Sam headed back to his office and was unsurprised to find Asha already waiting for him. Haru had already filled her in on what he had witnessed, and Asha was concerned. Her chain of command was clear. She reported to Soliman, but Sam was a friend. As yet she had received no orders regarding his position, so for now she decided to hear him out, without compromising any protocols.
‘Hi Asha. Can you pull up footage from the security cameras for the other day? And can you do it so that no one sees what you’re doing?’
She raised an eyebrow but accessed a keyboard, and after a few keystrokes asked what timeframe he wanted to look at. For a few minutes they both watched the footage as it sped through the night.
‘Nothing.’ Sam sighed and put his head in his hands. ‘Why would they lie?’
‘Why would who lie, Sam? Haru hasn’t told me what’s going on, just that you needed help immediately. So, what’s up?’
Sam went on to explain again and realised that each time he tried to mention a disappearing angel he heard how ridiculous it sounded. The security breach would be monumental. And now here he was, trying to explain just such a situation to the person in charge of it. Thank Ra they were old mates, though he suspected he might be pushing the limits of that friendship.
‘Sam, do you know how damn near impossible what you’re saying is?’
‘I know. Forget it. I’m just wound up. The Q Field isn’t working properly, there’ve been problems with some of the artefact storage and, oh, I don’t know,’ — Sam leant back in his chair and exhaled noisily — ‘something’s just not right, and it’s bugging me.’
Asha watched him thoughtfully. She was insulted that he had cast aspersions on her systems. The thing was though, that she too had been noticing tiny oddities, and until Sam vocalised it, she hadn’t realised how on edge she was too.
She pulled the keyboard towards her again and spent a longer time running through a chain of keystrokes. Once she was happy with her sub-routine, she hit send. Once more, footage from the night before spun up, only this time the wall could be very clearly seen to pulse and shimmer. A frail old woman stepped through as soldiers and medics stood ready. One of the medics helped the old woman and, retrieving a wheelchair, wheeled her out of the room and into the outer corridor.
‘What the hell was that?’ asked Sam
‘Well, I’d say that was your angel. And evidence that someone has tampered with the system. I’ve always kept a private back-up. Call me paranoid.’
‘I just call you Head of Security, but I think that’s the same thing.’
‘Okay, let’s see what happened next.’
Asha hit the keyboard again and added the exact timeframe into the security footage for the corridors. The door opened as the medic and the old lady left the Q Zone. As the door closed behind them, Asha and Sam watched as the man wheeled the angel along the empty corridor, without warning the screen went black.
‘Blast!’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Your medic has pulsed the security cameras. The way I see it, they couldn’t risk pulsing the cameras in the Q Field, as that would raise alarms. They waited until they were in the corridor, then discharged a localised EMP to knock out the cameras.’
‘But —’
‘Hang on Sam, I’m thinking.’
There was a pause as Asha closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked worried. ‘We have a serious problem. More than one person’s involved. At least someone in security, to have doctored the tapes and thrown a veil over an EM pulse. That would’ve been noted, but someone scrubbed it. The medic there is definitely involved in whatever is going on. And someone wanted to buy time and may have already done what they wanted to achieve. News of the angel’s disappearance would have been inescapable by the time that shift came back to work. Something has happened. Sam, I need to report this.’
‘Agreed. You also need to track down that medic.’
As they stood up the sirens went off, and Asha’s comms badge pinged. Patching the call through, she nodded, saying she was on her way and to secure the area. She tuned to Sam, her face hard.
‘Well, we’ve found the medic. But we won’t be able to question him. He’s been murdered.’
Asha and Sam hurried toward the main atrium. The Library of Alexandria was not just a Research Facility, it was also a world famous tourist attraction. Home to the famous collection of Beta artefacts and the planet’s only Q Field, it was a place of veneration, as well as wonder. Added to which, it’s a fifty acre campus covered in beautiful sections of formal lawns and gardens as they sloped gently down to the banks of Lake Mareotis on one side, and the Mediterranean Sea on the other. Families would picnic and play by the water’s edge. Researchers would come from across the globe to Alexandria, the cultural capital of Africa, and the Library Complex was its crown jewel.
By the time they got to the corridor the area was full of tourists. Some were openly crying, others were standing around shaking, scared and hugging each other. A cleaner was sitting on the ground being treated by two pale-faced orderlies. Shoved in amongst a broom cupboard sat a very dead medic. The green tinge to his skin, as well as the stench and the flies, very clearly spoke to his deceased status, as did the obviously broken neck.
As extra guards arrived, Asha had the corridors cleared of bystanders. As they walked past Sam he heard the same snippets of conversation around him. How it had
