01:02
Episode 1: The Original Blueprints
Part 2
Lynda Allingham sat at her desk tapping away at a keyboard. Anyone entering the dark room would be forgiven for mistaking the aged female for a girl of ten or eleven. She was as small as a young girl and her movements were darting and accurate as only the young can accomplish. Then too the enormous wooden desk she sat behind underscored the effect of youth — something she was particularly proud of. It was only when an intruder came close that the light from the single desk lamp would reveal the streaks of iron-gray in Lynda’s radiant orange hair and the craggy landscape of her ancient face.
Lynda tapped for a few more minutes and then, all at once, she slid down from the chair and stood on the floor slowly turning around her office.
Although the office was technically on a basement level there were a bank of wide short windows on one wall of the office high up near the ceiling. The glass in these windows was frosted and the light coming from outside was blue with the dusk and provided no light. Bookshelves overflowing with aged leather-backed volumes along side banks of high wooden file cabinets, the lot crowned with piles of paper rolls, all lurked together in the deep shadows along the brick walls. There was only the single source of illumination in the room — the green shaded desk lamp — but it might not matter if there were more. The room gathered darkness to itself in any case.
Lynda turned in the center of the room, her shoes shuffling soundlessly on the polished concrete. She surveyed the room as if accounting for each object and then she stopped. Lynda walked to high book shelf and stood atop a step ladder there to retrieve an ancient looking tome. She opened it to no specific page and, holding it in her left hand, she wiggled the fingers of her right hand at the page. She smiled at the result, invisible as it was to the rest of the world, and she began to speak.
“I have today engaged the services of two local contractors to retrieve the artifact from Paul Swanson. These contractors are associated with the local group of organized criminals known as the Minnesota Mafia and as such have been contracted through T&T’s ties with that organization.”
Lynda paused and stepped down from the ladder. She walked across the room and took a seat once again behind her desk.
“Although the operatives come with high recommendations I am apprehensive towards the mission’s outcome. I am sure they will recover the artifact, however one of the pair is purported to have a streak of morality that, if it surfaces, may change the outcome.”
She wrinkled her forehead for a second and then smiled.
“I suppose it won’t matter what the final outcome is as long as the old one is defeated. Still, I hope to see the artifact in the safe hands of T&T before long.”
Lynda closed the book and stroked the cover gently with the fingers of her left hand. She hopped to the floor once again and strolled to the heavy wooden door that closed her off from the gleaming steel and blinding lights of T&T corporate. As she opened the door she threw one final look to her desk.
“It occurs to me now to wonder what should happen if they should all escape?”
With that she stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed. For a moment the room was still. The desk lamp glowed and nothing moved. Then the book on her desk opened exactly as if some invisible man had sat at the desk and was reading the pages. The pages flipped once, then twice, and then the book shut. It faded from the desk and reappeared in its place on the book shelf with the words ‘if they should all escape’ faintly sounding from the desk.
EPISODES
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