Many floors below, in the main surveillance room, Chief Trent gazed furiously at footage of his men failing to see a strangely-dressed man with his face painted like a rock star who was standing right in front of them. In a tribute to Ma’s foresight and Karter’s resourcefulness, an IR scattering substance had been mixed into the paint as well, reflecting light into the lens and making him look like his face had been replaced with a sparkler. Identification was impossible.
“Explain to me . . .” he began, quietly, before raising his voice to a scream. “Explain to me! What you are showing me simply isn’t possible. There is no way that a single one of my security agents could be so incompetent as to miss this man, let alone an entire squad. And where the hell is Fisk!? He is supposed to report directly to me when he returns from assignment!”
“He may be in his office, sir,” offered Anders shakily. He was one of the unlucky men who had never had any aspirations of leadership or power, yet had ended up as one of Trent’s go-to answer men, thanks to the horrible mistake of doing his job well. “There have been a large number of file accesses from his terminal.”
“Bring up the cameras in his office.”
“I can’t, sir. He disabled them and I don’t have access.”
Trent growled, shoving the lower-level agent out of the way and logging in with his own credentials--that was to say, with his fingers. The cameras and other low-level scanners were reactivated, but the alarms were suppressed. In the office was a man in a mask staring anxiously at the datapad screen. Lex, who was about four inches shorter and thirty pounds of muscle lighter than Fisk, could in no way be confused for the owner of the office.
“I’ll raise the alarm!” Anders piped, reaching for a second console.
“No, you idiot,” scolded his superior, “not with those news crews outside. And that man is in a very sensitive area. If he gets desperate, he could cause serious damage. We are keeping this quiet.”
He tapped at the console, a screen with his secretary’s face popping up a moment later.
“Yes, Mr. Trent?” she replied.
“Did you see anyone come through and enter Agent Fisk’s office?” he asked sternly.
“No, sir.”
He pounded the desk with his fist, then forced himself to calm.
“Listen carefully. I want you to stand up, get onto the elevator, and go to floor sixty-five or lower. I am locking down our offices and everything else for five floors in both directions for a high-level security exercise that you are not cleared to witness.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Trent.”
He ended the call and turned to Anders.
“I want six men, armed, at the service elevator in thirty seconds. As soon as my secretary is out of range, do a ten-floor lockdown on all doors and windows, centered on Fisk’s office. No one but me gets access. Understand?” dictated the security chief.
“Yes, sir,” Anders quickly answered. He tapped at the console and shouted orders of his own as Trent marched toward the elevator.