The Human Experiment

The Big Guns

Chapter 2

            A knock on the door drew his attention away from the file he had been perusing.

            “Hey Ian, grab your stuff.  The cleanup crew is on deck.  Oh, and can you pass that on to Everly?”  Quirking his eyebrow, he held back a chuckle.  It was humorous how much one teenage girl could scare a grown man.  In their defense Everly was a bit different but he never saw a problem with it.

            “Why not tell her yourself?”  The guard turned pale at the thought and began to stammer out a response.  Waving him off he let him off the hook.  Not willing for Ian to go back on his word the man ran from the room.  Shaking his head, he put the file away wondering what was going on.  The system had a major upgrade in security recently.  He wasn’t the brains of the operation though, simply the muscle.  He liked it that way.  Not that fighting off hackers and viruses wasn’t interesting, but it did sound like a headache waiting to happen.

            His footsteps echoed down the hallway as he made his way to the room Everly had taken over.  It was hard to imagine that an angry punk kid doing penance for hacking herself would end up being the one person he trusted the most on a dive.  They made a great team.  He could admit she was a bright young woman.  He would and did brag how his partner was smarter than anyone else’s.  He had seen how some of the teams failed over the years because of the unstable match ups.  He had gotten lucky when Everly had been caught and brought in.  She always has his back in the tech world.  The first dive they did together was a fluke.  His first partner was a temp test to see how well they worked together.  They had never meshed well in person, and he had been feeling apprehensive that day.  His worry was unwarranted as his partner never even showed up for their test.

            Everly had been working outside of her sentenced hours doing other things that she found an interest in.  She had been in the room when he had shown up that day along with other techs that would be monitoring the dive.  When it was clear their time had all been wasted Everly volunteered to be his anchor.  At the time he had figured she couldn’t be any worse than his original partner.  They hooked him up and dumped his subconscious into the construct.  The task for the test run hadn’t been a complicated one to begin with.  He was pleasantly surprised when Everly did her share of the tasks before them.  It made it easier for him to concentrate on the construct itself and what was happening in front of him.  They had finished in record time.  They ended up being the most compatible partnership the company had as well. 

            Since that day he looked forward to diving with her at his back.  He had even sent up a request to change his partner to Everly.  His unreliable partner at the time had been furious that he had been ousted by a kid.  Not just a kid but one with a criminal background.  The higher ups however went over their stats and had agreed with Ian’s choice.  The job was offered to Everly who took it graciously.  He had overheard her squealing with excitement later that day but kept himself hidden so he didn’t embarrass her.

            Once they were official partners, they took on some of the most daunting problems.  Everly seemed to need to be challenged to keep her engaged.  It worked for him as he too needed to push his boundaries pushed to keep from becoming bored.  Their numbers were hitting off the charts.  They were not only assigned standard tasks but were also brought into complete missions that the others failed.  At that point he and Everly were referred to as the cleanup crew.  He found it a bit insulting, but she had found it funny.  To his chagrin the nick name stuck.

            If they were being called in again at the last minute, it could either mean it was yet another failed mission or the situation was more dire then the others had previously handled.  At this point the what, was irrelevant.  The fact that they were the team being called up wasn’t promising for an easy day.

            Knocking on Everly’s door he waited a bit impatiently in the silent hallway for her to open.  He was about to knock again when the door was flung wide.  Metal on metal gear music blared from within almost knocking him back like a physical force.  He would never understand the rage over what he considered pure noise.  Everly stood there in the doorway looking annoyed as heck to be bothered.  Her thickly coal lined almond eyes squinted against the glaring light of the hall.  He tried to peer inside the room, but the confines were dimly lit.  The brightest light coming from the screens that faced away from the door.  Huffing at the interruption she pushed her bangs out of her face causing them to stand out at awkward angles.  He was amused to see that she was now sporting a dark violet on the strands.  An improvement compared to the chartreuse they were just a week ago.

            “What is it?”

            “We’re on deck.”

            “Why didn’t you say so?”  The question was followed by the rolling of her brown eyes, but he could see the excited glint that had lit with his words.  It had been a few weeks since their last assignment and it was clear she was feeling stir crazy.  Honestly if she hadn’t been so good at building protections against cyber-attacks they would have more to do.  Although in hindsight that probably wouldn’t be good for business.  Tossing on a murky green jacket over her dark hoodie she grabbed her tablet and satchel.  He would have been surprised by the copious number of layers she tended to wear but the building was kept cool, so the system didn’t overheat.  Everly was also a petite little thing that became overly cold on the warmest of days.  He had been working alongside her long enough now that it was a sight he had gotten used to.  Honestly when they were out, he subconsciously would hand over any jackets he had been wearing simply to make sure she would be warm enough.  As he was stuck in his thoughts, she had managed to pass by him stopping a few feet ahead when she had noticed the absence of his larger shadow.

            “Are you coming?”  

            “Yeah, yeah.”  Shaking his head at her impatience he strode down the hall.  It didn’t take him long to catch up with his long strides.  She often complained that she would have to practically jog to keep up with him.  Normally he would have slowed down to accommodate her much smaller gait.  That would have just made Everly angry though.  She hated to feel like she was holding anyone back and often pushed herself hard so that she wasn’t seen as a burden.  She surprised him by how independent she seemed to be.  He often forgot that she was only 17 years old.  Then again, she had told him that she had been surprised by him too.  When he had asked with what she had answered that he had a sense of humor.  He hadn’t been sure whether to be offended with her remark at the time or not.  Like every other time he had opted to brush her snark aside and not let it affect him.  Most of the other guard didn’t have as thick of skin as he did.  It was more than likely why most of them avoided the tiny teen.  There were very few on staff that she liked enough not to run off.  He was simply glad to be one of them.

            Coming to the door of the dive center Everly took a deep breath before entering the code that would allow them entrance.  He couldn’t fault her for the moment.  They were going in blind and who knew what they were about to walk into