12 A Bomb?

Picking up her servers, the two walked through another pair of doors into the airport. Looking around, the airport was surprisingly empty. Seeing the surprised expressions on their faces, well mostly just Ace's face since Aida tended to have an expressionless and cold face no matter what, the police standing on the side explained, "We did a clean sweep of the entire airport and had everyone go through the blood test. Unfortunately, over 99% of the people within the airport were already infected so they were moved outside."

This explained the various bodies lying on the ground on the other partitioned tent. Apparently, they had sedated all the infected and kept them in a separate room for the scientists to study.

"You can head on down to Terminal 1, that's where any plane departing will leave."

Nodding to show their gratitude, they made their way to Terminal 1. Aida placed her servers onto the conveyor belt.

BEEP BEEP BEEP! The alarm on the x-ray system went off, and they pulled Aida's bag off the conveyor belt. Many people looked over as the sound was piercing.

"Who's bag is this?"

Aida raised her hand and walked over, responding in a calm voice, "It's mine."

The inspector brought her bag to the side and opened it, seeing a big metal mass and comparing it with all the complex wiring through the x-ray picture. The inspector's look turned severe as he looked at Aida, secretly pressing a button behind him. "Please wait a moment."

After a moment, a few police with guns ran over to the counter. The leader of the group, Randy, asked, "What's the situation?"

The inspector quickly walked over and hid behind them while explaining, "This Miss has a bomb in her bag!"

"..." What?!

Aida did not know whether to laugh or cry. She didn't realize her servers, after her modifications would look like a bomb to them!

Randy made a gesture and the team of police raised their guns, "Step away from the bag slowly with your hands up." Randy was clearly a professional, most likely not just a standard police officer, he was calm and collected in spite of a potential bomb less than 2 meters from him.

Shrugging indifferently at the guns pointed at her, she complied. This day was truly testing her patience. If they dared to shoot the servers, she would make sure they paid the equivalent price in blood even if they were just doing their jobs.

Raising her hands, she took a few steps back. Raising an eyebrow, she inquired, "Is this far enough? Do you need me to explain to you what's in the bag?"

Randy was impressed by her calmness and poise despite having so many guns pointing at her, not many would be able to keep their composure. He kept a neutral expression on his face.

"Please do."

"It's a server that I modified. We just came back from a conference in the city. I'm a programmer for a company in City X."

"How can you prove that this isn't a bomb?"

"How can you prove that it is?" Aida countered, "Don't worry, I have no suicidal thoughts at all. If I did, I wouldn't have bothered to fight my way across the city through dozens of infected people just to get here to the airport. Even if I wanted to kill people, wouldn't bringing in a vial of infected blood into the airport be far more effective? Your x-rays would never alert you if someone were to do that. Are you telling me that's not enough justification?"

Randy, the police squad and the inspector were all speechless. She indeed made a fair argument. Why would anyone bother bringing a bomb into the airport and committing suicide when they already had a perfectly viable option just outside the door?

"Understood. Nevertheless, I need you to open the bag and prove that it isn't a bomb." Randy responded.

Rolling her eyes, she watched as the police squad moved everyone away from the scene. Ace stood quietly behind Aida, prepared to "protect" her from harm's way. She then walked slowly over to the bag and explained every action she made to pacify the trigger happy police.

"I'm going to take out the server from my bag first, then I need to grab a screw driver within my bag and unscrew parts of the server. Don't shoot okay?"

Moving to the server, she calmly pulled it out of her bag and acquired the screwdriver. Then she started unscrewing one of the boards to show the inner workings of the server. The wires inside were a mess as she did not have zip ties in the hotel to hold everything down. Then she shined a light into the box and said, "See? No chemicals, not even a battery in there. How could I possibly build a bomb with no chemicals to explode or an incendiary device to trigger the bomb? Are you all satisfied now?"

Randy walked up to Aida. He gave her a deep look before turning to inspect the internal wiring of the server. After verifying that there were indeed no tubes of chemicals nor even any batteries or fans, he nodded to the police squad. "All clear." The police squad lowered their weapons.

Bowing slightly towards Randy, he said, "We apologize for the inconvenience Miss. Thank you for your cooperation. Would you mind sharing your name with me?"

"Is this a request or demand?" Aida asked coolly. On the side, Ace looked ready to tear Randy apart.

Randy smiled, "Just a request from a curious soul."

"Goodbye." Aida turned around and walked away as Ace put the server back into the bag and chased after her. She completely dismissed Randy's request.

Randy watched as she turned around and walked away, shaking his head slightly with a smile on her face. 'What an interesting girl I've found in this random coastal town.'