The General stood in front of the ranch house watching the man in a suit climb out of the small plane in the wide field opposite. He had been expecting this visit ever since The Facility went operational two years ago. Hidden below a run down old ranch in the one of the least populated areas in one of the least populated States was a hi-tech, black-ops secret complex. It had cost a lot of money to put it all together and the man in the suit was finally here to see how all those dollars had been spent.

'The Visitor' as the General rather contemptuously referred to him, wasn't the actual source of the money, he was just the paper-pushing dweeb who was his secret interface for the powers-that-be who were paying for all this technology. But petty bureaucrats have a burning need to feel important and when the nerd said he was coming for an inspection the General knew that he had no choice but to say yes.

The General looked every inch the ranch owner and good-ol-boy, although the two hulking bodyguards behind him would certainly have looked out of place to any casual observer. But in this remote area any outside observer, casual or otherwise, would be pretty obvious. Which, of course, is why this particular location had been chosen for The Facility. In fact, apart from 'The Visitor', no-one outside The Facility knew its location at all.

And The General intended to keep it that way.