Sheryl picked up her bag that was on the floor and placed her laptop and mobile phones inside. She stood up and looked round to make sure that there was nothing left, nothing incriminating, and strode towards the door. When she reached the room outside, she called Rashid over.
“Okay, secure the building and then we'll all go to the compound, get the kidnap team in straight after” She said.
Rashid nodded and waved over two of his men.
“While we're on our way there can you get the first team to extract Jarrah” she asked, to which Rashid nodded again, “Is the cosmologist with him at this moment?”
Rashid wasn't sure, so sent a quick message through to the first extraction team who were surveying where Jarrah was. There was a reply that crackled back almost instantly.
“Affirmative” it said.
Sheryl smiled, that would make life a little easier, “Great, make sure they're both extracted safely and take them to the safe house”
She started walking away, heading for the exit and the waiting transportation.
Chapter 7 – Extraction
JARRAH’S LAB
Jarrah's phone beeped, not his usual phone, the secret self-destructing one that had lain dormant for the past week. He'd been expecting this, so it was no big surprise, he just wasn't sure exactly what time it would ring. Emma was sat not far away and looked over, knowing exactly what was happening. He answered quickly, he knew it would only ring when something was imminent and so didn't hesitate. He was also paranoid that if he didn't pick it up quickly it might ring off, explode anyway, and leave them stranded.
“Jarrah” Sheryl said on the other side of the line, “Get everything ready, my team will be with you in a few minutes”.
Jarrah signalled that he understood and the line went silent. As instructed to, he flicked a switch on the phone and threw it in a metal trash can. Within thirty seconds there was a crackle, a small flame and then a short blast of smoke. It was no ordinary phone, he had never seen one quite like it, and the whole situation reminded him of hammy spy movies. Sheryl had financed the production of a small unit of these phones just for this situation, completely unique and untraceable. The self-destructing element was just the icing on the cake to make sure. The phones transmitted their message on an encrypted signal created through the dark web, impenetrable to the elite.
“Okay, it's time” He said turning to Emma.
“I gathered that from the exploding phone” she grinned.
They were dressed in their casual clothes, their lab coats already thrown aside. In front of them was what they had been working on for the past three years, a prototype space-craft, designed originally for collecting samples from passing meteors and asteroids, the goal to track which ones were suitable for mining. It would be the first stage of a lengthy process, but a vital one, they needed to know what asteroids were worth the effort of sending a full-scale fleet out to mine. The full-scale fleet was still a few years off, space travel still in its infancy, but they were collectively making progress. Of course, they were, until the Elite took over a few days ago. Now all research, space or otherwise, was being commandeered by them, to be used for who knows what means. They were unsure exactly what Sheryl's plan for their craft was, she had been vague, deliberately, until they could all be together face to face. Jarrah guessed that it would be some kind of weapon though, how else could she fight back against The Elite? But as all it was designed for was collecting samples, it would need some kind of modification.
There was a knock at the entrance, five solid spaced out knocks. It was the sign that it was friend not foe on the other side of it, so Jarrah made his way to the large roller door. He cranked the handle to the left and pulled it open slowly to be greeted by two of Sheryl's guards. They were dressed head to toe in black, with high-powered rifles slung across their shoulders. They were every part the stereotype that Jarrah was expecting, so he had to smile to himself.
“Ready?” Asked the guard to the left, to which Jarrah nodded, waving Emma over.
Behind the guards was a large van, the ramp folded down, its interior waiting to be loaded with the craft. It took all four of them to carefully haul it over and up the ramp.
“You could have put wheels on it” the second guard said.
“Why would it need wheels? It was built to be in space!” Emma replied shaking her head at the genius. Let's hope they don't get into any trouble she thought, otherwise this Einstein might end up picking his weapon up back to front, wondering where the trigger was.
They finally secured it in place and shut the back of the van. Jarrah and Emma were ushered into a small secret compartment behind the driver's seat. It was a little too snug. Jarrah was a towering guy and Emma liked him a lot, but not enough for his groin to be constantly rubbing against her shoulder the entire journey. Jarrah apologised to her throughout, he liked Emma, but not enough to rub his groin all over her for two hours.
After
