TIME WARS

Chapter 4

Rohan's lab was an underground facility, 5 kilometres away from the main Infinity Inventory. The underground facility itself was a simple square with an area of 1 square kilometre, filled with only Rohan's lab and a small room adjacent to it,which was built especially for the days when Rohan and Ethan were working together a few years ago away from all prying eyes. The lab was in the exact centerpieces of the square, a stone's throw away from the elevator which went straight to the surface and was the only way in or out of the facility.
The rest of the facility had been left empty, for "future purposes", or so Rohan had been told by the investors.
It was quite easy to get lost in there, especially as areas away from the lab weren't illuminated at all, and without sunlight, it was always dark.
On reaching the surface, Rohan would walk a few hundred meters in a rectangular tunnel of sorts, to reach a small garage, which could house upto ten cars at any given time. The garage bottomed out to a wide underground tunnel, which would extend for another 3 kilometres, and open out about 1500 meters from the main entrance to the Infinity Inventory. From there, Rohan would enter just like any of the 100-odd engineers and scientists that worked there daily, thus maintaining an iron-like veil of secrecy about the facility.

Now leaving the lab, feeling nervous and quietly excited at the same time, Rohan ascended the elevator, jogged to his company car, a black Honda City and drove to the inventory.

                  Infinity Corp. Inventory

The Infinity Inventory contains, at any given time, all the products and even certain prototypes of every projects accessible on a singular database. The 5-storey tall building houses laboratories on the first two floors, followed by partner offices on the third floor and finally ending with a a two-floor combined library, which had everything ranging from fiction novels, autobiographies, encyclopaedias, scientific journals and research papers all available offline and in an e-book format. Ethan had spent many a night putting in insane hours doing research here, an event, which had lead to Jennifer becoming a bookworm as well.

Today though, Rohan only had to drop off the ring to get it tested. A few "good evenings" and certain energetic "how-are-you"s later,  his work was done and he'd wait till tomorrow for the results.

He didn't feel like going back to his lab, so he climbed the stairs to reach the library and decided to spend the rest of the night there. He called Ethan and told him as much, following which Ethan decided to head back to his hotel and call it a day.

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                            The Library

"You can go home now," smiled Rohan at the librarian.
The library was completely empty tonight, not unusual for a Friday night, when everyone either issued books to take back home or just took a break from their hectic lifestyles and relax on the weekends.
"If it's not too much trouble," said the librarian, smiling delicately.
She was duty bound to stay till midnight to recieve her pay.
"I won't tell anyone if you don't."
"Thanks-I mean thank you very much sir," she mumbled, quickly packing her stuff and leaving before Rohan could change his mind.

"About fucking time!" muttered Rohan as he quickly got up , after hearing the librarian leave and made for one of the computers in the ebook reading room.

He was just logging into his account when he heard a dull thud coming from the somewhere outside the room. "Anyone there?!" he shouted, and cringed.

The security systems at Infinity were one of the most robust in the world which effectively meant that no one,except a high-clearance employee could gain access to the library after hours.

"SOMEBODY HELP!"

Rohan cursed himself for letting the librarian leave and ran out of the room, reached the center of the library and contemplated about where he'd heard the sound from.
Then it hit him.
No, not there. Anywhere but there

He ran to his right, towards the section where old manuscripts, some centuries old, were kept.

The same section that contained anti-oxidant measures to protect the pages.
The same section where you could only stay in for 15 minutes at a time due to the limited oxygen.
The same section whose only exits after those 15 minutes would get bolted shut by Plexiglass doors, inaccessible from the inside.

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