The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath.
-W. C. Fields
We rode in silence for the rest of the trip. Mr. Jones' mobile office was apparently designed to create the least disruption possible to her working environment rather than arrive at its destination with any speed. The journey took us several more minutes.
The signal that we had arrived was, as before, Darwin noisily extricating himself from the leather chair. Mr. Jones winced at the damage he was doing, then looked pointedly at me. I merely shrugged, presenting an unconcerned exterior. My mind, however, was still a whirl.
Mr. Jones cared only for things in so far as they affected her directly. Her webs of power existed solely to serve her desires. I had stepped into the proverbial spider's lair, and she was in no mood to play with her food. This added layers of depth to the information I already had. It also meant that when she was done with this scenario, Leena Found or not, she would be dining on me as well. That is, if Darwin let her.
I reached down to pet him, and he responded by forcing his head into my hand. Where had he been disappearing to?
Mr. Jones rose from her desk and walked to the door. Wordlessly, the captain keyed it open and she walked through without hesitation or a backward glance. He indicated with his weapon that I should follow her.
As we reached the door, I could hear another voice, speaking in a casual tone. There was something about it that tickled a memory, but through the helmet comm's distortion, I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Once again, and completely without warning, Darwin bolted through the door and into the brightness beyond.
The tall guard spun. "What the hell was that?"
The next thing I heard was the cocking of a gun. Emotion flooded my brain as I leapt through the door.
"NO!"
But I wasn't fast enough. A shot rang out, strangely echoing in the high ceilinged room that spread out in front of me. It was the tall junior guard, still helmeted with his gun drawn and aimed low. He was pivoting, scanning the desks and tables of the... Lab?
I was standing in a massive laboratory. The whole floor was given over to a research station, desks and machines scattered about, and close to one hundred people wandering between them on missions of great importance. Except that now the majority of them were cowering behind desks and counters, a few brave souls poking their heads up to see what was going on.
The trigger happy guard had drawn attention of his own though.
"What are your instructions, sir?"
It was the captain. While junior was still scanning the floor for Darwin, his one-time partner had drawn his weapon and had it level at the helmeted head.
Mr. Jones was standing there, surveying the situation.
"You. Are. Fired." was all she said.
I happened to be looking at the junior guard when she said this. I would have missed the slight shake of his shoulders if I hadn't been watching. At first I thought he was trembling. Fear? Shock? No. He was laughing! Silently, of course, but it was like he thought all of this was below him and found it vastly amusing.
"Sir?" The captain was still waiting for instructions.
"If he doesn't put up his weapon in three seconds, shoot."
Three. Two. The gun clattered to the floor.
"Fine," the junior guard said, standing and stretching casually.
"Throw him out," Mr. Jones instructed.
"I know the way," the disarmed, unemployed guard responded to the nudge to his helmet. The two headed for what seemed to be a second exit. Just before they passed through the door, the now disgraced guard removed his helmet. All I could see was a shock of steel gray hair.
I filed that for later. For now, I was still looking for Darwin.
"Sir?" This time, a bespectacled lab-coated scientist approached Mr. Jones, crawling out from behind a nearby cabinet. He was both nervous and concerned, trying to determine how best to approach the goddess of his entire existence.
He chose fawning as his tactic. It was probably the one that had served him best time and time again.
"It is wonderful to see you again so soon, sir. I am afraid that we have no new results to show since the final test subject went missing, but I would be happy to show you which avenues we are pursuing. A couple of them are very interesting, and one in particular is showing some promise, but nothing definite just yet."
Other employees started sliding out from under desks and tables, getting back to their jobs. At least, I assumed it was their job to 'look busy, the boss is here.' To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure what they were doing down here in the bowels of the building.
Several sealed off rooms lined the outside walls. Tall pillars rose to support the high ceiling, each of them covered with a network of wires and cables snaking up their sides. The ceiling itself supported huge lights and fans, keeping the entire room fresh and bright. Intake vents appeared sporadically around the perimeter of the ceiling, while fresh air vents lined the bottoms of the shaft. It all worked silently.
Mr. Jones had spoken quietly to her lab-tech, then turned and entered into her office, closing the door behind her. The lights on the keypad outside her door went from green to red. It would seem that Darwin and I were to stay here.
The lab-tech approached me, a gleam in his eye and a superior little half-grin on his face, his hands held behind his back.
"Well," he said, his demeanor shifting instantly, "it would seem that you are to be our 'guest' for the time being. I have been informed that you are here to locate our missing resource, and that I am to offer you every courtesy and support. Within the bounds of my discretion, of course."
His voice was oily and his manner was superior. He had cruelty and curiosity in his eyes, a dangerous combination in a person with power. He was no longer the fawning sycophant. I wondered if his employees feared him as much as he feared Mr. Jones. I suspected it was his aim. I decided to try a different tactic, given the absence of my partner again.
My shoulders sagged a little, and I pasted an awed look on my face. I tried to match the tone I had heard from him when he was speaking to his superior, though I didn't mimic him. I had to be careful not to offer insult. I was in a strange place, and the best way to take control of the situation in this case was to let the one person with the power in the room think he was in control.
"Oh, thank goodness," I said, "this place is so massive. Confidentially, I am in a little over my head here. She has hired a bunch of Finders to look for this person and I am just lost. She told me that if anyone knows everything about this place it is you. But she didn't tell me your name. Don't you think names are a great way to get started working together? My name is Joshua Friedman, but my friends call me just Josh."
I laughed a little nervously here. "Not Just Josh! That would be ridiculous. Josh is what they call me." I stuck out my hand, empowering him once again by giving him the opportunity to snub me.
He took that opportunity, refusing to unclench his hands from behind his back, confirming my analysis of his character. He would give me nothing I asked for directly. Though I was taller than him by about a foot, he still managed to look down at me.
"Petersen," he said absently. "Wil-SON!" He called out in a loud voice.
Another lab-tech stepped forward. "Yes, Mr. Petersen?" she said.
"Show 'Josh' here around." He sneered my name. I turned with my hand out to her. "You are responsible for him," Petersen continued. "If anything happens, you pay. If he breaks anything, you pay. If he learns anything that he shouldn't, you and your entire family will pay."
He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around to him. I suppressed the reflex to use this momentum against him and complete a punch which would have left him toothless. Instead I chose to respond with feigned fear.
"Do NOT interfere in anyway with the work we are doing here." He left the 'or else' out, thinking that his angry stare implied it.
It was good for me that my emotions rarely got the better of my actions, or I would have laughed in his face. As it was, I opened my eyes a little wider and whispered, "Yes, sir."
Petersen spun on his heels, attempting and failing military precision, though I am sure he thought it made him look more commanding. Still simpering, I turned back to Wilson. I held out a trembling hand again.
"Hi. I am Josh Friedman." She looked at my hand, then at my face. A look of impatient resignation crossed her face. She refused to shake my hand as well. "You can call me Wilson. Why do I get stuck with all the babysitting jobs?" she asked no one in particular. "Do I look like the mothering type?"
'All the babysitting jobs.' She had done this kind of thing before. For who? I wondered.
"What is this place?" I asked, looking in awe around at the underground facility, finally retracting my hand.
"Welcome to the Cells, a 3p premiere research facility," she said in a bored tone, as if reading from an advertising brochure.
Cells? Did that mean that 'prisoner' was a euphemism for an employee in the Lab? If so, that might mean that Leena had in fact been a scientist or lab tech here. Something didn't sit right though, so I continued to keep my eyes open. Maybe I just might catch a glimpse of my wayward partner. Fat chance.
She turned and started walking away, clearly intending me to follow. I knew how to break her kind. By forcing her to manage every detail of my visit, I would eventually overwhelm her tolerance for giving orders and she would compensate by giving me increasingly general instructions. Inside of thirty minutes, I should be able to wander this facility at will. I might even get a visitor's pass out of it, if there were such things here.
"Friedman, keep up!" she called behind her.
"Do you have anything to eat?" I asked running after her.