Book One – Chapter Nine

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“What are you doing in here?”

Nicolas looked up in the direction of the voice and saw exactly whom he expected to see. Agent Oren always wore the same style of suit and always combed his jet-black hair the same way. That wasn’t what annoyed Nicolas the most, however. Oren would consistently wear his security clearance tag pinned to his jacket, like he was the new kid on his first day in kindergarten.

“I… I work here,” Nicolas responded, covering his frustration with confusion.

Oren stared at Nicolas suspiciously and conspicuously fingered the grip on the gun strapped to his hip.

“Show me your ident,” the Agent said briskly.

Nicolas tossed his clipboard to a nearby desk and rolled his eyes. “You have got to be kidding—”

“Enough talking, young man. Show me your ident.”

This was the seventh time in the past month in which Agent Oren asked for Nicolas’ identification. After the fourth time, it was made clear to him that the Parliamentary Fed was just trying to mess with him, the young doctor’s assistant. Or he was trying to exercise what little power he had around there by making people pull out their personnel cards. Or he was just being a prick.

Nicolas had a feeling it was a combination of all three. He could hear the Agent’s thinly disguised chuckles as he left the lab. He also knew that the Agent had no place being in Nicolas’ department, but it didn’t take a psychic to tell that Oren didn’t want to be downstairs for very long.

They let the Readers just walk around down there. Just walk around and glean God knows what kind of information from whoever they wanted. This, understandably, disturbed Oren much more than his previous assignments. He could feel their big blue eyes penetrating into his forehead; especially the girl’s. He wanted no part of that for more than ten minutes. So, instead, he wandered around upstairs—but still more than fifty stories below the surface—hassling