"I'm sorry, sir," began the guard, tersely, "I can't—"

"Oh, stop it," Rouge snapped. She walked up to the guard and stared up at him.

"You know who we are, and you know we're scheduled to be here. No-one goes in or out of here without a log sheet and a signed order from the day clerk. You," she pointed accusingly at the guard sitting at the computer terminal, "I bet you're looking at it right now. You're just delaying us to be stubborn. I'm a government agent, and I could report any one of you personally to the president, so let us in right now."

The man looked down at her woodenly, peering over the edge of his bullet-proof vest to look down at the tiny, scolding bat. After a few moments where he locked iron gazes with her, he looked away. He glanced up at one of the cameras that were recessed around the walls of the room, and then resignedly stepped aside. He gestured to the inside of the sally port, with its air-lock configuration of doors.

"Right this way."

Without another word, or look, or even the faintest acknowledgment of any kind to the security personnel, Rock strode forward into the lock.

With everyone inside, the door slid shut with all the subtlety of a slow-moving car crash. Four heavy bolts clunked and thunked into place and whirred as they spun and latched, and did whatever other fiddly things giant super-max security doors did to satisfy the condition of locked like a tomb.

The lights immediately turned red.

"Authorization failure," said a synthesized female voice. "The number of persons in the lock does not match registration records. Lockdown initiated. Please stand by for further instruction from security personnel."

They were locked in a twelve foot metal box. Outside, the officer smiled for the first time since they arrived.

The primate, though shaken into looking at his environment in bewilderment for a few seconds, ultimately seemed unfazed. He stepped up to a pedestal that stood freely out of the floor off to the side of the second door. It prominently displayed a console with a screen, keypad, and card reader. He pulled his ID off again and swiped it through, then punched a sequence of numbers into the keypad.

"Identification confirmed," said the computer. "Sp-E1 clearance confirmed."

The officer's heart shrank a couple sizes smaller, along with his choked throat and beaded eyes. A volumetric display meanwhile appeared in midair above the keypad. It was a full 3D map of the complex.

Rock casually reached up, spun the model with a hand gesture, found their present location, and poked a couple glowing red icons next to the chamber.

"This area is locked down. Reason: Negative identification."

"Override," ordered Rock plainly.

"Sp-E1 clearance confirmed," it repeated a second time. Without further ado, the lights returned to normal and the door ahead unlatched and slid open. And with that, they were finally free to proceed.

Rock glanced at Sheffer. At only the most barely audible level, as he scratched his nose (surreptitiously to cover his mouth), he muttered, "More than I thought, too."

The hallway beyond the door was of steel from floor to ceiling. Pipes and conduits ran overhead and along high parts of the walls, among only "sufficient" lighting. It was fluorescent lit, but only enough to give everything a kind of harsh, unwelcoming look, while still somehow being dim.

There were no guards or anyone else yet. The moderately long hall sloped downward with no branching corridors or rooms. It opened up into a sort of junction room, however, with a higher ceiling, and open spaces. To the left, a corridor to some other part of the facility; to the right, the same, but larger, presumably to accommodate vehicles. Straight ahead, the floor ended with a nearly-sheer drop off what might as well have been an artificial cliff made of steel. The bottom could not be seen; the drop was a very steep slope down into darkness. A waist-high (for them, neck-high) railing protected would-be lemmings from any missteps, though one section was open, allowing access to a huge, square elevator platform.

GUN Mono Beetles hovered in the corners of the chamber, watching the group's movements intently. GUN Hunters stood inactive along the walls, guns and riot shields in-hand. Shipping containers were stacked in some areas, most of them with G.U.N. stencils.

Rock moved past it all and boarded the elevator platform. Once the others joined him, he swiped his ID on the control console and pressed the button. Safety rails popped up out of the floor (to keep any hypothetical individuals above from falling down while the platform was away), and the elevator started noisily down into the dull abyss. The roar of the elevator motor was loud enough that Rock was comfortable speaking.

"Everybody just... stay cool," he advised as best he could (although his expression betrayed how ineffectual he must have felt it was). "Rekk knows we're here, everything's documented—they know better than to try to make us disappear. It'd be treason."

The device whirred then hummed and began to vibrate. It then rocked a thudding jolt through Sheffer's hand.

The lights nearby flickered and the elevator platform jerked before continuing on its way down. The sensor Dr. Henshin had prepared worked differently than any previous sensor, using a radar-like pulse of radiation. Unfortunately, to be functional this meant it had to be powerful. This kind of "blasting energy everywhere in hopes of getting a ping back" approach meant it was extremely obvious. Mono Beetles immediately started descending into the shaft from above, hovering all around and examining the group and the surrounding area. No action was yet being taken, however.

As for the readout: Currently muddled and useless because they were in an elevator shaft with solid steel backed by bajillions of tons of dirt on all sides. Maybe later.

Apparently, the period of inactivity and lack of further disruption or damage of any kind was good enough for the drones, which backed off after hovering right around everyone for a good fifteen seconds. They still stayed within view, but not... getting up in everyone's business, as it was.

The elevator reached the bottom, and its front rail retracted into the floor. (Possibly the one Sheff was grasping, if fate had not yet been cruel enough to him.)