Chapter 10 - Homecoming (1/2)
When Balthazar came out the room, he saw Salazar leaning against the wall reading something on the screen of his wrist band. He was completely immersed into it and didn't notice that Balthazar was out till he got near him.
”Do you research genetic improvements and stuff?” asked Balthazar. ”Though I never have involved myself in it, I have seen my sister reading similar simulation reports.”
”No, I don't. My work is more along the lines of poison, reactionary agents, their antidotes and stuff. I might be using a framework similar to that you had seen,” said Salazar hiding the report.
”As Walter would have already told you, I will be you mentor. We will meet frequently from now on. I don't need to know all the things you do, but I will be evaluating your performance over this three month period,” he said. ”I am basically an assassin, I specialize in poisons, bio-agents, etc. I would suggest that you spend at least an hour with me every day for this period.”
”Come on, I will take you to my lab. Though you have a basic knowledge of the human body, general poisons and harmful agents. You are quite lacking in the way of assassins. There, we concoct new ways to eliminate the threats and also ways to protect ourselves from the same,” said Salazar as he started to move through the tunnels.
”The first thing you need to learn is the various symbols and signs, we use here in the forbidden grounds. You cannot accidentally go into places where you are not allowed into. I will provide you with the required information,” said Salazar. He soon stopped in front of a door and typed in a password.
”Maybe, you haven't noticed but your wrist band hasn't been able to connect to the network outside. There is a separate network running in the forbidden area, which connects to the network outside. The usual wrist bands cant access the internet from here. We make a special modification to them that allows us to access the internetwork and also to connect among us securely. We first need to have your wrist band set up. Then we can move on to my work space,” said Salazar taking him into the room.
The room was filled with a lot of equipment. But there was no personnel in the room. There were many automatons present beside the equipment. Salazar had Balthazar remove his wrist band and place it around a cylinder and then handed it over to an automaton. He then proceeded with giving it a couple of instructions and it began it's work.
After a couple of minutes, another wrist band which appeared the same as his was handed over to him. ”This is the modified version. This will work both inside and outside the forbidden area. It has a special memory device which syncs and stores information on to our servers. It also allows us to track you location. But it is not advised to wear it an a few secure places in the world. I will inform you of that later on. So, keep the original one also with you and don't lose it.” said Salazar handing over both the wrist bands to him.
”From now on, you will be injected with a solution containing pico-technological bots once every month or so. It is mandatory and is not standardized by the alliance. It will be a personal make of the Blyth researchers. There would be regular updates of you wrist band and also the nano-tech. Your wrist band allows to keep track of this too and it the access pass for both. These modified bands can only be worn by someone who has our specific pico-tech in their body, else their special functions can't be accessed,” explained Salazar.
Soon, they went to another room of automatons where Balthazar had the pico-tech serum administered. Once, the serum was administered, Balthazar could finally equip the new wrist band. Later, Salazar had taken him to a dead end. There was a sculpture of a large snake with its fangs bared at the end. Salazar went to a corner beside the sculpture. As he went past the sculpture a small hatch appeared by the corner. He opened the hatch and together walked down the stairs into a narrow tunnel about 30 meters long.
”Come quickly. The defences are disable for only 20 seconds,” said Salazar as he ran along the tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel there was a platform and few small hover cars. They got into one of them and Salazar instructed it to go to their location. ”My work is quite sensitive and requires to be done at a certain distance away for safety purposes. We are going beyond the forbidden area about 5 kilometers underground.,” said Salazar as the car was speeding through the tunnel.
”You are temporarily given access as my apprentice. Once we reach the lab, I will introduce the rest. I will provide you with materials regarding the basic signs and symbols and various places of the forbidden area. Most of the labs and offices are marked by sculptures or symbols as you have seen. Even the waypoints and warning marks are in a similar fashion. It would be a bit hard to keep track of it all for now, but in a month's time you will be as comfortable as the rest of us,” said Salazar.
A minute later, they reached a stop where they got down. ”Finally, I am out of the cave,” thought Balthazar as he got out of the car into a small, well-lit modern lobby made of poly-synthetic materials instead of stone. They got into an elevator at the lobby, which transported them a few floors up.
”Where are we?” asked Balthazar.
”This is the Manasa research laboratory, it is one of the laboratories under the Research division of the Blyth Medical. I work here at the capacity of one of the administrator here leading a group of pharmaceutical researchers. But, my actual work is done underground,” explained Salazar.
They soon got out of the elevator into a corridor and soon reached Salazar's office. Once in his office, Salazar connected Balthazar's wrist band to the computer there and transferred a few manuals with no names to him. ”These manuals would allow you to navigate through the tunnels at the forbidden region. There will be a lot of censored information in the manuals which you wouldn't be able to view. It can only be viewed if you have the right clearance level. These can only be viewed through your wrist band and can't be transferred to any other device. Any such attempt would damage you wrist band and make it useless,” said Salazar.