passing other cars as if they were standing still. Driving at high speeds usually had a calming effect on Jeremy, but today it wasn’t working. The muscles in his shoulders tensed as he gripped the wheel.
He had a bad feeling about this.
CHAPTER 5
At quarter to eight on Monday morning, the company car dropped Rachel off next to a windowless nine-story building on Flushing Avenue in the industrial part of Brooklyn, not too far from Brooklyn Shipyard. The huge sign on the weatherworn red brick building said
A to Z self-storage for less
. The driver, a grim looking middle-aged man, gave her security code to the simple looking keypad on the gate, and drove off without saying another word.
Confused and wondering if she was in the right place she dialed the nine digit code, and after a few seconds the gate buzzed and let her into the parking lot in front of the building. A handful of cars were parked by the farthest wall. Rachel looked around and spotted a small narrow door under a squat awning at the end of the parking lot. The door was odd. There was no handle or a knob and as far as she can tell there was no bell that she could ring. Next to the door was an old fallout shelter sign. She knocked on the door and waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened.
“What the hell,” she said out loud, looking around for help, but the parking lot was empty and silent. She banged on the door a bit louder and, when no answer came, in frustration she hit the fallout shelter sign.
Unexpectedly it clicked and opened like a miniature door, exposing a smooth surface of a biometric scanner. A stylized picture of a hand appeared on the screen. Rachel placed her right hand on the scanner, and a second later it beeped. She half expected to see “access granted” to appear on the screen, but instead the scanner spat out an ominous red “unauthorized”, then shut itself down. Before she was able to start panicking again, an invisible speakerphone came to life and a friendly female voice called out from what sounded like a conference room.
“Hi there! You must be Rachel Hunt. We’ve been expecting you. Mr. Steven Poznyak, your lab director, will be meeting you shortly. You’ve been given a temporary access to the facility until you get proper credentials. Please, proceed to the elevator bank B and head down to the seventeenth floor. He’ll see you there in five.” The intercom went silent, and the door without the knob noiselessly slid up, opening an unexpectedly bright hallway that smelled like a hospital.
“Seventeenth floor huh,” Rachel muttered to herself, wondering if she misheard as she walked to the elevator. To her dismay, the buttons on the inside wall of the elevator read from ten to twenty, but confusion was quickly replaced by a sense of wonder when she realized that she was going down and not up.
The seventeenth sublevel opened into a huge hangar-like room that seemed to go on forever. As far as Rachel could see, the floor was littered with aluminum tables surrounded by people in white overalls who seemed hard at work. Above the ground was a maze of an overhead rail system with robotic manipulators hanging down and moving some of the heavier objects from one table to the next. She stood there for a few seconds taking it all in.
“Miss Hunt,” a pleasant voice called, and she saw a short chubby man in his early forties briskly walking toward her. “Steven Poznyak. You can call me Steve.” His lab coat was a wrinkled mess, handshake was strong, and his gray eyes behind powerful glasses were lit with humor and intelligence. She liked him immediately.
“Follow me, please. You are going to have to forgive us for the fallout shelter sign theatrics. Someone should have told you how to use it,” he said navigating the lab and leading her on. “Unfortunately with clients like the Department of Defense and Otomo Corporation, secrecy is of paramount importance. Ah, here we are.”
He led her to a big office with
He had a bad feeling about this.
CHAPTER 5
At quarter to eight on Monday morning, the company car dropped Rachel off next to a windowless nine-story building on Flushing Avenue in the industrial part of Brooklyn, not too far from Brooklyn Shipyard. The huge sign on the weatherworn red brick building said
A to Z self-storage for less
. The driver, a grim looking middle-aged man, gave her security code to the simple looking keypad on the gate, and drove off without saying another word.
Confused and wondering if she was in the right place she dialed the nine digit code, and after a few seconds the gate buzzed and let her into the parking lot in front of the building. A handful of cars were parked by the farthest wall. Rachel looked around and spotted a small narrow door under a squat awning at the end of the parking lot. The door was odd. There was no handle or a knob and as far as she can tell there was no bell that she could ring. Next to the door was an old fallout shelter sign. She knocked on the door and waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened.
“What the hell,” she said out loud, looking around for help, but the parking lot was empty and silent. She banged on the door a bit louder and, when no answer came, in frustration she hit the fallout shelter sign.
Unexpectedly it clicked and opened like a miniature door, exposing a smooth surface of a biometric scanner. A stylized picture of a hand appeared on the screen. Rachel placed her right hand on the scanner, and a second later it beeped. She half expected to see “access granted” to appear on the screen, but instead the scanner spat out an ominous red “unauthorized”, then shut itself down. Before she was able to start panicking again, an invisible speakerphone came to life and a friendly female voice called out from what sounded like a conference room.
“Hi there! You must be Rachel Hunt. We’ve been expecting you. Mr. Steven Poznyak, your lab director, will be meeting you shortly. You’ve been given a temporary access to the facility until you get proper credentials. Please, proceed to the elevator bank B and head down to the seventeenth floor. He’ll see you there in five.” The intercom went silent, and the door without the knob noiselessly slid up, opening an unexpectedly bright hallway that smelled like a hospital.
“Seventeenth floor huh,” Rachel muttered to herself, wondering if she misheard as she walked to the elevator. To her dismay, the buttons on the inside wall of the elevator read from ten to twenty, but confusion was quickly replaced by a sense of wonder when she realized that she was going down and not up.
The seventeenth sublevel opened into a huge hangar-like room that seemed to go on forever. As far as Rachel could see, the floor was littered with aluminum tables surrounded by people in white overalls who seemed hard at work. Above the ground was a maze of an overhead rail system with robotic manipulators hanging down and moving some of the heavier objects from one table to the next. She stood there for a few seconds taking it all in.
“Miss Hunt,” a pleasant voice called, and she saw a short chubby man in his early forties briskly walking toward her. “Steven Poznyak. You can call me Steve.” His lab coat was a wrinkled mess, handshake was strong, and his gray eyes behind powerful glasses were lit with humor and intelligence. She liked him immediately.
“Follow me, please. You are going to have to forgive us for the fallout shelter sign theatrics. Someone should have told you how to use it,” he said navigating the lab and leading her on. “Unfortunately with clients like the Department of Defense and Otomo Corporation, secrecy is of paramount importance. Ah, here we are.”
He led her to a big office with
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