Chapter 10: New Partners mean Paranoia

Monday morning I went to meet my new partners. My stomach fluttered as I walked into the break room, the fear that one or both were company spies gnawed away at my insides. Our assignment was to explore the area adjacent to the lab that had been used as personal living space for researchers and staff. I remembered some of the more mysterious working accidents in the complex. People that had asked questions or somehow made waves had often fallen victim to strange and debilitating accidents.

The rumor around the coffee pot had been that the company was looking for something in the bunker. The salvage operation was merely a front for some dark, unspoken mission. Why else would teams be sent after file rooms and labs rather than the big transformers and wire closets where the valuable copper and gold wire could be found? I had always been disliked by Sam and George, so usually they let me work alone. No witnesses and dangerous settings meant lots of deniability if the company wanted to get rid of a troublesome employee. Since I wanted to be alone anyway, it seemed the perfect arrangement. Now that I had found another lab I was assigned partners, completely out of character for George. Normally he would have just sent me to another area - still a solo. To keep me on the same level, investigating what was obviously living quarters with two "newbies," was definitely suspicious.

I stuck my head into the staging area and waved at the supervisor.

He looked at his list, "Clarke and Forrest."

Two heads perked up in the crowd. The supervisor nodded toward me, indicating where they should go. I introduced myself as we walked down the hall. The guy's name was Bert Clarke. He was a well-built six-footer who didn't look much past high school age. The girl was Ernestine Forrest, a petite brunette who looked like she didn't weigh 100 lb. soaking wet. They made some jokes about Bert and Ernie. It was so cute I wanted to gag. I helped them draw their equipment and board the bus. Entering the bunker, we spent the day working through a dorm area, opening closets and looking into empty drawers. In contrast to the lab that I had just finished, this place looked like it had been abandoned in an orderly fashion.

During breaks, I got Bert and Ernie to talk more about themselves. I found out that both were locals, about my own age, with stories similar to my own. Without enough money to leave or prospects if they stayed in town, they had taken jobs with the company to build a stake before leaving town.

Bert had been working in on a salvage crew in one of the other bunkers in the complex. He said that it had been a warehouse. His crew was one of many that had spent the days opening and cataloging the contents of the crates that were stacked from floor to ceiling. Some crates were taken away in trucks, other just moved to the other side of the warehouse.

Ernie had been a forklift operator, a coveted job, before getting into a disagreement with her supervisor. She wouldn't talk much about it. I suspected her immediately. Moving from driving a forklift to spelunking in a steel cave was quite a move down the company's pecking order. She was either a spy or had pissed somebody off.

That night, I packed Brantwell's papers into boxes and took them to Andrea's apartment, hiding them in a crawl space above her garage. I worried that someone might break into my apartment, looking for some of the things I had stolen from the bunker. Security was definitely tighter at work, the guards more vigilant than before. I wrapped my first necklace in a plastic bag and hid it in the toilet reservoir. The second I hid in the bottom of my mailbox. It was the old-fashioned key-lock kind and the postman used the big mailbox on the street anyway. Once everything was safely hidden I plotted my next move.

After work, I tinkered with the necklace, adding the feedback circuit mentioned in Brantwell's papers. I finished late Saturday afternoon and tried the necklace on. Immediately, I could feel the increased power of this new design. Without trying, I could "feel" people's minds. I eavesdropped on Lucy as she made dinner and Annette as she got ready to go out to a club. I changed and got ready to go down to Lucy's. Perhaps I could get a decent meal and some "stress reduction."