Argent Glass

Chapter 28 - Unearth - Robin

"What the hell is that idiot doing?"

Robin looked up from the folder in her lap. The news clippings were spread out before her. She was looking for commonalities between stories.

Michael was jumping up and down on the landing pad shouting animatedly, his arms swinging wildly at the approaching helicopter.

"I have no idea."

"Get off the landing pad!" The pilot hovered above Michael, waving at him as if he could brush him off the landing area and enunciating the words so Michael could read his lips. When he finally figured out they could not land if he didn't move, he danced back and covered his nose and mouth with the collar of his tee shirt.

Before the rotors stopped spinning, Michael was at her door shouting again. He had a frantic look that conveyed his fear that they might just take back to the air. Unable to hear him, Robin held up a finger to indicate he should give her a minute and took off her headset.

As soon as she opened the door, Michael started babbling incoherently. "Wait. Wait, Michael. I can't understand what you are saying. You're deleting files and–"

"No! I'm not doing it! Your update is doing it!" He pulled at her arm in desperation.

"Okay, okay. Slow down. Did you touch the computer that was connected to the server or make any changes?" Robin shut the door to the helicopter and caught the pilot's eye. She rolled her eyes and he winked back.

"No. I'm telling you, your update is deleting hundreds of files from our network. And I didn't touch anything."

Robin followed Michael to the server room where her computer was sitting at the home screen.

"I'm telling you, it was deleting stuff."

Robin set the folder down by the laptop and typed some commands on the keyboard. If the update had been deleting files, it had also cleaned up after itself. There was no log of its activities. "Are you sure about what you saw?"

"Yes. Well, I think so. Well...yes. It said something about deleting something at the top, and then the files just kept scrolling and scrolling."

"I'm not finding any deleted files. Maybe it was moving them from one location to another and just looked like it was deleting." She continued to search for a record of the update. With growing consternation, she found there was nothing to find, not even the executable files she had run earlier.

Michael watched over her shoulder another moment, and then stomped away muttering. If Robin heard the door close behind her, it didn't register. She turned to ask another question. "Did you happen to–"

She closed her mouth and turned back to the laptop. The employee database for Maverick BioScience was available through the remote access server. With a couple of keystrokes, she had logged in. A file manager sat before her on the screen. She browsed to an executable file for the accounting software but discovered it needed a password she didn't know. For the next half hour, Robin browsed the directories on the server searching for information about any of the employees in the news clippings or Carlos Carrel. Once again, she came up empty-handed; no employee information and no attributions for research.

"So weird," she uttered aloud.

"What's weird?"

She jumped. Pierce had walked up noiselessly behind her and whispered the words into her ear. Robin spun around.

"A guy could get shot for sneaking up on a girl like that," she drawled.

Pierce snorted. "What's weird?"

"There's no record of a Dr. Carlos Carrel on the main servers. At least, no record I can find anywhere."

"So?"

"So, he was an employee of Mav Bio, did extensive research for the company and there's no record of him or his work? You don't think that's weird?"

Pierce shrugged.

"Take my word for it, it's weird." Robin turned back to the computer and grabbed the folder of newspaper clippings. She handed it to Pierce. "No records of any of these people either."

"What's this?"

"Newspaper clippings. I found them at Carrel's house." Robin watched Pierce turn the page and scan the articles.

"Some of these were employees."

"Not according to anything on the Mav Bio servers."

"Maybe you just don't have access."

"I work security, Pierce. I have access."

"Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"You're saying the number of Mav Bio employees who have accidents is just coincidence?" She reached across his arm, shuffled through the articles, and pointed out photos. "Stephen Cosopolis. Died in a boating accident. In fact, his whole family disappeared off the coast of California along with his 40-foot yacht."

She snatched the article at looked closer at the picture that accompanied the story. "Knot Just a Boat."

"What?"

"The name of the boat. It's a 40-foot yacht..." Her voice dwindled off as she slowly pointed at the photo.

"I still don't‒"

Robin snapped out of it. "Lauralee Andersen? Car wreck in the middle of the desert. While she was alone. A young lady named Katie Scott is just plain missing. Not only do they not seem coincidental, they seem suspicious when you look at them all together."

"Huh. Maybe." He closed the folder and handed it back to her.

"Maybe?" She looked at him, dumbfounded. "How about George Emory? Does that name sound familiar?"

Pierce shrugged.

"We just had a security briefing. His name was on the watch list." She shook the folder. "He's in here."

"Okay, but this isn't much to go on." He waved the clippings at her. "There are a lot of employees so maybe that's a fair average for accidents. Besides, you can't tell me with certainty they were all Mav Bio employees. Maybe Carrel had some weird fascination with death."

Robin snatched the folder down to her side. "I am not overreacting."

Pierce threw his hands up. "Okay, you're not overreacting. I need to get back to work. Have you seen Michael? I need to know if he can pull up the video from the crop side of the dome from earlier today. I found blood on the outer glass along with a puddle half-soaked into the ground."

"I can pull up the video feeds." She swung back to the computer and opened a surveillance application. She slapped the desk. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

"What?"

"There's no feed. It looks like that camera has been out since...what the hell. Well, for at least a year now. I guess you'll need to see Michael after all. Ask him why the hell he hasn't fixed his broken video camera in over a year. In fact..." she continued, pulling up more records, "Ask him why he's had three broken cameras for over a year. This would include the camera at the main gate."

"I'll get right on that." Sarcasm dripped from the words, but Robin had become caught up in looking at the computer, and Pierce slipped out the door.