The consoles were spread out across the floor of the room with wires, cords, and associated connections stretched out in equal measure. In the center of the chaos stood Ensign Carolyn Crawford, Zephyr’s Chief Engineer. Members of her team and the science team worked from each console and display, tracing the connections back through the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor. They had worked on the walls, pulling plaster, wood, stone, and insulation out as they chased the connections back to where, in theory, a central computer would sit. The work had been ongoing for the better part of four hours.

On the other side of the room was Lieutenant Calvert Rogers, the tall, thin, and task-oriented Chief of Operations for the Zephyr. He was deep into the evolving schematics his team was building as they went from room to room. The early excitement at pulling at the wires was fading in a frustrated funk as the building pointedly refused to give up its secrets. He walked into the center of the room, annoyed. Crawford finished her conversation with her team and made her way to stand by his side, searching the bland rock walls and ceiling for clues or ideas. She asked, “You think they did this intentionally? Crosswired the systems and tied them all up to prevent people like us from discovering what happened here?”

Rogers frowned deeper, his mind working overtime to grasp what was eluding them. “They took great care to use the weapon to erase all traces of The Sentinel program. It seems they were concerned with ensuring the secrecy of this place and its use. You don’t take measures like this without a significant reason.” He handed her his PADD, “We’ve mapped the entire building.” Rogers waited for her to scroll through the maps they had built, watching her pause on certain screens, zoom in on certain parts of the building, and then move on. She repeated this several times.

Carolyn looked up, “Something is missing.” She sidled up to him, working her way back through the images, “It’s in the architecture – each part of the design has a corresponding piece on the other side. Except here and here – that hallway.” She searched his eyes as she handed the PADD back, “But you knew that already.”

Calvert shrugged, “We had a theory. I needed an engineer’s eyes, and I didn’t want to clue you in – you might end up looking in the wrong place or for the wrong thing. The good news is that the hallway is the key. Care to join me in attempting to break down an invisible door?” She decided to let the deception fall by the wayside for now.  He wasn’t wrong – she might have chased the wrong clue.  She followed him through the main hall, around a corner, and down a nondescript hallway until they faced a further nondescript wall.

“There.” She pointed as she searched for the design oddity. It was in the middle of each corner. One flared design was there, and elsewhere it wasn’t. A small onconsequentrial empty space stared back at them. Crawford turned and walked to where the design element was, scanning it with a tricorder. She adjusted the sensors of the unit carefully until a quiet beep sounded. “There is a minuscule amount of power running through this design element in this corner. It wouldn’t have shown up without my adjustments. Permission to engage?” Calvert nodded, putting his hand on his phaser, calling over some of the security officers. She pressed the design, and a groan shuddered through the building as the wall began to shake. The hallway rumbled with a low growl as the massive stone wall slid into the ground, scraping harshly against the floor, eventually stopping with a heavy ‘thunk’.

Calvert blinked in surprise, motioning the security team to follow as he led Crawford into the dusty doorway. Flashlights clicked out and attached to uniform straps as they group carefully stepped down on old stone steps that led in a gentle circle, twisting until the large basement opened. He scanned, “Lots of unusual power readings here. Proceed with care.” As he stepped off the stairs, a thunderous electric buzz snapped on as flickering lights above them powered on, revealing a wondrous science lab with equipment.

Crawford walked around, tricorder in hand. Her tricorder beeped loudly, and she took off running towards the back of the room. There, at a stone desk, and a decaying chair lay a skeleton, slumped over the desk. She tapped her badge to get a medical team on their way. The clothes were in tatters, but appeared to be a lab coat in tatters. She turned to Calvert as he caught up with her, “Tricorder picked him up.” She stepped back, pointing at what was in the skeletal hand, “Lieutenant Calvert – that’s a trigger of some kind.” Carolyn stepped back further as the senior of the two of them stopped forward, tricorder in hand.

He walked to the side of the desk, scanning as he got as close as he thought safe. His stomach lurched at the possibilities. He said, “His finger is far off the trigger.” He traced the wire on the device up the wall, down the other side of the room, to where it turned again, and then went down to the floor. “Where does it go from there, Ensign Crawford?”

She had followed his eyes and traced it with him. She bounded over to where it was and followed it to where it wired into a large unit in the middle of the lab. She walked around the tall cylinder, scanning as she went until she had made a lap. “Tricorder can’t penetrate it – whatever they put in the metal was designed to keep prying eyes out. There are no labels, no markings…it’s just a blank canvas that’s probably a bomb designed to take out the lab.”

Calvert completed his tour of the mystery, joining her in examining the exterior. “They have to know it didn’t explode. Why didn’t they come back to finish the job?”

Crawford asked, “Did they? The three other locations are not within hearing distance. Maybe their guy made a last-second decision not to pull the trigger?”

A new voice spoke up from across the room where the body lay, “He did not make the choice, Ensign Crawford.” Carolyn turned and found Lieutenant Hiro, the lead nurse on Zephyr, standing over the body with a medical tricorder and a small team working with her. The even voice of Nurse Hiro was a quiet comfort to her.

She took one last look at the large cylinder and approached Hiro, asking, “What happened then?”

The nurse pointed out the head and the back of the neck, “It is not easy to see or detect after all this time, but this man was murdered, brutally. My preliminary finding is that he was stabbed in the back of the neck and then shot by some kind of projectile weapon in the head. A very clean shot, as it is small enough and did not cause physical damage to the skull in the ways you would expect.”

Carolyn glanced around the room, “Someone killed him to stop him from destroying this evidence? What was so important about keeping this place from being destroyed?” The questions were coming fast and furious now, and she did not like the implications that were starting to appear possible.

Calvert had worked his way through the room and had found a console against the wall at a workstation. He was scrolling through schematics that he had managed to activate. He called Carolyn over, “I don’t have an answer to that, but I have another question.” She stared at the screen and was soon joined by Hiro. Calvert pointed at the glowing display, “The question is…what is that?”

On the screen, an additional basement floor lay beneath them. The design was confusing to them, as it looked like a display unit at the front of the room, surrounded by unrecognizable equipment and technology. Carolyn traced the lines and muttered, “Is that…a holding tank?”

Hiro took a second look, “I can not say for certain. Whatever is down there, you must take Doctor Longfellow with you – he will understand it. He will not like it.”

Calvert eyed Hiro before he retreated to call for Lieutenant Longfellow. She wasn’t the spooked type. Yet he couldn’t ignore her eyes, and how wide they had become seeing that last schematic.