Not too bad of a reaction considering we had only been quarantined for an hour. It had been one heck of a crazy day and the sun wasn’t even up yet.

“I think this is it,” Trip pointed at a door that was nearly invisible under the strange lighting. There was a swipe pad for a key card. He tugged on the door, found it locked, then knocked and waited.

A few seconds later it was opened for us by a middle-aged, overweight man in a wrinkled gray suit, who blocked the way and regarded us suspiciously. He was wearing a big gold name tag that read Mitch. “Who’re you?”

“We’re from MHI,” Trip said.

“Let’s see some ID,” he demanded.

Trip looked down at his body armor. “Seriously?”

“These particular circumstances aren’t exactly in the handbook, okay? Gimme a second…Fine. Management warned me you were coming. This is on them if you do anything stupid. All right. I’m the night-shift surveillance room supervisor. This way.”

We entered a very normal corridor that could have come out of any office building in America. “How’d they tell you we were coming? I thought the phones were down.”

“There’s an internal switchboard and operator. We can still call from room to room, but we can’t call out,” Mitch explained. That was good to know. I’d have to make sure to alert Earl and spread the word. “I saw you coming. I see everything here. Management said I was supposed to fully cooperate with you.” He took note of Abomination and Trip’s KRISS submachine gun. “Rules say no unauthorized weapons in the control room. That’s in the handbook.”

“I’m not feeling real rulesy right now, Mitch.”

“We’re trained professionals,” Trip said. “We’re perfectly safe.”

“Friggin’ management…I get fired if I don’t follow the handbook but they just toss order right out the window at the first sign of trouble. Management just picks and chooses which rules to ignore and then everything turns to chaos, and you watch, because then it goes on my evaluation…Chaos, I tell you.”

“Total chaos. Complete pandemonium, I know, but here’s the thing, you can have my full-auto shotgun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Apparently your management is on my side in this argument, so quit dinking around and let’s go.”

“All right, fine. Guns, guns, guns. You better be on your best behavior.” The chunky man turned and led us down the hall. “What’s going on?”

“Have you seen the news?” I asked.

“Before it went out, we were. It isn’t Ebola,” Mitch said. “I know that much.”

“What do you know?”

“Damned near everything.”

“That’s unlikely,” I whispered to Trip.

“Whatever it is, we don’t need outside contractors to handle it. We’ve got our own security force here. My guys can handle anything.”