Aberrant: The Middle Children of History - Sister's Keeper

[Guest Potential Jones]

In the deserts of Nevada, the United States government had build and abandoned several missile silos. And while there were several dozen of the things, and more that were occupied, it wasn't hard for the young man to find the right one. It was just a matter of knowing who to ask.

The young man - most would call him a boy, still, because he was small for his age - appeared inside the gates at the silo. He looked around, frowned and disappeared. A moment later, he was back, nodding to himself when he saw he was outside the perimeter.

Finger-combing his dark hair into place, the fifteen-year-old boy reached out and pressed the buzzer next to the gate. Looking into the camera, he waited for a response.

[SalmonMax]

Alex was in the lab when the proximity alert sounded. The 'lab' in this case was a giant shaft almost two hundred feet deep lined by reinforced concrete. Catwalks ringed it at four different levels. There was a huge opening door at the top, and a large area at the bottom with vents that led out to the surface. And all that was just what the base came with. Now it sported quite a bit more. Probes and sensors ran up and down the sides of the launch shaft, as well as unfolding armatures that could be extended into the shaft itself to aid experiments. The most critical piece was at the bottom though. Heavily reinforced steel arms that held two large plates mashed together. Or so it looked. They were actually just microns apart from each other. The Casimir testing rig. Alone of all the equipment in the lab, it was created directly by Alex...because she had to be sure of exactly where the gap was...and because the tests tended to wreck it.

Dropping a million ton weight on something with anything less than utter precision did that.

Standing on the second catwalk down, Alex swore to herself when the sharp series of tones blared. The inner alarm, meaning someone had breached the fence. And since it had gone off without the outer alarm going off first...it meant a nova. Or someone reeeeally good at avoiding motion sensors. Neither boded well.

The alarm changed as she pounded up the metal staircase to the security center; the top level of the habitation area. It was basically just an empty circular room with the feeds from the monitors running to it in a cubicle near the door...and the inner blast door from the secure entryway at the far end. In the event of a breach, Alex would be filling that empty chamber with created barriers and weapons.

The harsh tones of the inner alarm stopped and changed to the less strident chimes of the outer. Which was interesting. Even more interesting was that whoever tripped the alarms then took the trouble to ring the doorbell. When she got to the security monitors, Alex understood better. She reached for the intercom button.

Outside, Potential Jones heard the intercom speaker just above the buzzer button crackle to life.

"If this is about my newspaper subscription, I cancelled it," says the voice coming out.

[Guest Potential Jones]

"Ha ha," the boy said, not really sounding amused. "Classic." He brushed his fingers through his hair again and added, "No, I don't have a paper, or a desire to sell you one. What I do have are some questions and my vow that your answers will earn no ire. May I come in?"

[SalmonMax]

"Well aren't we a formal young man?" Alexandra teased. Wasn't really the soul of graciousness, but she figured he'd teleported onto her turf; she had a license to piss him off a bit. Still, time to get to business.

"Who are you, and what sort of questions?"