That Ol' Storage Room

[Tom Harriman]

It was cold. At least, Tom felt cold. Maybe it wasn't really cold, but it was early, he was tired, and the sun hadn't got around to rising properly yet. So he hugged his hands under his armpits, and jogged from where he'd abandoned the Impala to where Frank was busy landing the Treadstone chopper on a patch of runway that had been helpfully painted with a circle and an H.

It was a few days after the press conference; a few days after the Brotherhood had hijacked a Treadstone transport plane full of prototype rocket parts; a few days since Dahlia had agreed to give him answers, after Tom had left her with no other choice.

So when Dahlia had phoned him at oh-christ thirty, and told him to drive out and meet her at El Toro, he'd groggily complied. But the wind in his face from the open window as his automobile had bombed down the highway had turned that groggy compliance into grouchy irritation; and that rolled off him as he stalked towards the landed plane.

"This had better be important," he growled, his raised voice mostly absorbed by the residual sound of the slowing rotor blades, but still loud enough to get the point across.

[Dahlia Ericsson]

"Still nothing?"

Frank's voice broke through her reverie, blue eyes flicking between the open locket and her Blackberry. She glanced up at her cousin and shook her head. "Nothing. Not a word." Dahlia sighed and closed the locket, then flicked her phone off and stuffed it in the pocket of her Dodgers hoodie.

The helicopter landed and Dahlia was soon sliding out of it, her sneakers hitting the runway with a soft sound. She didn't hear what Tom said as he approached, but his obvious frustration brought a half smile to Dahlia's features. It didn't approach her eyes though, not in the current state she was in.

When the rotors had quieted enough, she spoke and motioned for Tom to follow her. "This way, Tom. I do apologize about the early hour..." she began, her voice trailing off as she adjusted her ball cap and then stuffed her hands into the pocket with her phone. She led the way to the nearest hangar, assuming Tom would follow her, and Frank would be close behind after securing the helicopter.

The hanger looked, for all intents and purposes more like a fortified bunker on steroids than the simple hangar it had begun its life as. No longer simply for aircraft storage, it now housed many of Treadstone's closely guarded secrets - prototypes, blueprints, and thousands of research files. Things that they had nearly lost during Katrina, priceless, irreplaceable bits of knowledge and history. Some few things, such as her grandfather's first pencil sketches for Treadstone's first aircraft engine, were proudly framed and displayed in her office.

Known simply as by its designation, TR-S-2, the hanger loomed over them as they approached it. Specially formulated concrete reinforced with re-bar had been built up over the entire exterior, making it as earthquake-proof as any California building could be. Massive hangar doors had been replaced with enormous, fortified steel panels that interlocked, but could also be retracted one section at a time depending on how much space was needed as an entrance. Even the standard door off to the side of the front facade looked as if it belonged on a bank vault. Dahlia stepped up to it and the card scanner at its side, swiping her ID and waiting as it pulsed red before blinking green.

The card scanner hissed as it retracted into the wall, only to be replaced by a palm scanner, while a series of hisses and clicks could be heard from the door itself. She pressed her left palm to it, and waited patiently as the green light slid back and forth for a full ten seconds, scanning her palm and performing an intricate comparison to the one it had on file. It blinked blue and then it too retracted.

The door itself hissed loudly and a popping sound was heard as the hydraulics engaged, pushing it open to let them inside. The door itself was only a few inches shy of the two foot thickness of the walls, and thick steel bolts could be seen in their retracted positions. Floodlights flicked on overhead to illuminate the football stadium sized interior, filled with all manner of what Dahlia was certain Tom would call toys. Aircraft prototypes lined the length of one entire wall, with secured crates of corresponding data and blueprints stored nearby. Aisles of shelving took up most of the rest of the space, filled with locked crates, secure filing cabinets, and a myriad of weapon and armament prototypes - everything neatly labeled and dated.

Dahlia stood off to one side, letting Tom and Frank enter before securing the door behind them with another scan of her palm. Then she turned her bright blue eyes to Tom, just for the pleasure of his reaction.

[Tom Harriman]

Almost instantly, Tom forgot about being grumpy, and the tiredness rolled off almost everything but the corners of his eyes. It was one thing to know that one of the hangars at El Toro had been turned into a high-tech bunker for Treadstone's motley collection of prototypes and abandoned projects. It was another thing entirely to actually see it in person.

Tom was the kind of person who prided himself on his knowledge, and on his ability to work out what something was and what it was for, just by a quick cursory examination. In those first moments of walking into the storehouse however, there were so many things that his eyes settled upon that he simply could not fathom. And frankly, it was bloody marvelous.

He had to fight the urge to run from object to object, frantically asking what everything was, or rummaging through the papers stored beside each. From the closest objects it seemed like everything was tagged and catalogued. Was there some computerised library that held a list of every one of the building's secrets? Where was it, and what exactly would he have to do to convince Dahlia to let him look?

He drew in a deep breath, and managed to stop his eyes from frantically darting about. Asking for the open-mouthed grin to disappear completely from his face was asking a little too much, but he did at least manage to tone it down deveral degrees into a more age-appropriate smile.

"So," he asked, glancing sidelong at Dahlia. "Does this place come with a map, or do I just have to go up and down the aisles with a shopping cart like supertech Toys R Us?"

[Dahlia Ericsson]

She took off her cap and set it on the nearby desk, using her fingers to fluff out her platinum locks into something resembling artfully mussed. Tom's expression was just...beautifully spastic, at first, unable to focus on any one thing for too long.

He gradually remembered to breath and in turn tamed his grin, which earned a soft peal of laughter from her throat. Dahlia knew she could count on his reaction to at least dull part of the pain lingering in her chest. She reached out and plucked the iPad from the charging station on the desk, flicking it on and inputting a passcode to access the apps.

"Here...just scan the barcode that's attached to anything you're curious about, and it'll pull up all of the relevant data. Slightly better than a shopping cart, I think." she grinned and passed it over.

[Tom Harriman]

Tom was inclined to disagree: iPads lacked wheels, and were thus a far less entertaining way of navigating your way around a maze of aisles. How were you supposed to drift around corners, or zoom between point of sale displays when you didn't have wheels? Humming engine noises to yourself was perfectly appropriate when you had a trolley - especially a trolley that you'd deposited your kid sister into. If all you had was an iPad, that qualified as crazy.

Still, Tom dutifully paced his way along row after row, wafting the tablet at anything that was vaguely mysterious. It was like moving slowly through time, devices becoming progressively more modern the further Tom travelled from the entrance. Everything was there, from the most basic and benign revolutionary components to the most advanced applications and dangerous implementations concievable. One case reported it's contents as an impact-resistant fibremesh fabric; the kind of material in Tradeskill's suit, no doubt. Around the seventies he stumbled upon some sort of magnetic box - a containment unit for ionised hydrogen, meant as a power cell for an experimental ion drive. There were original blueprints for aircraft, engines, gadgets, weapons; some even had practical prototypes, either of key components, or in their entirity. Something that looked like a backpack-mounted vacuum cleaner turned out to be exactly that; it even claimed to have a self-sustaining nuclear power source, which made Tom wonder just how the hell the human race had managed to survive the crackpot ideas of the seventies in one piece.

It wasn't just technology, though. There were details and equipment from unpublished experiments. Some crazy scientist had actually built the contraption from the Shroedinger's cat experiment, though the associated blurb on the iPad suggested that animal rights complications had prevented the experiment from ever actually being conducted.

That was just the toys, though; the action figures, the fake weapons, and the LEGO models. Just like a real Toys R Us however, things became exponentially larger and more expensive the further through the store you went. Granted, there was a whole bunch of medical equipment and chemistry information - that was the creepy pink aisle with all the dolls and toy animals that any self-respecting male avoided like the plague - but then you reached the really cool stuff: the bikes, the electric cars, the climbing frames, the helicopters -

Tom wasn't a flyboy. Throughout his years in the Army, aircraft had been about as relevant to his interests as a taxi at the end of a night out. You knew it was important. You were greatful that it was there. But really, the only point of having it was to get you where you were going, so that you could throw yourself out of it and at the ground really hard. Such was the mindset of a Paratrooper. But this was different.

He remembered a trip to an air museum back in England; a rare family outing where all three Harriman siblings and their father had been in the same place at the same time. Walking around the British exhibits had been like travelling through a mausoleum of dead aircraft; weaving your way through hangers of planes in various states of disrepair, pretending to be interested in the little laminated information plaques as you stood outside the carefully roped off areas, and zoned out the input of your RAF veteran father.

But then they'd reached the American exhibit. Cold War fighters hung from the ceiling in dynamic poses. The public's pathway weaved around wheels and under wings. You stood beneath the gargantuan engines of a B-52; stood close enough to a Blackbird to reach up and feel the strange texture of the radar absorbing paint. Just like there, these planes didn't seem dead; they didn't seem withered and decrepid. They were just resting: sealed in this time capsule exactly as they'd been the day their engines last stopped running.

Tom's voice was quiet as he regarded the assortment of planes. "Screw the tablet," he muttered, glancing over his shoulder towards Dahlia. "You have got to tell me about these things."