Savvy, Part the Fourth

Hey again. I know I already posted today, but I got Part Four of Savvy done, and I wanted you guys to see it. Hee, Kipin had way too much fun inventing QUIET's biometric security system. Enjoy, dahlings!

Savvy, Part Four: Derec
Disclaimer: You remember this, I only own Timo, Baeli, Derec, Jakky and Cricket, and NOTHING ELSE. Okay, on to the story.

I was still in the shower when the alarms started going off. Grumbling under my breath about random fire drills, I shut off the water and exited the shower stall, pushing the cheap waterproof curtain out of my way. I snatched up the towel hanging on a hook nearby and began vigorously toweling myself dry. The alarms blared all the while. A voice was talking over the ear-shattering horns, but it sounded far away. I didn’t think twice about it. Dumping the towel in the canvas hamper by the bathroom door, I scooped my techie coveralls off the bench and was shrugging my way into them when my cell started beeping. I only had one arm through my sleeve as I flipped it open and answered, “Derec here, and who’s there?”
“The Nasties are attacking,” said Baeli’s curt voice. “Get down to the Hub as soon as you’re decent.” And just like that, she hung up on me.
I guess I was pretty shocked, because it took me almost a full minute to get my other arm in the sleeve and do up the zipper. I wasn’t really thinking about getting dressed. My mind was occupied with thoughts like, Snap, the Nasties are attacking! How did they get in here? We must have an insider planted somewhere… that’s the only way a Nastie-pants agent is worming their way into national QUIET HQ. I mean, come on! We have some of the best security in the country! Anybody trying to get in here is gonna have Doc Von Gizmo and his not-so-silent booby traps to deal with. You’d have to be invisible, room temperature, and weightless to make it in… not to mention stupid. Either that, or extremely clever.
Hmm, seeing as we’re talking about Nasties here, I’ve got my money on stupid.
The Hub was always a busy place, but today it was just crazy. What with all the alarms going off and the backup and emergency security being armed, almost everyone in QUIET HQ was piled into that one room. Thank goodness it’s the biggest room in the building. Not to mention the safest. If the Nasties were to somehow manage to get past the booby traps, there was no way they were getting into the Hub without some kind of army tank. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Hub are triple-reinforced titanium alloy, threaded at regular intervals with x-ray-blocking lead. Each surface is several feet thick. The massive doors, one in each of the four walls, are protected with several various locking mechanisms and retract into the floor when open, so if they get jammed (which has only happened once in QUIET history), it’s still difficult to force your way in. Each entrance requires an ID chip swipe, pinky finger scan, retina scan, and voice recognition. You are also swept for bugs by an automatic laser scanner the minute you get within ten feet of the door. And if anything is a mismatch, or you’re even a little bit bugged, the ball-bearing sleeper cannon mounted above the doorframe will knock you into the next millennia.
See why the Nasties would have to be stupid to try and get in here?
Once I had gone through the appropriate debugging, chip swiping, password-saying, pinky scanning, and eyeball scanning, the plethora of locks inside the mammoth door clicked open and the three-foot-thick slab of metal retracted into the floor with a loud rumble. I rushed into the Hub to find Baeli.
Like I said, it was a madhouse in there. Agents were running back and forth between the doors with big scary-looking weapons, waiting to unleash them at the Nasties the minute they poked their smelly faces in. A swarm of techies like myself were banging away at the joysticks and keypads that controlled the external cameras mounted in the hallways of QUIET HQ. There was a programmer at every console, sending out the commands to seal off all unauthorized entries and exits and initiate the lockdown sequence. The six-foot-wide holographic globe in the center of the room was glowing in a dozen spots. S.P. Onage, the new Headmaster in charge of training cadets and also the Chief of Operations, was studying the globe intently, flanked by a tawny-haired young cadet a year younger than myself. Her codename was Cricket, as far as I could recall. I yelled out to S.P. over the noise of chattering QUIET personnel and security alarms.
“Chief Onage! Sorry to interrupt, but have you seen Baeli?”
“Console fifteen,” he called back, not looking up from his analysis. The cadet, Cricket, glanced at me over her shoulder, eyes sparkling with excitement. Great, I thought. Another Proffesseur Le-Boum-Boum. She probably thinks it’s cool that the Nasties are attacking. Well, she’ll find out soon enough. They aren’t called the Nastonians for nothing.
“Derec, get over here!” shouted Baeli from a console several yards away. I ran, bashing into a few miffed-looking agents on my way, and skidded to a stop just before I did the same to the console. “Yeah, what’s up?”
She pushed her glasses farther up on her nose, throwing me a harried glance. “I can’t figure out where the alarms originated. How did they get in, and where are they now?” Her fingers were a blur over the keyboard. “I mean, they must have tripped a sensor at some point, obviously, but which one?”
The programmer at console sixteen next door stood up and dashed off. I reached over and snagged his chair, yanking it around the partition on two of its six wheels. Plopping down in it, I scooted closer to the monitor and examined the screen. “Well, what I’d like to know is, how are they planning to get in the Hub? We have stuff the Federal Reserve banks don’t have.”
She didn’t look up from the screen as she answered, “I’ve researched every possible weight-bearing point and weak spot on the floor plan, and there really aren’t any. The only way they might be able to get in here is to accompany a QUIET agent in right through the door. That would mean they could only come in one at a time. And actually, that wouldn’t work, because we just initiated lockdown.” Her eyes glinted mischievously behind rectangular lenses. “The sensor-equipped cannons are programmed to target any unauthorized personnel within their blast range. So, if the Nasties try to walk in the door…”
“Boom,” I supplied, grinning.
“Yeah, boom,” she agreed, grinning back.

You likey? Drop me a comment if you please, Kipin likes those.

Commander Kip, over and out!
Normal is overrated!
P.S. SNOW!!! *capers about madly*