by Hinze, Vicki
“That’s warm for specimens, isn’t it?” Emma knew it was but asked anyway.
“Definitely,” Mason confirmed. “Freezers containing the specimens are in the inner ring’s HC vault. It’s sealed.”
HC. High containment. “I’ll need the tour,” she said, seeing a man about Mason’s age leaving his office to join them in the outer ring. Unlike Mason, the man wore teal scrubs and a white medical jacket. He also wore clear protective eyewear and Poly boots for splash protection, which struck her as odd since he’d been in his office and not in the HC lab.
“David Johnson,” he said, extending his bare hand. His smile was warm and friendly.
She shook his hand. “Emma Miller.”
“Glad you got here,” David added, releasing her hand and stepping back. “I feel better riding out Holly with a security specialist on the premises.”
“She isn’t a security specialist,” Mason said, his tone slightly edgy and sharp. “She’s a reporter.”
“What?” David frowned. His confusion settled into anxiety. “What is she doing here?”
“She’s a sub for the security specialist who isn’t coming,” Mason said, disclosing maximum information in minimal words. “Headquarters gave Emma full authority.”
David’s anxiety deepened.
Mason wasn’t happy about her being here, but what was wrong with him, telling David that? Did the man seriously intend to make her job more difficult, undermining her credibility and creating doubt in her abilities? Okay, so he surely had plenty of doubts, but he didn’t have to poison the well. Debating on whether or not to report him, Emma ignored him and turned to David. “I met your daughter, Olivia, upstairs.” Emma smiled. “She’s adorable.”
That brought back David’s smile. “She’s quite a girl. Helps ease the way for her mother and me with Jacob.”
What exactly David meant by that, Emma wasn’t sure. She held her silence, seeing if he would explain more on his own.
He didn’t, but Mason did. “Jacob is as shy as Olivia is open. He relies on her to watch over and guide him.”
“That, he does,” David said. “Takes all his cues on how he should react to things from her. Always has.”
Emma nodded. “He trusts his big sister.” That told Emma a lot about the girl. “And, I expect, Bandit.”
David relaxed. “Ah, you met Bandit, too.”
“Not officially. But I saw him from a distance.” Emma wrinkled her nose. “I got beaten out on an intro by chocolate chip cookies.”
David laughed. “Don’t take it personally. With Jacob, everything and everyone gets beaten out by cookies—chocolate chip or any other kind.”
Mason’s mouth flat-lined. Why? Emma had no idea. He really didn’t want her here; that was clear enough. Tolerating her didn’t sit well with him, especially since his headquarters had given her full authority over his lab. She supposed she could understand that, though it should have occurred to him that the honchos wouldn’t give her full authority without good reason. If his own bias against her weren’t clouding his thinking, he would grasp that fact.
A low-level alarm sounded. Emma’s gaze darted to Mason. No attention diversion. No signs of anxiety or focus shift. He wasn’t concerned, so she held her silence.
“Ah, good. They’re here.” David started toward the outer door.
Obviously, the alarm was a warning, but only one signaling his family had arrived.
There were times when Emma’s background in Criminal Justice and certification in Behavioral Forensics came in handy. Of course, once she received the certification, it was considered a master’s degree. Difficult program but it had provided extremely helpful insights into both criminals and victims. Now, in colleagues, too. Completing the program while working full-time had nearly done Emma in, but it’d been worth every night of lost or no sleep and scrimping and saving to pay for it.
“He’s a happily married man. Stop trying to charm him.” Mason grunted.
“I wasn’t trying to charm anyone.” Emma bristled. What was wrong with Mason? “I was just being civil.” Dropping her voice so only he could hear, she added, “Maybe you should try it. Civility, I mean.” Charm was too far out of his bailiwick.
That comment didn’t win her any points. The muscle next to his eye ticked. It had always signaled his irritation. Seeing it, she didn’t feel generous on letting his attitude pass unchallenged.
David introduced Emma to his family. Sophia was even more beautiful up close, and Jacob stared at the ground. Rather than speaking to him, Emma said, “Well, hello, Bandit.” Then, she looked at Jacob. “May I pet him?”
Jacob darted a look at Olivia who nodded. “Okay,” Jacob said. “But be gentle.”
“Absolutely.” Emma gave the puppy’s ears a light scratch.
Jacob almost met her eyes. “He likes getting rubbed right between his eyes.”
“Like this?” She dragged her fingertips lightly across the bridge between them.
“Uh-huh.” Jacob looked right at her. “That’s the only place he can’t reach. Olivia says, no dog can reach there.”
“Well, that makes sense, then,” Emma said. “That he’d like that spot rubbed best.”
Jacob nodded.
Sophia gave Emma a grateful look. “Let me get these two settled in our quarters, and then I’ll start us some dinner.”
“Thank you, honey.” David dropped a kiss to her temple.
“No problem.” She slid Emma a conspiratorial look. “Self-preservation. We’ve eaten their cooking before. Not happening today. Not with this storm. We need comfort food that isn’t scorched or torched.”
“Sophia loves to cook, and she’s great at it,” Mason said, having heard every word. “Unfortunately, she’s right about David and me being kitchen-challenged.” He lifted a hand. “Ready for that facility…um, tour?”
His hesitation was a message to her that he knew exactly what she was doing, pulling an inspection. He was confused by that, but he’d softened his verbiage anyway. She suspected, not for her benefit but for David’s family’s. “Ready. Yes, thank you.”
David grabbed his family’s bags and headed down the hallway after the kids. Sophia led the way. She knew exactly where she was going. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time she and the kids had stayed in the lab.
David came right back and then turned toward his office. “I’m running a second safety check to verify we’re ready for the storm.”
“Better hurry,” Mason told him. “Holly’s barreling this way.”
“You’re certain to lose power, David,” Emma warned him. He needed to include that in his systems check.
“Maybe up above but not down here,” Mason told her. “Backup generators.”
Of course. “Best check those then.”
Mason lifted a hand. “They’re not located on the premises. They’re at the Armory.”
“What?” That set off a warning in Emma. “All backup systems deemed critical are required to be located at the facility.”
“In this case—airport above, lab carved out of mountain—the honchos have deemed it safer to have power backup located off-site.”
Emma would like to argue, but the odds of an airport being attacked were substantially higher than most other places on the planet, so she didn’t. “Where is this Armory?”
“About thirty miles from here.” Mason tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry. It’s a top-grade military facility.”
Top-grade? After sequestration? That was highly unlikely. Facilities were in the process of being restored, but few were top-grade as of yet.
“The generators are up and running—David will verify that—and they haven’t gone down once in five years.”
“I’ll check them,” David said, quickly escaping to his office.
He had certainly picked up on the tension between Mason and her. Why was the man bent on making her job more difficult? David wanted no part of any conflict and proved it, bailing and leaving it to Mason to de
al with her. She couldn’t blame him for that. Either way David went, he lost. Emma withheld a sigh. “Before the tour, I need to make a call.”
“Sorry,” Mason said. “Phones don’t work well in the lab.”
“No problem.” She moved toward the outer door. “I have a special phone.” Stepping out into the tunnel, she reminded him, “You’ll need to let me back in.”
“No problem,” he said, though he looked as if he were considering keeping her locked out.
Frowning, Emma closed the door behind her, gave her eyes a second to adjust to the dim light, and then called Liz.
When she answered, Emma dove right into what she needed. “You’d better get me a blueprint of this place and a schematic on its systems. Especially electrical.” If the power went out, she could need them. “I’ll need them for The Armory, too.”
“Either or both?”
Be safe. “Both.” Emma heard a rustling noise, retrieved her flashlight from her pocket, then shone the light beyond the two parked carts down the tunnel. Empty. “Mason says the Armory is about thirty miles away and the lab’s backup generators are located there.”
“Why?” Liz sounded as baffled as Emma had been.
“The honchos deemed it safer,” Emma said. “All I can figure is for ventilation. Mason didn’t object to the “safer” call, but I’m wondering. What could be safer than a hollowed hole in a mountain?”
“Located it,” Liz said. “The Armory is about thirty miles, but even if you need to get there, you’ll never make it in these weather conditions.”
Emma worried at her lower lip. “Do we have anyone who can?”
“Not in this storm.”
“So, there’s no one on that site?” How could he fail to mention that? Deliberately deceptive? She parked a hand on her hip. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Emma, that entire facility closed in 1992.”
It had been out of commission all these years and Mason had called it top-grade? Impossible man. Totally impossible. “Then who maintains the generators?”
“Looking…” A pause, then Liz disclosed her findings. “It’s classified.” She sighed. “I’ll requisition monitoring from headquarters. They can try getting someone to them. I’m asking them to also monitor that entire facility during the storm to make sure the backups don’t go down.”
No way Emma could trek thirty miles to do it herself. That truth did it. Emma dropped concern and slid headlong into full-fledged worry. “Liz, I don’t need to tell you what happens to pathogens if they heat up.”
“I know. They activate.”
“Yes. Active pathogens have no bias. No mercy.” Emma shivered. “They spread, and they kill.”
“Highly contagious. I know,” Liz said. “I’m on it.” Her voice wasn’t quite steady. “Complete your initial assessment and then let me know exactly what we’re dealing with here.”
She wanted to know the specific pathogens. So did Emma. “I will.”
“Try not to worry, Em. I’ll be persuasive with headquarters.” Liz hung up the phone.
Liz could be extremely persuasive, but even she couldn’t dictate to Mother Nature. If they couldn’t get to the Armory, odds were high that no one from headquarters could either.
Not worry? How could Emma not worry? She stood still, absorbed the gravity of her situation. An historical storm. Five thousand stranded passengers upstairs. A family taking refuge in a high-containment lab that wasn’t supposed to exist but did, stocked to the rafters full of dangerous pathogens that if not kept frozen became highly contagious. And thirty miles of high power-outage risks between her and preserving those pathogens and keeping them frozen.
That recipe screamed potential pandemic disaster.
Chapter Five
Tuesday, December 17th
1600 (4:00 PM)
Mason and Emma suited up in protective gear and then Mason opened the vault door. “It’s okay,” he said, picking up on her tension. “This is a decontamination chamber. The HC lab is still sealed on the other side of it. We go in, lock-down and decontaminate, and then enter the lab.”
“Okay.” She didn’t mention she’d been trained for this and had successfully completed the simulator on it. Just stepped to his side. “Same process coming out?”
He nodded. “We lock-down, decontaminate, dispose of the suits in the chamber, and then exit. No problem.”
She looked at him through the shield covering her face. “How do we dispose of the suits?”
“After decontamination, they’re incinerated.” He pointed to a chute in the wall. “Zero exposure to anything or anyone between here and there.”
An air lock chamber separated the inner-ring—the high-containment lab—from the lab’s outer ring and the rest of the facility. Leaving the decontaminate chamber and walking into the inner-ring’s outer circle, Emma checked the negative pressure gauge—-30, dead center of the -20 to -50 required. No dust streaks where the wall and ceiling met, so the seals were intact. She paused to check the electrical sockets. Intact.
“Everything okay so far?” he asked, sounding relaxed and at ease.
“Fine.” She walked on, making the circle, examining everything she passed. Hands free, deep hand-washing sinks. Benches lining the walls were preformed and sealed. Floor was sealed concrete. No evidence of chipping or flaking. Chemicals and gases were minimal and stored appropriately. A minimum of cardboard and plastics, and it was substantially colder in here. “Below freezing?” she asked Mason.
“Thirty degrees.”
Emma continued walking left around the circle. The safety-equipment area had fire extinguishers, a first aid kit, an eye washer. The fumigation valve and steel hoses met regulation standards. She spotted something unfamiliar. “What’s that?”
“An autoclave. New to the market,” he said. “It’s a front loader.”
“Total redesign,” she said more to herself than to him.
A wrinkle formed in his forehead. “You’re familiar with them?”
“Not with this model, no. But I am familiar with sterilization units used to purify waste before incineration. I did an investigative story on it a while back.” She looked to the wall. “Microbiological safety cabinets.” Emma turned to look at him. “How is air expelled in here?” The inner-mountain lab would require alternative methods. Scanning, she added, “Never mind. I see.”
“What do you see?” Mason sounded curious, not suspicious.
“The air is filtered, oxygenated, and recycled.” She peeked down at the regulators. All were well inside the green zone and spotless. She checked the tag. “PAT testing is current. Centrifuge maintained and serviced. Bucket seals are intact. Computers and their nodes are secure. And the bio samples are…where?”
He walked her around the circle to a tunnel on the far side of the decontamination chamber where they had entered. Inside it, crisscrossing light rays beamed, ceiling to floor. “Ionic?” she asked.
He nodded and they walked through the tunnel and into a separate work area that appeared to not have been used for some time. Upright freezers lined the wall. Appropriate glass fronts, and at the bottom of each was a written record, security-check sign-off form. All current and no blank lines.
“The pathogens,” Mason said, motioning to the freezers with a gloved hand. “Each set of vials is clearly labeled. ACDP CL 3 Biological Agents Pathogens being used in an ACDP CL 3 facility are—"
It was a test. One she considered failing, but if he was to have confidence in her authority and his own headquarters, she had to pass. “Capable of causing severe disease in man that may spread to the community.”
“In man or woman,” he said.
“True. Gender isn’t an issue with pathogens.” They’d kill anyone. “So, nothing in here leaves here?”
“No. Nothing.”
She walked down the length of the freezers, noting the specimen vials and their labels. Her skin crawled, and she recited the names aloud to help seal them into her memory
for her report. “Tuberculosis, Cholera, Syphilis, Typhoid Fever, Tetanus.” In the next freezer, she recited, “HIV, Poliovirus, Hepatitis C, Small Pox, Cow Pox, Viral RNA Replication, Viral Oncogenesis, Herpesviruses, Murine Leukemia, Influenza, Dengue Virus.” Her throat went thick. She swallowed hard and walked on to freezer number three. “Plague, BP7PP.” BP7PP…? She scoured her memory but didn’t recall ever seeing or hearing about BP7PP.
“You have Small Pox,” she said, for the moment, skirting her obvious question about the strange virus. “Why? I thought it had been eradicated.”
Mason nodded. “Yeah, well, things changed back in 2009.”
She’d heard nothing about this. “What changed exactly?”
“We received highly credible intel warning us the Soviets were weaponizing it. We reacted to the threat.”
A bio-arms race. She prayed it had been a micro-scale race and had quickly ended. “We reacted with what?”
“Actually, with BP7PP.”
Tapped into the subject organically. Finally, she’d caught a break. “Which is what?”
Mason’s expression sobered. “Black Plague—only much more deadly.”
“More deadly?” Emma couldn’t believe her ears. “Didn’t the less deadly version kill 350 million people?”
“Between 350 and 450 million, I’m sorry to say.”
Her skin crawled again, twice as fiercely as it had the first time. The truth dawned on her, and her throat went dust dry. “All of the specimens in here…they’re all weaponized versions?”
Mason nodded, his expression behind his face shield grim. “I’m even sorrier to say, they are.”
Emma swallowed a gasp and looked away. Heaven help them.
The risks she’d considered astronomical moments ago had just quadrupled.
Chapter Six
Tuesday, December 17th
1700 (5:00 PM)
Back in the outer ring, Mason smiled at Emma. “You look like you need a drink.”
Finally, a smile. How could he be amused by her reaction to what was stored in the lab? There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to drink her way through this. Weaponized pathogens? Under an airport? “No, no drink. Facing this? Sobriety is definitely required.”
