The sweat ran down his back, the foul smell of feces filled his nose.

Adam stood on a small step ladder inside the small restroom. The muscles in his arms aching, no, not just the arms. The entire body was hurting. Its been awhile since he had been this active. His ladder was barely enough for him to reach the ceiling. He had to stretch out his body fully and stay in that position while handling the fragile objects.

With tired arms, he removed the glass dome covering the bulb. Stepping down from the ladder, he washed it under the sink. The blue towel hanging over his shoulders was used to dry it off again. He quickly removed the exposed bulb with practised motions. He had after all done it many times this day.

*scree* *scree*

Adam screwed in the last light bulb. He stepped down and removed the dark glasses to admire his work. He wiped off the sweat dripping down in his eyes with his sleeve.

“I’m finally done.” *Phew*. “100 toilet lamps.”

Adam put the glass dome back and walked out of the restroom, taking a breath of much needed fresh air. He looked around, and spotted the man he was looking for. He headed towards the man wearing a similar overall as Adam.

“Willie, I’m done. I’m finally done. I’m going to my room now. Sleeping for hours…” Adam said, while supporting his tired body with a hand on the wall.

“Haha, where do ye think ye going? We have plenty of more work to do. A hundred meter of wires before ye quit for the day.” Willie said with a grin.

Wille, the red haired scotsman with a beard, was Adam’s supervisor. He had a Scotland flag on his left arm. Adam was given the USA flag. While Adam didn’t notice it at first, everyone at the base had a flag. The majority was from USA, Russia and China but there was also several specialists from all over the world.

After the dinner at the mess hall, Jane got a message that told her that the baggage had arrived. Adam was nervous because he didn’t remember if he had the tag or not, but thankfully he did. It was in his wallet. Since he had his tag, there was no reason to delay any longer.

He bade Jane and Steven farewell and they went separate ways. Adam went towards his zone and got set up with a room and work task. The rooms were simple. A single bed, desk, book shelf and closet. It was not some luxury hotel, they were there to work.

Speaking of work, his work schedule was brutal. Over twelve hour shifts were common amongst the understaffed electricians. The screwdriver group as a whole was large, but most took care of the nuclear plant. Adam had no idea how it worked so he obviously didn’t go near it. Instead he got the shitty jobs, so to speak. Changing the light bulbs, pulling wire for a new room, setting up new sockets. The work was never ending.

Every group sleeps in their own zones and you don’t see the others groups much outside the mess hall. There are some exceptions of course.

If there is a problem somewhere and they call in help, you obviously get to visit the other areas. The guards stationed all over the base were obviously an exception to all of that. Every zone had guards stationed at important places.

One of those was Steven. He had been placed as a personal guard for Adam. New people always had a guard with them for their ‘protection’. Steven didn’t need to follow Adam like a shadow but Steven was always within hundred meters. Something Steven was happy about, seeing as Adam’s task today was to check and replace the restroom lights in the base. It was done before the lights died out to avoid the awkward situation one would be in if the restroom suddenly turned dark.

When Adam was informed of his task, they both didn’t think much of it.

“How hard can it be, Steven? You worry too much. It’s just a few light bulbs.” Adam said.

“Guess you are right.” Steven agreed.

“Now, don’t just stand there. Help me carry the ladder.” Adam said. Steven picked it up himself, much to Adam’s delight.

However, they underestimated the amount of toilets the base had.

But the number was not the worst part, it was the smell. Yesterday's meal had apparently been something that created extra smelly poop. Or so Willie had claimed.

“Hundred meter wires? A hundred light bulbs? You- you are just making this up aren’t you?” Adam pointed with a trembling hand at Willie.

Willie’s grin quickly turned into a frown. “No. I’m not making it up. However, I’m the one that decides your workload. Since its your first day I was being nice. But if that’s how you want it. You can instantly be upgraded to a regular worker, instead of a newbie. Forget the wires. You can go and empty the trash from the toilets instead.” Willie’s usual accent disappeared and turned into a more universal english.

Adam was gobsmacked. This was taking it easy on him? His old job was like a paradise compared to this. One or two small jobs a day, with a 9-17 time period to show up. Why did he come here again?

Steven snickered to himself. Serves him right, Steven thought.

“Get it done. Now if ye excuse me, got some stuff to do.” Willie said with his normal accent again, and walked off.

Several days passed like this. It was hard work everyday for Adam. He ate at the mess hall with Steven, sometimes Jane joined too. At night he instantly fell asleep. He had never slept as good as he did at the base. It’s a wonder what some exercise can do to sleeping problems. One of the few things he liked about being at the base.

Willie often went missing, usually when Adam needed him the most. He said he had things to do.

It took awhile but Adam figured out that he must be going to the ‘secret place’.

So, Adam decided to spy on him. It had mixed results. Turns out he actually did alot of work.

“Damn, he is actually working. I thought he was up to something…”

Adam said, hiding behind a corner, cursing to himself. Not only did he waste time, he still had to do his normal job. Which meant working even harder...

That was not the only issue either. Steven was also a problem. Luckily Steven didn’t know what task Adam had, so he could pretend that ‘he was supposed to go that way’, or ‘taking a look at this panel’.

“I’m telling you, this panel is broken. Look, after I pulled it out from the wall, it stopped responding. Something is clearly wrong with it. A glitch or something.” Adam said, while holding the ripped out computer panel in his hands.

Steven scratched his chin beard. “I don’t know… It seemed to be working fine before you removed it…”

“Yeah, maybe. For the untrained eyes. You should just trust the expert in these situation. Hey, if something needs shooting, I will let you handle it.” Adam waved off Steven’s concerns.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“You know what, I guess you are quite bored. Why don’t you take a few hours off. Go to the shooting range or the gym or something.” Adam said while putting his hand on Steven’s shoulder.

Steven eyes lit up. “That is true, it’s quite boring to simply watch you work. But, I can’t simply-”

“Stop!” Adam held up his hands in a stopping motion. “Don’t worry so much. Aren’t we friends? I won’t tell anyone that you left me alone for a few hours. Besides, do I really need to have you around all the time anymore? I can understand the first few days, it’s easy to get lost. But now, especially when I’m only going to work on this for hours. Seems to be inefficient.”

“Yes, inefficient… Indeed, I hate that. Very well, but don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.” With that Steven left.

*Phew* Adam’s heart was pounding. He wasn’t used to lying like this. He managed to lose his guard dog. Even though he liked Steven, it would be a problem if he was around. Now he had another problem. What to do with the computer panel? Adam inspected it carefully. It seemed like some wire had come loose when Adam removed it. Simple fix.

Not so simple in fact. It took him ten minutes to get it up and running as usual. Adam quickly left the scene, after putting it back in the wall.

Adam was now free to roam around the base. Screwdrivers were often seen all over the base, so he didn’t draw any attention to himself when he walked outside his own zone. He found Willie working on a panel in the wall. Like Adam had been doing. However, Willie was most likely actually doing something important.

It took awhile before Willie was done. Adam fiddled with a tablet while waiting. One of the perks of the job. You get lots of tools.

Willie finally moved on. Adam followed. The training he got from all those spy movies finally payed off. However, the clock continued to tick. Soon he would be out of time and Steven would be back.

But just when Adam was about to give up, Willie walked up to a wall. A dead end. Something seemed to be off about this area. It had no doors or cameras nearby.

Willie swiped with his tag and a panel came out. He bent forward and looked into it. Eye scanner, Adam thought. Willie then punched in a code. Adam couldn’t see it, nor how many digits. It had no sound either when pressing the buttons.

The wall moved, revealing a doorway. Willie walked through and the wall came back, like nothing ever happened.

Adam’s body was trembling. The smile on his face started to hurt, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

Mom I did it! I finally found something!, Adam thought to himself, while clenching his fist. His mother had always complained about his hobbies, especially the conspiracy theory one. Messing with the government always ends badly, she used to say.

Adam was overjoyed. Finally something substantial. This was what he had been looking for all along. Of course, he had not actually learned anything new about it. He had simply confirmed his suspicions that ‘something’ was in this base.

Adam came up with two plans to get access to the new area. One, make Willie unavailable and maybe Adam would be asked instead, assuming it was electrician related at all. Two, become trustworthy enough to be allowed access into it.

Both had pros and cons. The first one had the potential of being quick but it was very risky. Not only was there no guarantee that he was second in line but he had no idea how to make Willie ‘unavailable’.

The second plan however, had the risk of never actually completing. It was very possible that Adam would never normally be allowed access to it. And even if it one day would happen, it might take years. After several years, it would be too late most likely. Whatever they did in there, would be either completed or revealed.

Adam decided to put it off for now. Patience was necessary. It had been less than a week after all. He needed to prepare. If he was to remove Willie either permanently or just temporarily he would need some kind of alibi first. Don’t want to end up as a suspect in the middle of a military base. He was behind ‘enemy lines’ now and he had to be very careful.

Adam was a ‘normal person’ that never hurt anyone before so he decided to not go with the violent route. Even if Adam snuck up behind Willie with a pipe Adam wasn’t sure Adam could take Willie. While the overall clothing they all wore weren’t very revealing, you could still see some things. While it just looked tight on Adam, it looked good on Willie. While Adam was sweating like a pig, Willie breezed through the much harder jobs.

Apparently Steven had ran into Willie a few times in the gym too. Willie didn’t lift weights like Steven did. Instead he did alot of bodyweight training and was on alot of the martial arts training sessions. Clearly he was no simple electrician like Adam was. He was a… combat electrician! Or so Adam thought.

No, violence was not the answer. Adam thought about using poison instead. Easier to use and harder to track down. Simply offer him your home baked cookies and down he goes. Now, where does one get home bakes cookies and some good poison, deep underground, inside a military base?

If not poison, then he could maybe arrange some kind of accident. The electric kind. Like accidently turning on the power when he was working on it. However, that was very risky and he needed to be close to Willie. Willie also wore safety equipment designed for just those occasions. Like gloves and boots immune to the electric currents.

It should be noted that the step to go from planning mode to action mode was gigantic. Adam would need some time to figure out any details before he started. Learning more about the base layout and supplies available was also essential.

As Adam was occupied thinking about such nefarious plans, the door began to open again. Adam was startled. He quickly hid behind the corner again.

Surprisingly, Jane walked out.

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