WISE - October 197X

Sylvia swept past the first stage of the WISE security system - only a staff ID, as a preliminary measure - and her heels clicked on the concrete floor as she made her way to the reinforced steel door.

Sylvia could have easily walked silently within the WISE halls, despite her heels, but she liked the way that their clacking on the floors announced her presence to everyone nearby. She liked to be heard - though she may not have been the leader of WISE itself, she was the head of the Berlint Base, but for many of the employees, she may as well have been the

real

head, for the way that she led them purposefully, making all the hard decisions that needed to be made.

The steel door before her could only be opened through a biometric security system - using iris and fingerprint scanners - and Sylvia quickly let it scan her, opening the door to a row of cells with more steel doors, each barred, and locked.