HOME BUT NOT HOME

Chapter 54 - the Scrapyard

Chapter 54 – the Scrapyard

On the road, Kanzen City
Korolev Crater, Mars
Thursday, May 7, 2076
16:31 EST GMT-5

After finishing at Jonathan's Bar, we then went to explore our area of interest. The hover taxi then took us to a strange location. It looked like some scrapyard or junkyard of sorts. We found old computer parts, old and broken stoves, ovens, washer-dryers and dishwashers. Along with car parts. What were cars doing on Mars, had us confused. But looking at the cars, it looked like they were high end expensive vehicles, owned by rich clients, who relocated to the Red Planet. We saw some airborne drones pointing cameras down at us.

"We need to be careful!" I told my team. "God knows what is going on here."

"What do you recommend?" asked Aurora.

"Keep your head down and on a swivel at all times." I instructed my team.

"Hoo-ah!" said Ranger and Aurora.

We then got out of the taxi and proceeded to enter the scrapyard. We then also put on some special heat-sensing goggles, with X-ray vision. I.V.A.N.A also helped guide us. Surely enough, it seemed everything was okay. But we continued to explore.

"Great, we came for nothing." I told my team. "This place is empty."

"Wait, do you see that?" asked Ranger, pointing to a small building. "I sense some electronic signals coming from there."

"It is worth checking out." I said in agreement.

We then made our way over to the building. It was the scrapyard office. There was a sign on the door saying, Authorized Personnel Only. Of course, that wouldn't apply to us as we were in the military.

"We can definitely find something here." Aurora said. "It doesn't look that big, one of us can stay outside and guard the area."

"Ranger, you go ahead and do that." I said to my commanding officer. "We'll check it out."

"Affirmative!" said Ranger. "Be careful. The place is rigged with alarms and a security system. Can't hack it, as the systems are protected with strong encryption."

"We got it!" I assured him.

Me and Aurora went inside the building. The office seemed quite simple. There were plenty of boxes filled with folders and USB thumb drives as well as portable hard drives. Then we found the source of electricity. It was coming from a laptop, which was left open and unattended. A Dell laptop from about fifty years ago, on a wireless charging pad, which kept the battery full. To our chagrin, it was password protected, but we saw it had a fingerprint sensor. So, we took out our tools and began looking for fingerprints, then did the same for the fingerprint sensor, to determine which fingerprints we found presented a match. Once we got the fingerprint we needed, we placed it on the biometric scanner, and the laptop unlocked. We found a typed address in an open Notepad document. Aurora and I both began to search for the address.

"No way!" said Aurora.

"This address is of an old house in the city, located in the suburban areas of the dome. Doesn't look like anyone had lived here in years." I said to Aurora and Ranger over my small radio. "Ranger, we got what we need. Let's move from here! Who knows whoever was using this, may come back soon."

We then quickly wiped the area, and made it look like we never came around. We also had I.V.A.N.A loop the surveillance videos. Then left to go to that address.