Lex made his way forward, trying his best to tiptoe in boots while lugging a flight suit full of equipment and a now-useless backpack. The hallway before the sensor gate had been dead quiet, but now there was conversation behind every door, and too often people paced down the hallway. A big event like this would probably have had the security area buzzing like a hive regardless, but from the snippets of conversation he was able to make out, his presence was shaking things up considerably. Ironically, the disturbance caused by the heightened alert level was keeping everyone too distracted to notice the source of the breech slipping by their doors.
“I’m telling you. They’ve got Mr. Trent on his way over here,” fretted one security agent. From the anxiety in his voice, you would think that the devil himself was coming to visit.
It was slow going, so much so that he didn’t even want to think about how far into his speech the CEO must be by now. He’d had to make a panicked leap for an alcove or side hallway more than once, but he managed to make it to the elevator indicated by the schematics without being seen. He reached for the button, but the elevator was already on the way, coming down from level seventy, according the panel. There wasn’t a decent hiding spot to be had, and someone would be getting off of the elevator.
What followed were simultaneously the longest and shortest fifteen seconds of Lex’s life. He looked desperately for a handy crate to hide inside, or maybe one of the ubiquitous man-sized ventilation ducts that always seemed to show up in the movies. No such luck. He was forced to press himself against the recessed wall and hope for the best.
There was a tone, and the elevator doors slid open. Out stepped a man in his early fifties, hair graying at the temples, in a standard business suit, sans jacket. His tie was loosened, and his cuffs and top button undone. He had the same sort of generic businessman look as the cookie-cutter CEOs, but there was a flustered and stressed look about him. Rather than marching down the hall, he stopped just outside the elevator door, blocking the way inside. Lex wasn’t more than two feet away, flattened against the wall and plainly visible. At the moment, he seemed distracted by a datapad in hand.
“Agent Anders!” he called out.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Trent!” called out the nervous voice from earlier, as footsteps began quickly marching down the hall toward the elevator.
The underling arrived to find his superior, Mr. Trent, alone in front of the elevator.
“Do you know anything about this admin override?” he growled, stabbing a finger at the datapad.
“It came in a few minutes ago. It looks like it was entered via an exterior access panel, under fingerprint authentication from Agent Fisk, sir.”
“Fisk is back? Has anyone seen him?”
“Not yet, sir.”
A bleeping sound drew their attention to the datapad. It was announcing that a wireless signature had been detected.
“That’s the second time we’ve gotten that warning,” Trent grimaced.
“Yes, sir. I think there may be a problem with the monitoring systems. Our men in the surveillance room were reporting an intruder that the deployed agents could not locate.”
“Do we have video?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Show me. And run diagnostics. I can’t be dealing with this right now. There is something very important I need to oversee,” he said, striding toward a nearby door.
Behind him, the elevator door slid shut. He turned, glancing at it suspiciously.