Eve In Utopia

Chapter Twelve

The New Utopia resort was really a series of buildings connected by above ground walkways and underground tunnels. There were the three main towers, designated Alpha, Beta and Gamma, that were a hundred stories tall and used by guests. The employees had a series of smaller and much less luxurious buildings that they were crowded into such as the one Eve and Joy lived in. There was also a twenty thousand seat concert facility that attracted the biggest names for concerts and a fifty thousand square metre convention facility. To power it all, the resort boasted its own small modular nuclear reactor in its own separate building.

Eve had spent most of the night tracking down the six mysterious devices her tablet had detected. She had found five of them so far, though the discoveries hadn't done her much good. Those five had been in the basement of each of the three main towers, the base of the concert venue and as far as she could tell, directly under the nuclear reactor. The readings from the sensors built into her tablet confirmed that the devices were in fact massively powerful conventional explosives that if detonated would completely destroy the buildings they were under. Terrorists didn't need to try and sneak a nuclear bomb onto the island as the large conventional explosive under the reactor would be a very nice substitute. The problem was that all the bombs were buried under at least a half metre of concrete and couldn't be removed with anything less than a jackhammer. Eve rather suspected that the vibrations of such an attempt would be likely to trigger the devices which was going to make removing them rather problematic. The sixth device was the one Eve was currently trying to confirm as she ventured down the stairs into the subbasement of the convention center.

Knowing what to expect from the first five devices, Eve headed for the approximate center of the building and began her scans. It didn't take long to confirm her suspicions as her tablet's sensor picked up another huge explosive device. How had these things been installed without anyone noticing during construction? They would have required multiple people to install them and what about the building inspectors? There had been something in the blueprints about earthquake detectors, but such a device and a bomb would look about as much alike as a Volkswagen and a Ferrari would resemble each other.

"Can I help you lassie?"

Eve had been so caught up in her musings that she hadn't heard the man enter the storage room she was in. Damn, that was careless, she thought angrily. The program she had injected into the resort's security system automatically erased her from cameras, but it couldn't do anything about someone seeing her in person.

"I know I shouldn't be here," said Eve turning to look at the tall, muscular man in a coverall, "but I'm kind of an architect groupie and I wanted to take a closer look at the buildings of the resort. They are really a masterpiece."

"Aye, that they are," agreed the man with what Eve thought was a Scottish accent. "And that's an interesting piece of technology you have there in your hands too lassie."

"It's just a normal tablet with a few specialized apps," replied Eve, quickly powering down the tablet to keep the man from seeing anything more of it.

"Specialized apps indeed if they can detect bombs," said the man in a casual tone as if discussing the weather forecast.

"Bombs?" echoed Eve, trying to put surprise and shock into her voice, but she knew she had hesitated a fraction of a second too long as she had just been taken too much by surprise.

"That's what I said," answered the man. "My name is Montgomery by the way, Monty to my friends."

"So, are we friends Monty, and please tell me your last name isn't Scott."

Monty threw back his head and laughed. "It is, but only on the employment records for the resort. I just couldn't resist using that name when I applied for an engineer's job here and they didn't even blink an eye at it." The man's brown eyes twinkled merrily, "I'm afraid it's going to blow captain. The whole damn thing is going to blow."