Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 4 | Books 10-12

by Lecter, Adrienne

  With thirteen people able to still move freely, it made no sense to keep our fireteams up. Nate didn’t protest when I told him I was coming with him and Hamilton now, leaving Richards, Cole, and Hill to fend for themselves. Burns opted to stay with Blake and his two remaining men, while Eden attached herself to Marleen and Scott.

  Our team took the lead as we proceeded to the staircase at the opposite end of this wing, the farthest point away from the central hall and the direction we’d initially come from, if my spatial orientation hadn’t completely forsaken me. “Staircase” was a bit much for the two sets of ten steps each leading upward, bringing it roughly to street level. There was only one paranoia-inducing corridor, though, and then more steps went back down to the lower level. I halted between the two sets and stared at the wall there, making the others halt, Hamilton the only one looking annoyed. Using my knife, I pried away one of the wall panels, and was greeted with what I’d expected, although they’d tried to hide it: three feet of layered shells, making up the outer cocoon of any self-respecting high-level lab in the world. We’d likely find another, similar if smaller construction further in if they had a BSL-3 and BSL-4 setup.

  The lights were still turned off, but when Cole checked one of the cables he dug out of another panel at the bottom of the stairs, he reported that it held an electrical charge. Since we hadn’t found a computer room or guard station—just defunct banks of servers that had never encountered an iPod—it was likely in this part of the complex as well.

  The corridor leading away from the stairs was only twenty feet long, ending in another T-crossing. Cole was the first to reach it and did a quick spot check, coming up empty. The corridors leading away were both a good hundred feet long with a single corridor leading off about two thirds of the way to the end. There were airlocks on both ends, from the looks of them leading into lab clusters. It wouldn’t have made much sense to build an airlock for a maintenance room.

  Nate signaled to Richards to come with him and chose the left branch, leaving the other for Blake and Scott. As I’d expected, the corridor at the intersection was a much longer one, leading deep enough into the building that the flashlights barely reached the other end. Nate signaled Richards to stay there and went to the airlock, Hamilton and I trailing behind him. Unlike the lab complex in France, there were no retina scans required to get the lock to cycle. From the lack of warning signs, it was an area that didn’t require a hazmat suit. It took Nate and Hamilton both to breach the two parts of the airlock since someone had either gone to great lengths to seal it, or the electricity working it had been shut off with the lights. With them already in front of me, it made sense to let the guys go first, so I waited impatiently until Nate whispered back that the air was clear. Clean, too, I realized as I stepped into the workspace—that special kind of clean that required HEPA filters that had only very recently been turned off. The main room of the workspace looked just like that, but both rooms at the back contained two laminar flow hoods for working with more dangerous shit, an autoclave each sitting between them. To the right was a small office, looking like every office I’d ever had the great fortune to call my own—full of stacks of papers, the shelves overflowing with more.

  Ignoring the main workspace, I went to the office first to get a quick idea what they might have been working on. I wasn’t familiar with any of the proteins mentioned, but from the names of the publications it was immunology stuff—viruses, yes, but not those ranging into serum-program territory. Most papers were from the last five years before the shit hit the fan, but more reviews and overviews than single-topic publications. It looked like someone might have been working on cross-checking effects, or just setting out to breach a new specialty. That guess also fit with what I found when I checked the two cell-culture rooms—bare-minimum set-ups to run the odd experiment, but not have four people running a million different trials at the same time. They only had a small incubator and a fridge, not even a nitrogen tank for keeping frozen samples.

  In short, interesting for me personally, maybe, but not the reason why we were here.

  When we returned to the others, Richards had already sent Cole and Hill forward to go snooping into the rooms ahead and secure the corridor to where the next cluster of lab rooms was, again to our left, putting it right adjacent to the office of the first lab. No airlocks on this one, letting us see right into the rooms through the rows of glass panes. The massive metal doors to the right—to the middle of the complex wing—led into storage rooms, filled with the usual equipment of large centrifuges, freezers, and my beloved nitrogen tanks. Hamilton frowned at me when I unscrewed the lid of the first tank and peeked inside.

  “Ha!” Three pairs of eyes shot to me, making me snort. “The tanks are topped up. Someone’s still using them. Those in France were half empty, and that was years ago. Someone is still refilling these.”

  Rather than pull the rack inside out, I went to check on the inventory book where the samples were marked. I didn’t see any dates but several different styles of handwriting, and none designating the samples as anything that jogged my memory. I left the room after that, figuring that finding someone—alive—would be easier in order to find out what they’d been up to.

  Scott radioed in that they were making their way through equal setups—which made sense as most labs were built in boring, symmetrical ways. In case of an emergency, it made no sense to confuse people.

  Once it became clear that the labs were pretty much useless, Nate sped up the process, only checking for possible nooks and crannies rather than letting me get lost in perusing the research itself. Scott and Blake were even faster, reaching the end of their corridor ahead of us. That way, they got shot at when they checked the corridor continuing on from the middle of the lab spaces, but not where that turned into another, similar two-pronged layout beyond.

  Hearing gunfire jolted me alert immediately, but my body was more sluggish to spring into action, making me stagger when one of my feet caught on a table leg. I managed to catch myself before I could face-plant on the floor, but didn’t miss Hamilton chuckling under his breath as he pushed past me to check on what was going on ahead. Nate was already outside with Richards and the others, so it was just me. Cursing under my breath, I sprinted after them, trusting that we had been thorough in our check.

  That’s when I came face to face with the fatigues-clad figure right now crawling out of the open floor panel.

  If I’d had a moment to think, I would have tried punching him out instead, but the shotgun was in my hands and he startled me, so he ate a slug before my mind could get smart. Looking behind me down the corridor, I saw four other guards, all in different stages of coming out of the floor. If I’d had a rifle, I would have considered spraying them with bullets, but the shotgun lacked range, and by the time I’d have fumbled the dead guard’s rifle from the sling across his body, I would be shot and dead myself. So I sent one slug toward the closest guard, whipped around, and ran, hoping that by the time any of them got ready to aim and fire, I’d be around the corner.

  “They are behind us! In the floor!” I shouted, trusting that someone would hear me and get ready to guard our rear and flank. I almost collided with Marleen as I careened around the corner. She quickly sidestepped, letting me slip into cover before she glanced into the corridor. She only got five shots out before the return fire made her pull back.

  “Got one,” she shouted over the din of the bullets smashing chunks out of wall paneling everywhere. “One’s down, and one’s on the ground but still shooting.”

  “That leaves one,” I summed up, getting ready to reduce that number to zero as soon as he was close enough to pulverize his brains.

  “You got this,” Marleen told me and ran to the other corridor, immediately drawing fire when she checked on that. “Five here!” she called over before she set to decimating them.

  Unlike the automated guns, the human opponents weren’t as quick in shooting when I glanced into the corridor, finding
the single standing guard still a little far away. The shooting at Marleen’s side was loud—and near-continuous—enough to make me chance it, though. No sense in waiting for a kill shot here if I got gunned down from the other side in the meantime. To steady my aim—and present less of a target—I crouched down before I stepped into the corridor, aimed, and shot. A good call, it turned out, as he was still hitting where my head had been on the check before, ending with him dead on my second shot, and the one I’d wounded before down on the third.

  The guard Marleen had killed was close enough that I risked wasting a few moments in favor of going for his assault rifle and the two spare magazines in his MOLLE vest. Not bothering with the one currently in the M4, I ejected it and slammed a fresh one in, and went to back up Marleen.

  “Two down, three to go,” she told me as I patted her on the shoulder, letting her know I was ready. “You up, me down, on three!” I had barely enough time to register what she meant as she dropped to the floor and started her countdown. Without bothering to aim, I took a step into the corridor and shot everything at shoulder height that moved. I was almost surprised when her ploy worked and we killed the remaining guards before they could return the favor—or rather, pay it forward. My brain didn’t much care for me taking the risk, sending a shake through me that didn’t feel very pleasant. But we were still alive and mostly unscathed, so who cared?

  “We need to catch up to the others,” I told Marleen, and after a last look in both corridors—finding them still empty of new dangers, and positively chewed-up from weapon fire—pushed on forward. Immediately, the acrid scent of too many weapons getting discharged without proper ventilation in too little space tickled my nostrils. It was easy enough to catch up to the others since they’d only managed to make it to where the long corridors started, needing the two corners on each side for cover. Two bodies were on the floor but still alive, clutching makeshift bandages—Blake and one of his guys. Marleen quickly joined them, walking backwards so she could keep an eye on what might be coming behind. I did the same, going in the other direction.

  “They’re using the maintenance shaft in the floor,” I shouted at Nate as soon as I reached the corner. “We killed nine and it looks clear, but we need to check our six better.” He didn’t react but I presumed he’d heard me. Sending another volley down the corridor seemed more important. “What’s our opposition?”

  “Two of the automated guns, and three or four men behind that. We already took out one gun, and killed two,” he explained.

  Just then, Hill got ready to pitch another grenade down the corridor, making the others flatten themselves against the walls to avoid any shrapnel hurtling back toward us. That reduced the number of auto-guns to one, and soon to zero after two more grenades. He’d already used up all he had been carrying—very smart, considering he’d also been our C4 supply—and I offered him the two from my pack when he looked around for more to scavenge. The other group must have resorted to similar tactics since I heard two explosions go off there as well—followed by an eerie silence settling over us, only the low crackling of something flammable catching on fire audible.

  “Go!” Nate hissed, and Richards sprinted down the corridor. Glancing over my shoulder to the other group, I saw Scott disappear as he did the same, the others getting ready, except for Marleen who was kneeling next to Blake, doing her best to help him to patch up a wound on his leg. As soon as she was done, she helped Blake pull himself closer to the center of the corridor so he could aim his rifle into the section behind us.

  I was the last to leave, only needing to step over scrap metal and dead bodies as we made our way forward. As heavy as the opposition had been, no backup arrived, allowing me to chance a glance into the lab spaces—from the outside only as all of them were fitted with airlocks, and nobody made attempts to pry them open for me. Inside, it was all orderly cell culture with lots of incubators—production and high-throughput testing spaces, unlike the labs we’d passed before. The last two even went a security level above that, the three separate lab spaces only accessible through more airlocks, and the hoods I saw inside were closed glove-boxes, making me guess those were makeshift BSL-3 setups. Now we were talking, but no way did I have any intention of stepping in there without extra protection. I was already infested with enough shit that was killing me slowly. No need to add to that. Not just because of that I was happy to see that the security glass of the inner sections looked unaffected by the bullets and even grenades, built to withstand far worse. The corridor was littered with shards, crunching unhealthily under my boots.

  Like in the other part of the wing, the corridors merged into a single one again—only this one was fitted with not just an airlock, but also a security checkpoint and heavy steel doors beyond the airlock, making me guess that we’d reached the innermost sanctum—the BSL-4 part of the building. It occurred to me that we still hadn’t come across the central control room, and we had been thorough about searching for it. Whoever must have figured it was worth setting that up inside the bomb-proof cocoon that likely housed plenty of viral shit that was way more likely to kill everyone than a nuclear strike must have been one paranoid fucker.

  It absolutely fit the bill, but meant that we needed to get through that checkpoint.

  I felt like joking to Cole that I’d known there was a reason why we let him tag along when he got out a laptop and somehow connected it to a cable that he pulled out of the wall, minimal sparking required. Hill and Scott meanwhile worked on prying the airlock open, but it was a heavier one than those we’d encountered before, needing four people in the end. Nate wasn’t one of them, staying back, turning his body so the others didn’t see how he pressed one hand against the bandages in his side, grimacing. I caught his gaze, giving him another wide-eyed, semi pleading “stay back!” with my eyes, which he of course ignored. I used the opportunity to dig into my pack and get the extra rifle ammo out that I’d been lugging with me for such opportunities as the one that had presented itself in the form of my new M4. The others had already searched the dead and relieved them of their spare ammo. Not knowing what opposition we’d be facing, we had packed heavy, and nobody was running empty yet—also due to the fact that we were below half strength now, manpower-wise.

  “Ha, gotcha,” Cole muttered with a triumphant smile, typing even more furiously. “Sure, why upgrade your cyber security when you’re sitting three levels deep inside a bunker? I should have the lights back in three… two… one…” It actually took five seconds longer, but then the illumination panels all around us came on with a random series of flickers, quickly followed by the low hum of the ventilation system.

  It was the latter, probably, that got Scott to halt and glance back to me. “Hey, Lewis—you’re the biohazard expert here, right?” I nodded. “Just how much junk did we breathe in since getting to this level?”

  I shrugged. “Not much more than you’d get on any shooting range.” When he eyed me quizzically, I grinned. “You mean because of the labs? The ones with the airlocks likely have their own, closed-off systems that weren’t affected by the shut-down. The hot lab we presume is behind that door? That has its own entire ecosystem, including waste management and air. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. Until you go through the decontamination chamber, you won’t get anywhere close to the shit that will kill every single one of us.” Or so I hoped, but there was no sense in spreading my personal brand of paranoia around. I could guess how much of that was based on reality; the others couldn’t.

  Burns stepped up to me, still looking around alertly but a little more relaxed now that we were stuck here in a position that wasn’t that hard to defend—for now. “Do you ever get tired of ending up in places like this?” he asked, allowing himself a small chuckle. “This is now how many times that I’ve asked you if you get nostalgic about no longer working in high-security labs?”

  “Fuck you,” I told him succinctly, answering his grin with one of my own.

  “Any progress on the locks?�
�� Hamilton wanted to know, still busy on the second half of the airlock, calling right over our chat.

  Cole glanced up for a moment, then back down at his laptop. “Give me a sec,” he muttered. “I need to crack the security override first. Because you went all ape-shit on the outer door, it won’t let me disengage the system.” That said, the inner doors gave a squeal, followed by the mechanical sounds of getting pried apart. The heavy metal doors swung inward as well, making everyone standing idly by raise their weapons. Cole cursed but didn’t explain why.

  No guards greeted us. Also no automated machine guns, nor a pack of mutant dobermans. Just the boxy complex of the BSL-4 lab with its impressive banks of air filters on top, surrounded by gray-tiled corridors, and two separate partitions on each end that were likely for maintenance or offices. Whoever had built this hadn’t bothered to make the inside of the security cocoon look pretty, leaving concrete and metal struts exposed.

  “Two remain here,” Nate ordered, singling out Eden and the last Silo marine. Eden looked ready to protest, but a look at Nate’s face had her close her mouth without a word coming out. The rest of us—eight, minus Cole staying behind with his laptop—went through the open airlock and doors, quickly separating into two groups to cover the open space around the lab as quickly as possible. With the others paying attention to everything except the lab, I allowed myself a few lingering glances through the few viewports. Unlike most BSL-4 labs I’d seen, this one was more closed off. It was also larger, about double the size of the already substantial lab of the Green Fields Biotech complex where I’d been working until Nate had to bring down the sky on it. I could only guess at what they needed the extra space for. It was hard to tell, but what equipment I saw looked outdated if well-maintained.

  Nobody shot at us during our entire circuit of the lab complex. If anything, that seemed to make all of us even more jumpy than we already were. I was surprised to see that on the other side, at the back wall, was another heavy metal door, like the one with the airlock. Nate explained the situation to Cole on the radio. Cole tried to get the doors open but gave up after five minutes. “They’re locked out of the system. My guess is you’ll need to flip a switch in the control room to open them. But I can put a temporary lock on the controls so that they can’t disengage them unless they have a hacker around who’s better than I am.”