Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [20]
Lisa closed her eyes and sighed. The ubiquitous security cameras. She herself performed regular checks of the cameras to make sure they were functioning properly.
The recording from the camera played out: Lisa on the phone, talking with someone. Alice had left the volume turned down, so it wasn't until Lisa was able to make out the image on her monitor that she remembered that she had been talking to Dr. Rosamonte down in Pharmaceuticals about a month or two earlier. She recognized the code that applied to the doctor's account. As she had with Alice the other day, Lisa had walked Rosamonte through the process of trying the password again, realizing that she hadn't updated it in the requisite eight days, and so she reset it.
As with Alice, for a brief instant, she saw what Rosamonte had on her monitor before the security kicked in.
And only then did Lisa realize her mistake: she peered intently at the monitor. Anybody watching her on the security camera would know just from the expression on her face that she was studying every pixel on that monitor during that all-too-fleeting moment.
She remembered a disparaging comment Matt had made once about her lack of a poker face—in fact, it was right after he cleaned her out during a friendly family game Christmas night when they were both home from college.
"Once I realized that your little password-change rule had an ulterior motive, I looked at your file again." Again that odd smile. "I have to give you credit for that—it's the perfect cover. It's a good security procedure, well within your job description. Hell, it shows initiative and brains. But you were also using it to try to find something. Once I knew you were looking for something, I knew what to look for in your file."
Alice leaned against the winged statue. Lisa asked hoarsely, "What'd you find?"
"Your brother, for one. A former Federal Marshal, but one who retired under odd circumstances a few years ago. But that wasn't what really got my attention. After all, that was in your initial background check, and if there was anything weird about your brother, it probably would've come up then. But then there was Mahmoud al-Rashan."
The hand of ice became a tightly clenched fist.
Alice's odd smile became a full-fledged grin. She straightened up and walked toward Lisa, putting an encouraging hand on her shoulder.
"Don't panic too much, I only found the connection between you and al-Rashan after a month of computer searches that I did in my spare time. It gets very boring on mansion duty some days, and even Spence has his endurance limits."
Despite herself, Lisa actually returned the grin.
But it didn't last. She couldn't stop thinking about who this woman was, and what she could to do Lisa—and to Matt.
And to Matt's organization.
"Once I realized that you and al-Rashan were coworkers and friends, it all came together. Pursuing a job with the same corporation that was all but responsible for your friend's death, to the point where you relocated from the city you'd lived in all your life, a relocation you'd rejected six years earlier. Sure, there were circumstances to explain all of that—but not why you were so aggressively trying to get peeks at stuff you aren't cleared for."
Lisa's breaths started coming more shallowly. As Alice reached into her pocket, Lisa feared that a gun with a silencer would come out of it. Or would she even bother with a silencer? They were in the middle of nowhere, and the only person likely to hear the gunshot was Spence, and he was on Alice's side.
But all Alice did was put the mini-DVD player away.
"What did you think of what you saw?"
Lisa blinked. "What?"
"On my monitor. What did you think of it?"
Honestly, Lisa said, "I don't know what to think. That creature was—it was a nightmare. And that virus—it looked like something we were developing, not studying. Not something