When Eile came down the stairs into the basement, she found Sunny standing outside the door to the Mystery Room, staring at it. She had been doing that a lot lately.
The house they shared technically wasn't theirs. Medb had bought it to have a place to stay whenever she came to Denver, but she made her home in Cairnsford, halfway between Denver and Colorado Springs. However, they needed a safe place to live, what with Sunny's parents being in hiding, and the house not only had a sophisticated alarm system, it was located within a highly secure gated community. So she let them stay there, ostensibly as housesitters, but really as permanent residents. In the end, however, they couldn't really help thinking of it as their own place.
She allowed them to decorate it as they saw fit, and provided funds to pay for it. They claimed one of the two master bedrooms on the second floor as their own, while reserving the other for Medb whenever she was in town. They then converted the remaining two bedrooms into guest rooms. Beyond that, they pretty much left it as it was, even though Medb had told them that she didn't care if they gutted the place and put in monkey bars and hammocks, as long as they didn't go over budget. She did, however, make a number of modifications to the original plan to suit her own purposes. One was converting the garage into a library, since they didn't drive and thus did not own a car. She also converted the conservatory into a music room, and split the family room into a combined game and media room. However, most of her modifications were done in the basement. One corner was converted into a safe room, with armored walls, floor, and ceiling. Fully a third of the space was taken up by a utility room that contained equipment Eile didn't recognize or even know what it was for. Only one corner was for their own use, and they converted it into an exercise room, where Eile practiced boxing and Sunny did her aerobics. The remaining space was devoted to the Mystery Room.
At least, that's what Sunny called it. It was Medb's private workroom, and she kept it locked with a palm reader. Sunny was just dying to know what was in it, but whenever she broached the subject, Medb refused to say, the last time telling her in no uncertain terms that it was none of her business. That ended the questions, but not her curiosity, and whenever she could, she would go down and just stare at the door, as if she could somehow will it to open and discover its secrets.
"There you are!" Eile said. "I've been waitin' for ya for fifteen minutes!"
Sunny jumped. "What? Oh! Ha-ha, sorry!" They had decided to spend some quality in the jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom, playing a game of Roman Matron and Body Slave. She had gone down to get the wine; the safe room doubled as a wine cellar, since it was temperature controlled.
"Well, the grapes are getting warm, so hurry it up!"
"I'll be up in a minute." She looked back at the door.
Eile sighed in exasperation. "Will you give it a rest already? Yer never gonna find out what's in there, not until Medb decides ta tell us, and I doubt she ever will."
"Aren't you curious?"
"Well, yeah, sure, but I don't obsess over it. It's probably nothing anyway. I mean whaddya expect it ta be, a secret command and control room, or a sex dungeon with captives?"
"I don't know, but why keep it locked to us?"
"Why not? She's entitled to her privacy, and in this house, with you around, a locked room's probably the only way she can get it."
"Oh, hardy-har, very funny. Still, you may have a point. I mean, Medb respects our privacy."
"Damn right, Missy, so come on, I can't keep my motor revving forever, ya know."
Sunny giggled. Eile was still amazed at how the thought of sex turned her into a little girl, but then it seemed like lots of things could do that.
"Why do you spend so much time down here anyways?"
"I don't know; I guess I just have the feeling I could get in if I just knew the right way."
"Have you tried 'open sesame'?"
"It's not voice activated. It reads palms, see?" And she placed her hand over the glass-covered scanner.
"I was only kidding, ya ditz."
Sunny giggled again, but then the reader lit up as a laser flashed over her palm.
"Aaaah!" She leapt back. A moment later, the red light above the door turned green, there was an audible click, and the door unlatched and swung open into the darkened room.
"What did you do!?"
"Nothing!" she squealed in a panicky tone, but then she brightened. "But it worked!" And she started into the room.
"Gaaah!" Eile ran up and caught Sunny by the arm. "What are you doin'?!"
Sunny gave her a perplexed look. "Going in to take a look around. Duh!"
"Are you nuts? Medb doesn't want us going in there."
"But she must, otherwise she wouldn't have programmed the reader to recognize us."
For a moment, Eile didn't know how to answer that. It made sense, in a way. Then she shook her head. "It's gotta be a glitch of some kind. Come on, we'll call Medb and she'll get it fixed."
"But it can't hurt just to take a look around. Please? If we don't touch anything, what could go wrong?"
Plenty! Eile thought, but Sunny was right. What difference would a quick look see make? Besides, her curiosity was stronger than she let on.
"Aw, cripes. Alright, we'll take a look, but just for a few moments. Okay?"
Sunny smiled and crinkled her eyes. "Okay, partner!"
She stepped through first, and Eile followed. The light coming through the door wasn't strong enough to illuminate very far, but either the room was no bigger than a walk-in closet, or they were in a short corridor. Either way, they couldn't see anything.
"There's gotta be a wall switch around her somewhere," Eile muttered as she felt along the wall.
"I think I got it!"
Eile heard her flip a switch, and an overhead panel of lights came one.
The door also closed with a slam, and as they spun around in surprise, a gate closed across an opposite opening.
"Geezus, we're trapped!" Eile said.
"Identify yourselves," a feminine voice said over a loud speaker, but it wasn't Medb's.
"What the--?" But Eile was interrupted by a minigun popping out of the floor and pointing it's six barrels at them.
"Identify yourselves, please," the voice insisted.
"Geezus! I'm Eile and this is Sunny!"
The barrels started to spin.
"Full names, quickly!"
"Goddammit, Eile Chica and Sonne Hiver!"
At first nothing seemed to change and Eile was certain they were both dead, but the barrels stopped spinning and the gun dropped back into the floor.
"Stand by for verification."
A fan-shaped, blue-white laser passed over their bodies. Eile squinted and held up a hand to shield her eyes, but then it cut off.
"Identities confirmed: Chica, Eile Marelys; Hiver, Sonne Aourgen. Access granted." The gate in front of them opened and lights came on in what turned out to be a back room.
Eile relaxed; she realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out.
Sunny turned to her and flashed a lopsided smile. "Marelys?"
"Yer one ta talk; what's the deal with Aourgen?"
"That was my Dad's Mom's name."
She felt embarrassed. "Oh. Sorry, I wasn't tryin' ta be a jerk. Marelys was my father's mother's name, too."
Sunny smiled. "It's okay, partner, I wasn't upset."
"Welcome, Team Girl!" the voice broke in. "Please, come in, I've been expecting you."
They walked into the main room. Eile realized that the section they had entered must have been a foyer meant to screen visitors, because it had just been a narrow passageway. The back part of the Mystery Room took up one quarter of the basement. And it really did look like a command center. Except for the entrance and what looked like a couple of storage cabinets, the walls were covered with consoles, computer terminals, and video screens, some displaying streams of data, some showing diagrammatic animations, and the rest displaying scenes of news reports, n
atural disasters, protests and riots, and assemblies or counsels in session. She recognized the US Congress from having watched sessions on CSPAN, having one of its seemingly endless debates on healthcare reform.
But the significant thing Eile noticed was that, except for her and Sunny, the room was empty.
"Um, hello?"
"I'm here, Sunny," The voice came from hidden speakers all around them.
"Who are you?"
Eile figured that 'What are you?' would have been a better question, but she held her tongue.
"My name is Masie. It's a pleasure to meet you both at last."
"How do you know who we are?"
"I've been observing you for some time, ever since you moved in."
"Observing?" Eile asked, suspicious.
"Perhaps that's a bad choice of word. I can hear your conversations in the house and your telephone calls to the outside, and I can monitor your computer use, but I can't actually see you except outside, and only when in view of one of the security cameras."
Eile didn't like the idea of Masie, whoever she was, spying on them like that, but she also realized arguing about it there and then wouldn't do any good. She'd talk to Medb later.
"Where are you?" Sunny asked.
"Ah, that will take some explaining. You see, I'm not actually here, I reside at Cruachan in Cairnsford."
"Cruachan?"
"Yes, in the mainframe."
Eile and Sunny exchanged glances, and from the look on her face, Eile realized she felt just as confused as she did.
"Um..."
"I'm sorry, haven't you heard of the Cruachan Independent Institute for Pure and Applied Research?"
"No, not really," Eile said.
"It's Medb's research and development factory. Its main products are breakthrough