This is a fanfiction of scifiwriter's Enhancement for the 250K contest. 

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"Dr. Shays, the supervisor is asking for you." 

I nearly jumped out of my chair at the sound of the cool, almost robotic voice from behind me. My secretary, as prompt and helpful as she was, had a quite frightening habit of sneaking up on me when I was least expecting it. 

"I'll be right there, Elyse," I said over my shoulder, logging out of my computer, pushing my rolling leather chair back, and following Elyse out the door. 

"So, how has your Enhancement Project been going?" She chirped, trying to make conversation to combat the awkwardness of our silent journey through the sterile, rectangular halls of the Department." 

"That's classified information," I said tersely. 

"I thought we were friends, Dr. Shays," Elyse frowned. "You can trust me! I'm not going to go tell every guy on the street!" 

"President Hybriad himself forced everyone working on the Enhancement Project to swear to total secrecy!" I hissed. "I think they're serious about us not telling anyone." 

"Oh," Elyse sighed. I didn't blame her for her curiosity. These days, almost everyone in the Department was working long hours on the Enhancement Project, and those not involved were quite understandably itching to know what it was all about. 

"He's waiting in there," Elyse stopped in front of a thick mahogany door on which hung a brass plaque reading "Dr. Jim Walters." 

"Thank you," I muttered, before giving the door three sharp raps. 

"Dr. Shays?" 

"Yes," 

"Come in." 

I gently turned the large doorknob and stepped inside. The supervisor's office was smaller and homelier than I thought it would be. Dr. Walters' walls were covered in framed photos of himself and his family and his shelves were filled with thick, hard bound books. Such a large collection of hard copy novels was quite an achievement in this age of technology. 

"Welcome, Miranda," Dr. Walters smiled thinly. 

"Hello. What can I do for you?" 

"Ah, getting right down to business, are we? I like it!" Dr. Walters chuckled. "Well, I have something very important to show you." 

He reached into one of his desk's many drawers and retrieved a small, rounded silver object. Placing it on his desk, he pressed an unseen button on its underside. It began to whir and hiss, as sheets of steel and glass began to unfold from its belly. After a few seconds, it had flattened into an ultra-thin screen. 

Dr. Walters tapped the middle of the screen and it flickered to life, showing a blue holographic map of America covered in floating red dots. 

"Each one of these dots represents one of the Enhancement Project's unfairly Screened subjects. These places where many dots are concentrated," he pointed to a few large blotches of red, "are our Pods, where the subjects are held and experimented on." 

"I'm aware of this, but how is it relevant to anything right now?" I asked, a bit bewildered. 

"It's very relevant, because of this dot right here," he tapped one of the few red dots that wasn't in a cluster with others. "It may very well be the most important red dot in this country," he laughed dryly. 

After observing the dot, I noticed that it was different from the others. It was larger, and blinked flashes of blue and purple instead of being a solid red. 

"Who is it?" I asked. 

"Her name is Holland Renner," Dr. Walters smiled. "She's defied pretty much everything the Department has put in place to keep the subjects under control. She acted out violently, repeatedly attempting to resist Screeners while she was in the Pod, spoke and acted rebelliously, and intentionally disabled Enhancement tech." 

"Then...aren't you supposed to report her?" I raised an eyebrow. 

"I am," Dr. Walters nodded. "But that's not what I'm going to do." 

He smiled slyly as he clicked the exit button on the top of the screen, and then "delete file." 

"Now, that's unrecoverable," he beamed triumphantly. "No one's ever going to see that there's absolutely anything wrong with the Enhancement Project." 

I gasped, my eyes going wide. There was no way that Jim Walters, one of the Enhancement Project's most loyal employees, just deleted a file that contained valuable evidence!

"How..." 

"I'm not who I pretend to be, Miranda," he whispered, leaning in so that I could hear him. "Although I've sure put on one heck of an act. Listen, I'm telling you this because I know you hate the Enhancement Project as much as I do." 

At this, I was even more shocked. How could he have known? Although I despised the Department's work with every inch of my being, and had for as long as I'd been there, I never did anything to overtly show it! 

Noticing my surprised expression, he laughed. "When you're disloyal, you tend to be quite perceptive. You analyze things other people don't even notice, trying to see if they're a threat. And, in the process, you end up seeing other things as well. Like potential allies," he smiled up at me. 

"Are you saying you're a...rebel?" I stared, not able to believe what I was hearing. 

"I know what you're thinking," he looked down at his desk. "Rebels don't hold high paying government jobs in big cities. Rebels live in faraway, almost unreal places like Pod 14. No! The reason places like Pod 14 can exist is because so many rebels live in the cities! It's because so many of us are relatively safe that they can afford to take that risk." 

"But the government destroyed Pod 14 a few weeks ago. It was on the news." 

"My point exactly!" Dr. Walters clasped his hands together. "A bunch of rebels crowded in one place is literally asking to be captured! However, a thousand individual insurgents spread out across the country with no way of contacting each other don't do much good either. That's why, yesterday, I had a glorious idea." 

"What?" I asked, suddenly excited for this. 

"We need to start reaching out and finding each other, one at a time, slowly so as to not arouse suspicion," he explained. "We need to, quite literally connect the dots. But, there's just one problem. You need at least two dots to draw the first line. Miranda, will you help me start?" He asked. 

"But...I'm not a rebel!" I sputtered. 

"You don't need to be part of some underground organization to be a rebel," Dr. Walters chuckled. "You just have to have a strong sense of justice and what's right inside of you that no amount of pressure can destroy, and you do, Miranda. I see it in you." He gave me one of the most sincerely hopeful smiles I had ever seen. 

"I'm honored to be called a rebel," I beamed, shaking his hand. "And I'm going to help you connect the dots, because million tiny, useless strings of spider silk can make the world's stickiest web."