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Less than an hour after the hoverskimmer had touched down, Kathryn was facing the door of Rockington's office. She knocked gently and entered. The room was less intimidating than most might have expected. Pictures of family, among other, more official things, punctuated the light blue walls. Bookshelves and filing cabinets lined one of the walls and there was a desk in a central position, bracketed by two chairs. Most of the furniture was manufactured from artificial wood. In the chair on the far side of the desk sat David Rockington, Director of the Babylon Institute. He signalled for the agent to take the other seat.
Kathryn sat down.
"Good afternoon, Sir."
Rockington nodded.
"Good work on the Dalyn-Steward incident. We've got some intriguing data."
"Anything to indicate what we might be facing?"
"Indeed. The bug has already been detected and neutralised by Dalyn-Steward security, but we have what we wanted."
The Director flipped a switch beneath his side of the desk and immediately the space between the two of them became filled with light. A hologram of the view from the air vent Kathryn had recently infiltrated came into focus. The hologram played much like a video recording, only in three dimensions. There was an audio track accompanying the display, but Rockington chose to commentate over the proceedings himself. A hologram image of Dietrich walked into view. There was a momentary pause as pleasantries were conducted, and then some sort of a presentation began.
"It appears that Dietrich himself doesn't have too much of an idea of the bigger picture. However, taking into account what we have already learned from other sources, some interesting points have come to light."
"Such as?" Kathryn continued to watch the hologram as the Director spoke.
"Dalyn-Steward have captured a girl. We don't know too much about her, just some photographic records of her arriving in London on a hypersonic jet from Tokyo recently." Rockington flipped another switch underneath his desk and the holographic image switched to a two dimensional picture of a girl walking away from a jet at what Kathryn recognised as Heathrow airport.
"What would Dalyn-Steward want with her?"
"We aren't completely sure, but whatever it is, they were willing to sacrifice a number of operatives to get her. We've confirmed four dead."
"Four? To get one girl? Did she have an escort?"
"No. She seems to have been able to take four trained Dalyn-Steward operatives out single handed. The only surviving member of the squad sent to get her appears to have gone underground. His name is Butterstone, that much we know from information hacked out of the Dalyn-Steward mainframes. There are more files, but they are taking time to crack."
"So what is our next move going to be? Rescue the girl from Dalyn-Steward?"
Rockington's eyes narrowed, as if he was going over a decision that he had already made several times. "Not yet, not until we know exactly why she is of importance. We need information, and that probably means finding Butterstone. I have our contacts trawling the Net and the streets looking for him. Hopefully we should find something before long."
"Until then?"
"I suggest you take some time on the training grounds. If I have to send you back into Dalyn-Steward to retrieve this girl, they'll be expecting you. It will not be easy."
"Understood." Kathryn stood from her seat and nodded to the Director as she left. She had a feeling that things were about to get interesting.
Chris Smith, 25/10/00
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