Chapter Two
Year 2034
There were a few interview rooms held in the ARC for any prisoners and such, they'd never been used while Nicki was at the Arc so she'd never really been in this part of the building.
Each room had an adjacent viewing room with one-way glass, exactly the same as used in police rooms. Bot her and her mum flashed their ID bracelets at the guard at the door and were allowed entry.
Inside the small viewing room was her dad and Nathan Anderson, looking through the glass into the interrogation room she could see Becker guarding the door from the inside and Matt sitting at a table with the intruder on the other side.
She could see him more clearly now, short dirty blond hair, long angular face, square jawline and high cheekbones, he was handsome she supposed and wondered what he'd look like if he wasn't currently glaring at the man across from him.
He was wearing the uniform of all soldiers in the ARC, black t-shirt and trousers with the ARC logo on the breast pocket of an equally black jacket.
"Jess is currently doing a search for him," her dad was saying to her mum. ", trying to find out who he is and who he's working for. He's not talking at the moment."
"How did he get in?" Nathan asked, it something Nicki was wondering herself.
"We don't know." Connor sighed.
"Do you think he's got any spy gadgets?" Nicki asked excitedly. "What about one of those new transmitter blockers, or a mouldable-metal lock picking device? I've always wanted one of those, they automatically mould to form any type of key they-" she was blocked of by her mother's exasperated sigh.
"Not now Nicki, we need to know what he was doing here."
"Well, yeah of course. I know that, I want to know what he was doing in my lab, he better not have touched anything though or I'll-"
"Nick, we need to know everything you've got in there, maybe we can find what he was looking for." Her dad said.
"How did he get so far through security though?" Nathan asked. "You would've thought he'd been caught earlier." He was surprisingly serious for once, his usual annoying personality gone.
"Oh, that was my new thing I'd been working on, I made it so whenever someone enters my lab-"she glared at Nathan at this point, "-I'd automatically get a text saying who it was."
"Well it looks like your little invention actually caught a criminal, Nicko." he laughed roughing her hair up, she jabbed him with her elbow for the nickname and for messing up her hair.
So much for losing his annoying personality.
"Stop it guys," Abby's scolding voice sounded every bit of the mother she was. Jess then entered the room and walked straight over to the computer on the table in front of the viewing window.
"Ok, so his name is Ryan Grace, he seemed to be like a normal upstanding citizen until three years ago, he used to be a police officer before he quit. He now works for a company that sell security cameras and surveillance gear.
"He has a criminal record for suspicion of grand theft auto, breaking and entering and once even stealing a helicopter. The only problem was that nothing was ever proved; all evidence went missing or was seen as tampered with."
"So what's he doing here then?" Nicki asked, confused.
"That I don't know." Jess sighed.
"Ok, well I'm going to make sure he did mess anything up in my lab." Nicki said, heading to the door. She took one last look at the intruder, Ryan Grace, "Call me if you find anything else out."