Rita glanced a bit dubiously down the hole and then carefully began to climb down.
Mel went next, then Con followed.
Rita looked around, her curiosity clear to see.He remembered the feeling too well.Half awe, a little creeped out.He’d wondered what he’d gotten himself into.
Now he knew.It was still a bit creepy, but more familiar now.
“This way,” Mel said.
She led them to an area of the silo Con hadn’t been before.Their footsteps ran hollowly on the metal floor and the air was stale, though not damp.
Mel stopped outside an opened hatch.Inside, Con could see a weird looking contraption and several chairs.
Rita followed Mel inside, looking around with wide eyes, but she became increasingly tense when Mel directed her to sit in the chair nearest the contraption.
It must be the lie detector, he decided.It was pretty handy that it had been here when Jack took over the place, or so he’d heard.
Still worked, too.
The old machine looked like it’d had a hard life.It was metal and had wheels that used to roll, but now they limped.It was chest high with lots of dials and switches and splotches of rust randomly applied.Did it really still work?
He arched a brow in Mel’s direction and she shrugged.Maybe it was for show?
“I’ll just attach these,” Mel said, pulling out the cables and studying them briefly.
Rita looked a bit green in the weird illumination of the old room, but she held out her arms when Mel asked her to.When Mel attached the cables, her expression of strain turned to surprise.
She looked down, then up.
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”Mel asked.
“More than this.”
Con exchanged an uneasy look with Mel.
“Have you done this before?”Mel asked.
“It was part of the application process to join the agency,” Rita said.“It wasn’t…fun.”
“Well, this won’t hurt a bit,” Mel assured her.She leaned back.“We need to get your levels, so I’m going to ask you to lie and then tell me the truth about something.”
How would she tell the difference?Con wondered.
Rita nodded.“I’m not from the future,” she said.
The stylus scraped across the paper.Con noticed Rita watched it with as much interest as he and Mel.
“And something true?”
“My name is Rita Graven and I’m a time traveling researcher.”Rita leaned closer.“How do you tell the difference?”
Mel pointed to the lie pattern.“This shows stress, which is a ‘tell,’ if you’re lying.”
“I’m pretty stressed,” Rita said, with a wry grin.“The two lines aren’t that different.”
“No, but there are differences, enough differences to help,” Mel said.
