The next day I decided to try to change things up at work. Instead of going to the conference room I went to Eric's office. I had been up early and had an epiphany that while I might be slowing down discovery of what supplies were snuck into the resistance; I was not slowing down research or production at all. Then I realized a path forward that would be very disruptive and time consuming.

I knocked on his door and he let me in.” Have you found something?”

This was the part I was nervous about; a bad effort here could be something that made him monitor me more closely.” No, I just had a thought. Maybe a worry? If the previous executives were... Up to no good...” damn I'm doing horrible, ” what if, well... We don't know if they took something”

Eric stopped me there ”and that is why you are going through the purchase orders and receipts.”

“No sir, I mean what”, and I decided to just go all in, ”what if they took parts or even a full one of the devices?” I saw him go pale at that suggestion.” Without doing an inventory how could anyone be sure?” I stopped there and left it hanging in the air. Surprisingly he got even more pale.

The time between us talking took longer that a supposed pregnant pause, it was a long time but what more could I say, or should I say?

Finally, he spoke,” This is alarming, we did a cursory examination to check if the machines were still there but parts, we don't know if they took parts that could assemble a machine and if they had a better working idea of the system then the risk is real...”

He paused for a moment as his hand went to his chin, he had a grimace on his face and then both hands went up over his face and swept down. Finally, he said ” Ok so this is going to be very bad and big both, but my duty is clear, good call, go tell Tom to get one hundred audit badges, he needs to give you both rank one badges and a rank five badge for me and one other. He should probably set up five other rank one badges as well but leave them blank for now. That's all” and with that he did a shooing motion for me to leave.

I walked down the hall to the conference room thinking about what I had started. I hoped I was not risking any resistance personnel with this, the thought intruding from out of nowhere, but I had to try to distract them from producing these devices and to make a move like this was exactly what was needed. With luck the entire effort could be derailed even.

I reached the conference room and Tom looked up at me.” Tom I just got orders from Eric and he wants one hundred audit badges made up. He said you and me are to be rank one and he was to get a rank five. He also wants a rank five and five rank one badges but I guess he wants them blank?” I looked at him expectantly.

“Oh, so we have a plausible threat. Ok I will get on that; can you secure a downstairs conference room and arrange for an appetizer selection from the kitchen? If I am printing this many badges, it is likely some of these guys won't have time to grab something to eat when they get the call.”

So, with this I went downstairs to the executive assistant we use when we needed, and I got to watch as she went to a nearby conference room of some size and shooed out a bunch of mid-level managers from some sort of meeting they had. Then she came back and offered to let me select the appetizers, but I deferred to her experience. I returned to see Tom returning with a small box on top of a larger box.

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“Ahh perfect timing, come here and help me add lanyards to these badges” he said.

He already had a lanyard and badge on his neck, it was green. I noticed most badges were white, but a few were green and there were two black badges. One badge, a green one, had my picture and I grabbed it. I wondered where they got this picture but at the same time, I cynically knew they probably had hours of video to select an image of me with. One of the black badges had Eric's picture but no name under it. I started on others as I finished mine.

“The white badges are for the basic auditors we use to go through things, green is sort of like a team leader more than anything else, if we had blue they would be in charge of several greens and about twenty white badged auditors. Red is above blue and would have about one hundred under them, Black is considered the agents in charge and usually there is two of them on missions. The fact you are getting a green badge tells me you are the reason for the audit,” and that made me pause and look at him with worry starting in my gut, ” because otherwise the boss would have had you and me issued white badges instead. A rite of passage you might say and proof you will get auditor training soon.”

I almost missed a beat from the last part, but I seem to have come out ahead from this in more ways than I suspected.

Slowly but surely the pile of badges and lanyards disappeared into a completed piled and food service workers came in to drop off trays with crackers, cheese, lunch meats, and others small snacks. I also noticed large jugs filled with juices, urns with coffee and tea, and boxes of pastries.

The bagels and cream cheese were too hard to pass up, so I quickly went and grabbed one, and looked at Tom to make sure if he wanted one. He might be an auditor, but you should always be polite even though you hate what they do for work... Besides it makes for a good cover to always be polite and think of them. He however waved me off.

However shortly after I started nibbling, he directed me to come sit next to him.

“You have never seen these I should hope” and with that he pulled out a unique looking identification card. It was rectangle with his image on the left side, his name and some numbers and letters on the right, but most interesting was the corners which were boxed off and had a number in each of them.” The numbers on the corners indicate various authorizations we have; however, you won't know the code so just let me issue out our team leaders badges when the time comes. Here let me show you how we use them.” Tom then pulled his badge from around his neck, he squeezed the sides and the green card slipped out of a transparent case that held his picture.” The green card can thus be switched if I have a different authorization level, but in this case we are both green cards” . I looked at mine carefully and saw how it was a shiny yet transparent case over a green card.” The cards are coded to the facility they are designed for and the color codes also grant certain access rights usually, in this case however all doors will be open for our green cards and the black cards where the white cards will have a lower level of access.”

“I see” I said as I watched the first arrivals start streaming in. Tom grabbed the green cards and then handed the black cards to me.” huh?” I said as he did so.

“Go upstairs and give our boss those cards, then come back and help me issue cards to our team”

I hustled upstairs and came to Eric's office. I saw someone was inside with Eric, but that someone's back was facing me. I knocked on his door gently and held the badges up for him to see. Eric gestured for me to open the door and come in.

The man in the seat with his back turned to me and I admit I just about stumbled, and my heart leapt into my throat. How the heck could it be...

Eric took that moment to say ” I think you know Carl and of course Carl knows you.”