The Bleaker Street complex was the very definition of “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Originally built back in the early eighties as an auto parts shipping facility, its exteriors consisted of the expected drab brown bricks and smashed out windows that lined every other building within a three-block radius.

  But the fa?ade of crumbling infrastructure merely masked something completely unexpected underneath.

  Instead of dirty and dusty rooms packed with homeless people and rats, the structure housed a hub of T1 lines, supercomputers, and secure briefing rooms that rivaled anything found in Washington. Tucked neatly from prying eyes, the planning committee had referred to this phenomenon as urban camouflage.

  And for once, a government agency was right. The slums had become hi-tech.

  Justine darted through her usual entrance on the far-left side of the building. And soon, she found herself standing next to her perturbed partner in a hideous waiting room.

  “What’s going on?” She asked, excitedly. “I was just about to go home.”

  “Change of plans,” he opened the door directly to his rear. Together, they both walked through, and into the next antechamber. It consisted of one guard and a pair of hi-tech body scanners. “The director has a new assignment for us in tech services.”

  “That’s unexpected,” Justine rummaged in her pockets for a second, then handed her ID badge over to the imposing agent. He took it and ran the only thing Fitz Hume hadn’t taken from her underneath a barcode scanner. “After the conference I just had, I figured I would be persona non-grata around here for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe even forever.”

  “Yeah, I heard something about that. A Starbucks…?” his tone conveyed his sense of disbelief.

  “Even criminals need coffee, Jeff.” Badge back in hand, she walked through the nearest scanner with Saunders close on her heels. “Where are we going? I’ve never been to tech services before. Where are the labs?”

  “Tech services are on the ground floor. So, we’re headed this way.” When he was close enough, Saunders waved his security badge against a wall-mounted RF scanner. Two large, black metal doors swung inward, revealing a long, dimly lit corridor.

  The first odd thing she noticed was a series of brown security doors. Smaller than the ones they just passed through, these otherwise identical entrances had a burnished plaque that read Server hung above them. The second thing that stood out to her was a low powerful hum emanating from above her head. Barely loud enough to be perceptible, the sound assaulted her being from every direction.

  “What is that noise?” she asked.

  “This whole bottom floor is just one big server farm. The humming is the cooling system.”

  Justine had never been down here before, so she was a little confused by the unfamiliar layout. “Cooling system… have you been here before?”

  “Just on the tour,” He said with a forced grin as they hurried along. “You did go on the tour, didn’t you?”

  “No,” She replied. “When was the tour?”

  “You know when the tour was, Justine.” Saunders focused his attention on the end of the hallway in a desperate attempt to look past her laid back attitude. “You know, one day, you might try being prepared for something that doesn’t involve a weapon.”

  “One day,” she promised.

  Just ahead was a pair of pale green doors that also had a small plaque hanging above them. It read: TECH SERVICES.

  “I wonder how we get in here. During the tour, these doors were already open." Saunders searched in vain for an RF scanner that wasn’t there. He turned to Justine with a quizzical look on his weathered face. “Maybe, we should knock?”

  “Or maybe,” she pointed to a camera mounted on the wall. “They’ll just buzz us through.” With those words, a buzzing sound filled the entire hallway. Before Saunders had a chance to see what his partner was pointing at, the emerald doors hissed softly, then swung toward them.

  “Open sesame,” Justine mocked, her hands spreading outward. “Let’s see what this is all about.”

  Back when this building served as a warehouse, this section was built to accommodate distribution and shipping. To facilitate these functions, one whole side of the space consisted of nothing but roll up garage doors. In its heyday, this place regularly had all ten doors open and rocking.

  Today, only two of the doors functioned for deliveries, while the other openings were sealed shut during the conversion.

  Down the center of the room, a series of workstations were strategically placed for maximum utility. On the wall, opposite of the roll-up doors, a chain of inter-connected storage rooms lay stocked with the various replacement parts needed by the technicians throughout their day. Utilitarian by design, this out of the way workshop served as the repair station for every server, smartphone, and laptop employed by an NSA agent stationed in the greater Washington DC area.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Near the other end of the room, a group of animated techs gathered around one end of a long table.

  “That’s probably the place.” With a destination in mind, Justine picked up her pace considerably. “Maybe they know what’s going on.”

  As they drew closer, the agents noticed that the sea of white lab coats was pushing each other out of the way to get a better look at something on the workbench. Near the fringes, a tiny technician scrambled around for a better view. Justine tried to signal to him, but her attempts at gaining his eye were unsuccessful. Whatever held the group’s attention was palpable.

  Saunders prepared to tug on one of these geniuses’ coats when a woman dressed in black called out to them.

  “Agent Saunders,” Celesta Elango stood alone by the freight elevator that serviced the backend of the complex. Right away, he recognized her as the chief of building security. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Over here, Justine.” Saunders motioned for his partner to join him just outside the fray. “Miss Elango,” he began, as they made their way over to her position. “Have you seen the director? We received instructions to meet him down here.”

  Celesta didn’t respond to his question right away because something quite distasteful had caught her eye. Unprofessional and out of place, Justine couldn’t help but notice the way that her choice of wardrobe had ruffled the head of security’s British sensibilities.

  Not that she particularly cared. After all, she was technically suspended.

  “What’s with all the commotion?” She joked. “Did they finally release the new iPhone early?”

  “No,” Celesta responded haughtily. “Those have been here for weeks.”

  At that precise moment, one of the techs loudly exclaimed. “Let’s grab an acetylene torch from fabrication. We could burn it open from around the hinges. That shouldn’t hurt anything inside of it.”

  “There are no hinges,” another voice strongly countered. “Or edges for that matter. Besides, I don’t even know what it’s made of.”

  “That’s not saying much Ronald,” a female technician blurted out. “You’re still using Windows Vista.”

  Ronald must have had a reputation for being a little slow because everyone in the group laughed heartily at the slight. Eventually, a new, calmer voice rose above the din.

  “We’re not going to do anything to it. The director said leave it alone, and we’re going to leave it alone. Besides, you guys have already done enough…” the voice hesitated, “… damage to it already. Do you understand?”

  From the cacophony of moans, it was clear that the mob did not understand. They whined to one another about the unfairness of it all, how they just needed a few more minutes. But in the end, every one of them started milling off in the direction of their worktables.

  Clearly, they all feared the director too much to go against his orders. Eventually, only one person remained next to the workbench after the sea had parted, Samuel Mosley.

  “You were awfully hard on them,” Celesta teased her beau. “Everyone loves a good mystery.”

  “They wanted to cut into the damn thing with a torch, a torch. I thought these eggheads were supposed to fix things down here, not destroy them!” Just as he planned, his voice projected loudly enough for everyone to hear him. In response, Ronald cowered alone by his workstation, feeling guilty.

  On the workbench sat a black box with a dull metallic finish, with rounded edges, and no visible markings. Justine’s first inclination was to label it an oversized briefcase, albeit one without a handle or a visible locking mechanism. Lying next to it on the counter was a small ball-peen hammer and chisel.

  “Were they trying to open it or smash it to pieces?” she asked with a hint of approval.

  “I think Ronald was attempting to do both,” Samuel said with distaste in his mouth as his eyes wandered over Justine’s athletic body. In response to this callous gesture, Celesta shot him the dirtiest look in her repertoire. Instantly, the scientist backed down. “It’s a good thing they don’t keep explosives around here. But even that might not put a dent in this thing.”

  “What is it?” Saunders asked while running his fingers across what he thought was the top of it. “It’s smooth, almost like glass.” After a second, he yanked his hand away like it had been bitten by something hairy and poisonous. “Why is the metal so warm?”

  “We thought you could tell us,” Celesta said in an accusatory tone. Her cold brown eyes turned to envious jade as she stared her competition down. “It’s addressed to the bloke that you brought in earlier today.”

  “Evers?” Saunders said surprised that the head of security would ask such a weird question. He slid to the right so Justine could get a chance to examine it. “Why would Foster Evers know anything about this?”

  “That’s the mystery. We don’t know.” Samuel took a couple of steps back and stood beside Celesta as a sort of peace offering. This symbolic move did little to appease the scowl directed at him. “But whatever this thing is, it was addressed to him.”

  “I don’t understand. We just signed him out of a mental institution yesterday.” Utterly perplexed, Saunders folded his arms across his chest. “And he’d been there for the past eight years without ever receiving a visitor. I don’t see how any of this could concern him.”

  Without realizing it, Justine was jumping to Foster’s defense. “That’s not true. He knows the director personally.” She placed her hand on the box, palm down. “When I saw them together, they acted like old friends or something. Only… it seemed like they may have had a falling out.”

  Flipping the case over, Justine noted that each side was identically dull. No hinges, no seams. She couldn’t even discern how the thing had been put together, much less how to open it. “Weird. Do you have any idea what it is?”

  Samuel threw up his hands in mock defeat. “We think it’s a container.”

  Blown away by the vaguely penetrating response, Justine smiled like she had discovered a secret. Wasn’t everyone in this building supposed to be a genius? “How many degrees did you say you had again?” She laid the mysterious object back down on the workbench. “Of course, it’s a container. It’s a box. What I’m curious about is what is it containing?”

  “Something I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on, Agent Rushing.”

  In unison, the group swung around to find that the freight elevator had opened to give birth to a stoic Director Fitz Hume. But more importantly, a positively giddy Foster Evers. The one-time resident of Wilson skipped a couple of steps forward and addressed the group.

  “And if you don’t mind, I am tired of waiting.”