie?" Cade shouted again.
Eddie grabbed his headset when the static had died enough for his head to stop throbbing.
"Foster? What was that?"
"Eddie? The building just blew." Jordan said.
'What?!?" Eddie couldn't believe his words. He quickly started to do long strings of searches, going through newspapers and newsgroups.
"Oh my God." Jordan said, slowly getting up. She gazed at the debris around her and on everyone. She saw a woman cry for help as a few uninjured others tried to pull her out from under a sheet of twisted metal.
***
"I have heard of your accomplishment." Larson said.
"Yes, the operation was a success-"
"Who gave you permission to destroy the building?" Larson said, cutting him off.
"Larson, during the mission, there were several humans who tried to stop us. If we hadn't destroyed the evidence there would've been an investigation."
"Investigation? What do you think is going to happen now?" Larson asked bitterly. "You blew up the building, Aaron. What kind of burial is that? You buried evidence, but now you've created more doors for the humans to look through."
"It needed to be done." Aaron said.
"Mabus will not be pleased. These were not the orders. You were to capture the contagion, not flatten a building." Larson said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry."
"What-"
Larson raised his weapon and fired. He looked away as Aaron dissolved.
The phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Honey."
Harold swallowed. "Hi, Mary. I was just looking at your picture."
There was a laugh on the other end. "I had a feeling you were looking at me."
"Are we still going for lunch?" He asked nervously.
"Of course." She said. "Why wouldn't I want to see my husband?"
Harold smiled. "See you then, honey."
"I'll see you." She said.
***
"I don't see anything." Cade said.
"Neither do I. Eddie, are you sure there's useful information?" She asked. "It all looks like a bunch of numbers."
"There was a tip given that the Gua had established a small division in Capital Pharmaceuticals devoted to experimental weaponry." Eddie said.
"This obviously can't be good. " Jordan said. "I can't find anything."
"It's there." Eddie said. "Are you sure you can't see anything?"
"Wait." Cade said. Jordan stopped. "Check under Projects and Developments."
"What for?" Jordan asked. "They're not going to put it in plain sight."
"Sometimes the best place to hide is right in the open." Cade said.
"Wait, what's this?" Jordan asked. A window popped up, prompting a password.
"What's Division 4?" Cade asked. "Eddie, can you get us in?"
"If I could, don't you think you'd be looking from behind my shoulder instead of getting into the building?" Eddie said. "Security is really tough there. I could barely get you the security job, Foster."
Suddenly, a window popped up.
"What the-"
WARNING: SECURITY BREACH ON LEVEL 9. CONTAMINATION PROBABLE. EVACUATE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY.
A red siren light above the door started to flash and Cade and Jordan were basked in red light.
"We have to get out of here." Cade said.
"What's going on?" Eddie asked, sitting up.
"I don't know, Eddie." Jordan said as she exited the system and pulled out a disc from the drive. They quickly joined the end of an evacuating crowd.
"What's going on?" Jordan asked a woman.
"Level 9 has been breached." She said hurriedly. "They're taking everyone out. Someone said that the CDC is coming."
"CDC?" Cade asked. "Why?"
He had shed his security shirt and his ID card said he was Robert Blake, software engineer.
There was no reply.
Jordan and Cade followed the crowd out the front doors, where there were already a large mass of people. They had gathered far from the building, and some of them had even run up the hill next to the parking lot. Almost everyone was on the other side of the street.
They untangled themselves from the rest of the people and wove through the cars until they found the SUV they had come in.
"Eddie, are the cameras taken care of?" Cade asked.
"Of course. There was a technical glitch and from 8:30 onward, there was no feed." Eddie happily said.
"Nice." Jordan said. "There's the CDC."
"Why would the company have contamination?" Cade asked. "They deal with vitamins and antihistamines."
"Unless there's something on Level 9." Jordan said.
"Or there wasn't any breach or contamination." Eddie said.
"What do you mean?" Jordan asked, watching the white van pull up to the building. Four figures in haz-mat suits jumped out.
"Well, I have bugs in some systems, just to see what they've been doing. The one I have in the CDC access panel is completely silent. Nothing even remotely like this has happened in the past week." Eddie said. "According to the CDC computer, no one called about an outbreak of anything."
"So either the computer is wrong or-"
"Or that's not the CDC." Cade finished.
"So who are they?" Eddie asked.
***
"Hurry!" Aaron shouted. The other three men clad in protective suits picked up the pace as they carried equipment inside.
They were watched by several people who were still making their way out of the building.
"Are we contaminated?" One hysterical man shouted.
"We're going to die, aren't we?" A woman asked and grabbed Aaron's sleeve.
"Ma'am, calm down." One of the other men started to pull the crying woman off Aaron.
"We don't have time for this, Jared." Aaron said and pulled out a gun from the case he was carrying.
The woman's eyes grew big.
Aaron raised the gun and the woman slumped down, a trail of red leaving from her chest.
"You didn't need to do that." The other man said angrily.
Aaron looked around at the three other people. He shook his head.
"I'm sorry." He said, and shot all three.
"That wasn't needed, Aaron." Doran said as Aaron as he and Jared entered the elevator. "You just slowed us down."
"They were in the way." He stated.
"No they weren't." Jared said angrily. "All you had to do was ignore them."
"Well, it's too late now, isn't it?" Aaron shot back. "And what's four humans compared to what Mabus will do? " He said, smiling.
***
"We have to get inside." Cade said.
"But what if there really is a contagion loose?" Jordan asked. "They might not be CDC, but I'm betting they're Gua. And we were looking for evidence of weapons, remember?"
"She's right, Foster." Eddie said. "This could be the real deal. It's too much of a risk to go in."
"There isn't anyone in the van." Cade said. "If we can't go in, we can at least find out what they're doing."
Jordan and Cade left the car and started to walk towards the van. The attention of the crowd was riveted to the silent and empty building.
Jordan pulled the back door open and she got inside. Cade shut the door as she rummaged in the dark. A sliver of light illuminated her direction as she looked at piece after piece of information.
"What do you see?" Eddie asked.
"It looks normal CDC information." She said.
"Foster, what's the plate number?" Eddie asked.
Cade quickly glanced at the back of the van. "THG 5931"
In his trailer, Eddie typed the number in. "it's a legitimate CDC vehicle." He said. He shook his head. "The CDC computer says it's still docked though. They must've covered up the computer."
"Yeah I'm sure there's Gua in the CDC." Jordan said. "I don't think they left anything in here. Just standard CDC equipment. Nothing alien."
***
"Quick, grab it." Aaron instructed as Jared took out a stack of discs from a safe. He stashed them into a case and did the same with several papers that were also in the safe.
"We're almost done." Doran said, carefully placing several vials of yellow liquid into a padded container.
"Let's get out of here." Aaron commanded as Jared locked up the case and Doran picked up his container.
***
"Jordan they're coming back out." Cade said, quickly running up to the crowd. He drifted to the side, so he would be obscured.
Jordan Radcliffe shoved a case shut and hastily locked it. She gingerly stepped through the middle and opened the driver's door. She jumped out and gently shut the door. It closed with a small click. She met Cade's eyes and slipped into the crowd as the four Gua left with their equipment.
They loaded their equipment and left without a word, leaving the puzzled employees without an explanation.
"What's going on?" A voice in the crowd asked.
There was a murmuring of confusion. No one knew.
"Guys, there's a call coming in to the CDC." Eddie said. "It's coming from your area."
"Look for anyone using a cell phone." Cade said and he and Jordan spread out, watching.
"Oh man." Eddie said. "It's coming from directly inside Capital Pharmaceuticals."
"There's someone still inside." Cade said.
"They must have hid. I doubt the Gua would leave anyone alone if they saw them."
"Eddie, can you pick up the call?"
Eddie was frantically typing. Windows popped up and disappeared. "You'll hear it."
"Please-please help."
Jordan arched her eyebrow. "That's Harold Donaldson, the director of operations."
"Help. The men-they shot-" There was nothing.
"The CDC computer is-what?!?" Eddie said, baffled.
"What is it?" Jordan said urgently.
"The CDC computer is refuting the call. It's passive, like nothing is registering." Eddie shook his head. "As soon as the call was picked up by the CDC, the computer erased the call log and hung up."
"What's it doing now?" Jordan asked, looking at Cade.
"I'm not sure." Eddie blinked. "But I think it's restarting itself and reprogramming. It's going back to normal, deleting any log that would show any evidence of any call that came in from Capital Pharmaceuticals."
"The Gua are smart. They're going to make it so nothing happened." Cade said, gazing at the hollow building. "And no one knows there are people inside."
"Eddie, replay the call." Jordan said.
Harold's strained voice came across again.
"There." Jordan said. "They shot. The Gua must have shot some people that were still in the building."
"Then how are they going to cover that up?" Cade asked.
"Probably claiming that one of them went on a psychotic rampage and shot his co-workers." Eddie said. "The Gua do have a flair for what the public hates to hear."
"So no one knows what to do." Jordan watched the multitude talk amongst themselves, wondering what to do. "And they don't know there are people injured inside."
"I don't think there's any contagion." Cade said. "There's something inside that they wanted to get."
"Why did they want to evacuate the building then?" Jordan asked, shaking her head. "It doesn't make sense."
"What if the Gua wanted to take something, but they needed to have protective gear? From what I've gathered, Level 9 isn't anything that requires protection, but who knows what the Gua are doing behind the cover?" Eddie said.
"That's true." Cade said.
By this time, the crowds has grown restless and several people had started to walk back inside. A few had pulled out their cell phones, talking to police, who were surely baffled.
"I think it's time to go inside and-"
A rush of energy knocked everyone backwards as in the matter of seconds, the building was engulfed in a ball of fire. The force and flame put everyone down to the ground and many screamed. Rubble flew from the building, pelting them. Glass was incinerated and flames dove down like the angels of the heavens. Cade and Jordan shielded themselves from the explosion by running to a nearby car.
In his trailer, Eddie scrambled to pull his headset off his head as static invaded his ears.
"Eddie?" Cade shouted among the confusion.
The building had blown. Into a cinder it now laid, a reminder of nothing.
Nothing and no evidence. No Harold. No traces of Gua.
"Eddie?" Cade shouted again.
Eddie grabbed his headset when the static had died enough for his head to stop throbbing.
"Foster? What was that?"
"Eddie? The building just blew." Jordan said.
'What?!?" Eddie couldn't believe his words. He quickly started to do long strings of searches, going through newspapers and newsgroups.
"Oh my God." Jordan said, slowly getting up. She gazed at the debris around her and on everyone. She saw a woman cry for help as a few uninjured others tried to pull her out from under a sheet of twisted metal.
***
"I have heard of your accomplishment." Larson said.
"Yes, the operation was a success-"
"Who gave you permission to destroy the building?" Larson said, cutting him off.
"Larson, during the mission, there were several humans who tried to stop us. If we hadn't destroyed the evidence there would've been an investigation."
"Investigation? What do you think is going to happen now?" Larson asked bitterly. "You blew up the building, Aaron. What kind of burial is that? You buried evidence, but now you've created more doors for the humans to look through."
"It needed to be done." Aaron said.
"Mabus will not be pleased. These were not the orders. You were to capture the contagion, not flatten a building." Larson said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry."
"What-"
Larson raised his weapon and fired. He looked away as Aaron dissolved.