*****
Ms. Green watched as the activity from the encrypted server flashed across her screen at the security command post. She sipped her rare and illegal jasmine tea, smuggled in as a result of the trade embargo, and observed as Warrick stared back at her on an adjacent screen. She didn't care for the little man at all. Small, scrawny looking, and not very well endowed with manly features, Ms. Green was actually slightly repulsed that she was forced to constantly watch the man. Her good taste prevailing, she darkened the camera behind the screen that Warrick was using. She could monitor his activity without having to stare at the ugly man's face.
She watched as he swapped out the files, drafted the fake message from Jameson, and then cleared his activity just as another tech was starting to come down the hallway. She glanced at the giant 3D map of MESA's entire grounds and saw a dot walking away from the terminal Warrick had just used and another dot approaching it in the same hallway.
Small dots all in various colors buzzed around the hologram. Some were in labs, others in offices, yet others in hallways. Some dots were even outside of the buildings. The entrance guard station had a few and so did the parking lot beyond MESA's perimeter fence, as did the restaurants and shops near the grounds.
From this map Ms. Green could identify, track, and record the movements of any employee, security officer, or visitor. She noticed the group of blue squares congregated in the main lobby. She checked her watch and then called up the lobby cams. She had almost completely forgotten about those wretched children on their field trip. She looked back at the map. The deep red dots of the security guards and the green dot of the public relations director were clearly visible amid the sea of forty or fifty blue squares. She had assigned one of the S&D commanders to escort the group. She quickly located him at the security station and flashed him a message to report to the main lobby.
She felt a sense of relief that she wouldn't have to deal with the snot-nosed kids. Secondary school or not, all kids were nothing but little brats. She was the head of security, so she had the power to delegate. It had come in handy so many times throughout her career at MESA. She supposed that this was the very reason she was so bitter about the Warrick assignment. Watching and tracking that unattractive man day in and day out, reviewing his messages and monitoring his communications, she hated all of it. Kingston would seriously owe her one.
She knew that the orders came from the old man, but this was Kingston's project. He was the one who suggested she take this on personally, as opposed to delegating it to one of her team members. Sometimes that man made her blood boil. He could be so infuriating... and that's what made him so appealing at the same time. Oh, he definitely owed her for this. Her eyes closed as she pictured Kingston. She could think of a number of ways that the man could repay her. After a brief moment of daydreaming, she opened her eyes.
The commander had reached the lobby and was doing his song and dance about security at MESA labs. The man was good at it, too. He looked like ex-military, and in fact was, which usually impressed the little kiddies. Something about a beefy man with facial scars seemed to add a little something to the tour. Ms. Green started to stare at the beefy man on the lobby cams and then noticed that she was biting her lower lip. No, she thought. "One man per day. You'll have to wait until tomorrow," she said as she tapped his image on the screen.
She looked back at the hallway where Warrick was and saw that he had reentered the Harmonics lab. He was sitting in his office as other colored dots moved around the lab. Next to him was a bright orange dot that marked the Professor. It was the only orange dot on the whole map.