Chapter 54: A Buggy Mission

"May I help you," a woman said from behind a desk. I watched her look at me very suspiciously as I said, "Yes ma'am. I have gotten myself lost. I was told to arrive here to meet my coworker Susan Gibson for a meeting with a client in this building. Being the new kid on the team I hope they are not playing a joke on me."

She asked for my badge, hit some keys on her keyboard, stuck my badge in a card reader, and then looked at me really funny again. My badge was checked again before she pushed some buttons and then spoke so quietly into her headset that I could not hear her. I just waited patiently as she did her job. It was a while before she handed me my badge back.

"It seems you are in the correct building Mr. Smith. Please go right on through the door to your right," she told me as I headed over in that direction.

The door had a hand scanner and place to put my badge. I put it there and waited for it to turn green. It took a long time before it worked to let me through the door. When it closed behind me I got a bit of a surprise, the door had no handles or anyway to open it from this side. There was no choice but to go down this hallway to wherever it led.

Joy. This gets worse and crazy at the same time. At least they are real lights in here so there is energy I can use if I need.

I went around the maze of hallways until I came to a pair of steel doors. I had to use my badge again to enter. When I turned back to go down the hall I saw this was a much worse hallway than the last. It was almost exactly like the one inside the mall when I was playing a blind kid. There was a keypad at the other end and holes in the walls where I could see the barrels of guns sticking out. They were all aimed at me as I walked past.

To get out of this hallway I had to use both handprints and my pin code, but my low clearance badge still let me through without problems. I kind of wish I had not come into this next room at all. All around me were glass walls, at least an inch thick, and lined with men aiming machine guns at me from both sides. There in the middle was a nasty looking old woman waiting at a desk.

Shit! Is this the government principal's office or something? Should there be small holes in the floor?

On the front of her desk there was a place to put my badge, punch in my code, and do the hand scans again. When I finished, a little door in the desk opened and the woman told me to put in my badge. It was snatched free of my hands and then she started asking me questions about my fake identity, over and over again. I could see the men with machine guns starting to be more alert as she pushed my badge back to me.

"You do not have the security level required to enter this facility," she told me.

I could see her getting a very evil look in her face until I pulled out the Top Secret level clearance badge.

"I was not told what security level I needed. This is my first time out in the field. I was told that standard protocols dictate only using the lowest level security access credentials required, so I only provided my lowest clearance, the classified facility access card. I believe this card will meet the requirements," I told her as I used the Top Secret one to open her little window in the desk.

Her look was one of disgust. She went over all the details from before, some new ones that must have been just on this card and then off into all sorts of dumb things like my weight. She did some sort of scan on the badge with an ultraviolet light and then called someone. Then it was the questions all over again until someone beeped her phone. I could not hear a thing she was saying, but I noticed the guards stood behind their guns and I heard them get cocked.

Great. Now I am going to get shot at because someone is playing some game with me. Maybe they found out about me after all and now are going to test if I can use my shield to absorb the bullet's energy?

The woman pushed my badge back to me and then sat there still with her fingers over two red buttons. I don't know what she was waiting for. I was starting to sweat and the men with guns pointed at me were starting to scare me now. Someone called the woman back and she talked a few seconds, but never said a word to me. Seems we were now playing the silent game between her phone calls. I hoped one of the people in the all black gear holding guns did not get tired and shoot me by accident.

Deciding I had nothing to lose, and being a pissed off with her jerking me around, I slid the purple badge out of the sleeve. Almost immediately there was a series of beeps and then loud banging as doors slammed shut in front of the places with the men having guns. The nasty old lady looked to have wet her pants as her eyes went wide. All of the sudden she was out from inside her glass enclosed desk and came right around to me. She had what looked like a little sighting scope in her hand.

"Mr. Smith, if you well permit me to examine the badge you are keeping hidden, I will have you on your way quickly. I apologize for the procedural delays. I was unaware of your status," she said very apologetically and nicely.

Giving her an evil grin I said, "I am sorry, but you are not permitted to come in contact with my badge in any way, shape or form."

Talking with so much sweetness that her mouth looked ready to drip pure sugar, "Mr. Smith I must insist that I am able to view the badge and verify authenticity. This does not require any contact, just close proximity."

I carefully held it out and turned it so she was able to see the back. From a few inches away she put the scope thing to her eye and then pushed a button that made it send out all sorts of colors of light, including infrared and ultraviolet. As soon as the scope was done doing its work she rushed back into her glass, pushed a set of buttons and then all of the glass walls around her desk slid silently into the floor. The old woman kept apologizing and I could tell that she was scared shitless.

If she wasn't shitting in her pants already, the men in dressed like Sam Fisher from "Splinter Cell" that surrounded her would have made her lose bowel control.

Before I got very far, a pretty woman in a skirt and woman's dress shirt came running towards me holding her high heels.

She handed me a clear holder on a lanyard and said, between gasps for air, "Put your special badge inside, picture showing out. Hurry. You were not to be delayed."

Still holding her heels she told me to walk with her as fast as I could. This building had to be huge. We hurried down a long hallway to a single elevator hidden behind a wall panel. She was finally able to get her breath back as we waited on the elevator.

"Sorry for that reception. You were verified properly at the front desk. It appears our validator position is coming open again. She was notified multiple times to permit you to enter," the woman told me. "She complained that you could not be the person identified as you appeared to be only a juvenile."

Well duh! I am only fourteen and was made to look every bit of it.

When the elevator arrived she used a red badge on the pad inside to make it start moving up quickly. It opened to a hallway that had two expensive looking wooden doors at the end. The woman just put her badge on a reader and then hit a lot of buttons really quickly to get the big doors to open.

She apologized again saying, "Please realize that we hire specific security staff for their diligence in following protocols to the letter. When they fail to do as they are told, they are replaced."

Inside I found a group of men around Paula that were taking a machine out of a padded metal box. The man explained all sorts of technical stuff about his machine before going into the room to do a bug sweep. He was not in there very long before coming out with a handful of stuff. I always thought they were made to look like real bugs. Instead they were all sorts of things, including what looked like a wad of old bubble gum. All of the bugs were handed over to an old man wearing a badge with CIA on it.

I knew this man was one of Steve's agents. The CIA guy went into the room to return with a bunch of other bugs. As everyone looked at the bugs the CIA guy found, they argued about if they were really bugs, did they actually transmit any signals and more technical stuff like that. An older man, with a CIA badge too, said there were be no arguments. The CIA detector found them and that one did not.

Closing my eyes and looking at the bugs he had I saw that all of them had no signs of power inside them for them to work. When the man waved the CIA detector over them I saw the bugs get energy from the detector that made them work, but only when almost on top of them.

"Inductively powered devices are impractical and require a noticeable power source placed within one inch of the device," I blurted out flatly having no idea where they hell that came from.

Paula spoke up to say, "Technical deviation from testing specifications in this manner is in violation of the contracted engagement. Counsel will be informed accordingly. Now if you will please depart, Mr. Smith and I will begin our sweep."

Even old CIA man stood up very straight when Paula addressed them. Quickly they were out of the room and Paula punched in a code that secured the room. She told me to scan around to find the bug that was letting the people spy on this room.

First I wanted to quickly recharge all of my own good energy. While the shield did a good job of converting other energy to the good energy, it just did not feel as natural as the energy from another person.

Turning on the place in my head I told myself to only see the needed good energy in the people around me. I never thought there would be so many people this close. I was easily able to reach out to draw off from each of them at once to pull in the energy I needed to have my reserves topped off again. I knew I needed to get down to finding the bugs, so I had my eyes go back to just filtering out light.

Once I had a good feel for the room, I went ahead to remove wood, strings and cloth. That let me see lots of wires, pipes and energy types. I was having problems until Paula whispered that I should try to also remove metal that made up the walls, as long as it did not have energy in it, and regular electricity. Slowly walking around the room I started to see that there was energy on one of the outlets even though I was not seeing normal electricity. The closer I got to it, the stronger the energy wave getting sent down the neutral and ground wires. Slamming a desk drawer near it really sent out a big set of waves down the wires. Walking into the bathroom I found something like that there as well, but the signals were going from the faucet down the pipes and though the walls. The last one I found was connected between an outlets ground wire and air vent right above the large conference table.

Paula went to each one, looked at it a bit and then did something to the scanner. It was able to find the two that were not in the outlets now. That was still not all of them because she whispered that somehow pictures or video was being leaked out too. Thinking a bit she told me to look for anything that was leaving the room that was not air.

Damn she is smart. Why did I not think of that?

Nine bursts of energy came up that I had missed before. I held the scanner as I got right up to where I saw their energy. Paula removed them all quickly. She took a good look at them, but could only figure out four were some sort of camera and the other five were microphone transmitters. These were completely sealed up in some sort of plastic with different metals in it. I could not even look inside them other than to see they had some sort of energy, but did not look like a regular battery of any kind I had seen before.

After making my eyes see normally again, Paula opened the door. She called the others back into the room before putting the nine odd ones on the table. Taking the scanner, she showed them the two in the bathroom and told them there was also one still in the outlet. The three of them were removed and packed in the case with our scanner along with the other nine.

"Please come follow me," the older CIA man told us.

He led us out through a different hallway and directed us to an ordinary looking elevator. Paula used her high security badge to get the elevator opened for us. Inside we saw only two buttons, but did not have to push either before the elevator started dropping really fast. It was longer and faster than the one I rode up here on. When it finally stopped there was a buzzer and a blinking red light.

I was getting my purple badge off to put near the light when a scratchy recorded message came through the elevator's speakers.

"Restricted access facility. Extreme prejudice authorized. You have 30 seconds to validate authority to enter."

I moved my badge over as the recording repeated every five seconds with the time remaining. There was a dual beep, green light and then the doors finally opened as the counter got down to ten seconds. We quickly exited in to a hallway that looked like it was carved right out of solid stone. It was rough all along the walls, floor and ceiling. Paula said it was definitely a government hallway from the bland, beige painted walls and ceiling. Only the government would have wasted tax dollars to paint stone.