AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Why do you need Hoffman?" Anderson demanded. He might have been happy for Rafe to accompany us, but he didnotwant the man involved more than necessary.
Well, thiswasnecessary, unless one of his SWAT team could pick a lock.
"Rafe can get us past the padlock," I said, staring Anderson down.
"He has the key?"
"Of course not," I said, bemused at the notion. "He can pick it."
"Doctors pick locks?" I heard a guard ask his comrade. Goon 2 simply shrugged, saying nothing.
"Very well, then," Anderson magnanimously replied.
I waved at the padlock, arching my brow at Rafe. If he didn't have his kit on him, I'd look a bit of an idiot. Thankfully, Rafe rarely went anywhere without his kit.
"I'll have this open in a jiffy, Doctors," he said, stepping forward and drawing his kit out of a thigh pocket. "Ah, that is, Doctor and Overseer and ... um, fatigue-wearing men with big black guns and lethal-looking things."
"Just get on with it!" Anderson snapped. "I haven't got all day." His eyes met mine. "I'm beginning to think you're wasting my time, Dr Evans. You do not want to waste my time, I assure you."
"Wouldn't dream of it, Mr Anderson," I replied.
He huffed out an aggrieved breath of air and turned his attention to Rafe. Rafe, for his part, proved why he was so handy as an Intern and had the padlock open in next to no time at all. He returned his lock pick to his kit, returned the kit to his thigh pocket, and then stepped back, flourishing an arm at the now unlocked door for our edification.
"Gentlemen," he said, smirking.
Anderson did not appreciate the smirk, so I rushed to remove the padlock and open the door. The obvious appearance of an older model Orion Vehicle inside the shed helped to soothe ruffled feathers.
"I'll be a monkey's uncle," one of the guards said.
"All this time, it's just been sitting here, and you knew nothing about it?" Anderson asked.
"I learned of its existence a couple of weeks ago," I admitted. "Until then, Dr Crawford had kept it well hidden from all of us. This is the first time I've seen it. I thought, until recently, that it had been destroyed during the reverse engineering stage of the Orion Project."
"We all did. Parliament had written it off decades ago."
"I'm not sure where it was before Clive returned to RATS. I can only assume in his time, it had been well hidden as well."
"Not inthisshed," Anderson observed. "This is not an old building."
"Just looks like one," Rafe offered.
"Very sneaky your Crawford, Dr Evans," Anderson said.
"In our line of work, Mr Anderson, a certain amount of discretion is often required."
"Not when you answer to Parliament, Doctor."
"Sometimes even then," I murmured.
Anderson gave me a hard look. "Then it is just as well I am here. No more secrets!"
I gave a vague indication of agreement with a small movement of my head, but really, the man was delusional if he thought we'd bare our souls to him.
"Well, then. This does change things," Anderson said, walking around the Vehicle inside the shed.
The building itself was just big enough to do so. A charging plinth took up most of the space, but across one wall stood maintenance equipment. It was Rafe who found the power outlet. I knew from looking in the system earlier that the power connected to the main grid at RATS, but any indication of power being drawn from the system was well camouflaged. I'd had to dig deep to see what Clive had done.
"Why did he not use this when you lost all of your Orions?" Anderson asked.
