Page 9 of Gravel and Grit

Sitting back in her seat, she stretched the kinks out of her back from being hunched over her keyboard for the last… however many hours. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was almost three in the morning.

“No wonder I’m starving to death.”

Avoiding the break room was seriously inhibiting her ability to eat. By the time everyone left the lab for the residential area, she was so hungry she bordered onhangry,which meant no one wanted to be around her, even if she weren’t actively avoiding them. That might be helpful for her subterfuge, but it was damned uncomfortable for her stomach, not to mention being at fault for the couple of pounds she was sure she’d lost over the last week. She

may not have the figure she’d learned most men wanted, but she liked her curves and didn’t have any desire to lose them, particularly not by starvation.

Mira reached under her work surface for her purse, pulled the heavy thing into her lap, and dug inside, searching for something to fill the hole in her middle. A cracker. One of those bite-sized chocolates. Hell, she’d take a stray Tic Tac at this point, but there was nothing.

She made a habit of keeping a survival kit of sorts in her bag—a practice developed from growing up in such unstable environments and not knowing where she’d sleep or if the foster family of the week would feed her regularly

—but this wasn’t the first time she’d scavenged her purse.

Sighing, she set it on the table and got up to go raid the break room vending machines. She was nearly out the door when the device made a new noise, startling her. It wasn’t the beep it made almost a week ago, and it wasn’t the low humming sound it’d been making ever since. This sounded like a ping. And it was louder than the last beep had been.

It was alarming enough to make her forget her empty cavern of a stomach.

Racing back to her work station, she scanned the data scrolling across the screen and saw that the device had sent out a signal.

“Everything okay in here, Ms. Bennett?” came a gruff voice from behind her.

Shit. Shitshitshit.

In her alarm, she’d stupidly forgotten to remain calm and shut the lab door.

Turning in her chair, she saw one of the black ops security guys standing in the entryway to the lab, staring at her. She thought his name was Luke, but didn’t know for sure, since she avoided him and the rest of his buddies. They all seemed nice enough, but there was something in their eyes—a detached kind of coldness—that never failed to set off her internal alarms. Mira knew it was their job to protect her and the rest of the people who worked in Area 51, but instead of making her feel safe, they unnerved her.

Maybe it was knowing that, if it came down to it, she was disposable, and they would be the ones to dispose of her.

“Everything’s fine. Just a ping from the… translation software telling me it decoded something. Nothing to worry about,” she assured, smiling calmly.

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he eventually nodded then turned to leave.

Mira didn’t relax until he was out of sight, and the sound of his booted

footsteps faded down the hallway. She had a bad feeling he didn’t fully believe her lie and mentally chastised herself for not controlling her reaction better. Now, there was a better-than-good chance he’d keep a closer eye on her.

“That might not be a bad thing,” she whispered, as she read the information on her screen, confirming a signal had been sent.

The potential implications of that were unnerving, to say the least.

Mira wasn’t overly reckless, nor was she naive enough to think she was perfectly safe in the underground lab, but after a few minutes passed with no answering signal, she decided she wasn’t willing to throw in the towel and give up what was quite possibly her only chance to advance her career.

If she sounded the alarm now and revealed her prior knowledge—and the fact that she’d kept it to herself—without anything to show for her subterfuge, she’d be facing a world of trouble, up to and including her termination. And not the kind where she was just fired. The permanent kind.

But if she kept it under wraps for just a little while longer, she could be looking at an even bigger leap in the ranks than she’d initially anticipated.

She was so close to cracking the device and discovering everything it was capable of. Being able to present that breakthrough would be huge, but if the device was signaling aliens, and she was the one to inform the General—and was, therefore, instrumental in facilitating first contact—she’d make herself invaluable.

I need to confirm this data and see if I can pinpoint where the signal isbeing sent, before I report my findings.

Keeping everything to herself was still a gamble, but it was one she was willing to take… right up until reality wormed its way past her ambition and excitement. It sank in that first contact on a military base/secret underground lab might not end well for the alien.

Horrific images of it being experimented on and vivisected for the rest of its life flashed through her mind, making her stomach roll and her heart squeeze.

That served to make her hesitate in her plan where the possibility of her own death hadn’t.

For a long minute, Mira fought with the sudden and foolish impulse to send another signal through the device to alert whomever or whatever might be on the other side and warn it off. Only her inability to convey such a message with any guarantee of accuracy made her pause long enough for

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