“What do you mean he’s got it?” Rami asked incredulously.

“Matsumoto injected me with…with something earlier and I went into a haze and almost killed Officer Seol—I mean Elaine. It wasn’t a rage or anything, I certainly didn’t hear any voices, but still, I don’t know of anything in particular that the police has access to that can really do something like this.”

Rami furrowed his brow.

Brad then looked in Rami’s direction. “Did you ever figure out what was down there that made everyone go crazy and violent?”

“No,” Rami admitted bitterly. He smacked the table with a fist. “This means we don’t have much time.”

“So we’re going straight there?” Elaine asked, arms folded.

“Not quite,” Rami responded. “We’ve got a reconnaissance drone that we can use to take a quick look at the entrance of the facility. I can launch it from here.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his communicator, which he connected to a hologram projector in the room. Within the hologram, a large three-dimensional map of the area surrounding the drone as well as a smaller window showing a 360-degree view surrounding the drone appeared. The drone was controlled via gestures within the hologram.

Brad noticed as Rami worked with the drone, a smile formed on the old man’s face. Without thinking, Brad spoke his mind, saying, “You sure look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Rami chuckled. “These things are so cool. As upsetting as it was that our company made so many excuses about using drones, I could never blame the little guys themselves.”

“Excuses?” Jolene asked.

“Oh, the usual. Too expensive. Would need too many repairs. That sort of thing.”

“Surely that would be worth the risk to avoid putting people at risk?” Jolene pushed.

Somehow this conversation wasn’t proving to be much of a distraction for the old man as he carefully guided the drone outside of the dome and into the vacuum of space. “As I said, excuses,” Rami said. “Sure, camera signals can be a little unreliable underground, machinery needs constant repair, and there are many things even now that robots cannot accomplish for us. But at the end of the day, my guess is the company wanted to save money, and most of us that took jobs for them were just desperate enough to put up with their nonsense. Even if we tried to play hardball with them, they’d just find someone else who would do the same work for less, so at the end of the day, it was either take a bad job with low pay or no job with no pay. Though even with that in mind, we had it better than some others who took early jobs on the colony.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As Rami continued reminiscing, Brad found himself mesmerized by what was showing on the drone’s view screen. He’d been in space many times before, but the endless blackness dotted with distant stars was something that never failed to amaze him. Brad found himself wondering if people felt the same in the past when examining humanity’s achievements—that is, when traveling on the sea or in the sky. Brad had only spent a small amount of time on Earth, so it was something he didn’t have much experience with. Even if he had, the amount of pollution in the ocean was something that might hinder what enjoyment he could get out of sailing that previous generations took for granted. The fact that space had so much more…well…space meant that, even though there were pockets of trash and wreckage orbiting the sun and planets, there was so much more room to maneuver so one didn’t have to deal with the debris unless it was one’s occupation.

That always sounded kind of fun to Brad. He wasn’t sure he could do it every day for years. Probably couldn’t even do it every day for a few weeks. But he wouldn’t mind going on a ride-along with a space sweeper sometime.

Damn. I’m spacing out again. Brad shook his head trying to return to the real world.

Brad took another look at the screen and the map. Rami had resumed speaking more specifically about the location of the mine, how its entrance was relatively close to the gate to the colony, and how all that was left of it should have been a solid concrete wall where the main entrance was.

Emphasis on should have been, as the concrete looked like it had been forced open, either by a collision of space debris or excavation equipment. Rami made the camera on the drone zoom in to get a closer look without physically moving the drone. Sure enough, the drone picked up faint signs of movement. Edging the drone closer, Rami squinted his eyes to get a better look at the movement. Sure enough, ground vehicles and autonomous digging implements moved to and fro, moving mined stone and ore out of the mouth of the cave, with the sort of zeal that implied that they knew something was in there.

Brad spoke up. “They’re just doing this all right in the open. Did they already know going in that something was in there or was it an accidental discovery?”

“I don’t know,” Rami sighed. “But I mean to find out. Let’s get a move on. We need to get you three better armed and prepared.”