“Fine,” she said. Pulling the weapon from the holster, she dropped the magazine into her free hand. Ejecting the remaining round, she pushed it back into the magazine. Handing it to him, she pulled the vest back on. “Satisfied?”
“Very,” Gabriel stated. “I won’t even embarrass you for the second ankle holster.”
“Please. A girl has to have a little protection. It’s not always the guy’s responsibility.”
“Give. Now,” he said sternly.
She knelt down and lifted her jeans over her calf. Unsnapping the small pistol, she repeated the process of ejecting the magazine and chambered round before handing it over.
“No baton?”
“I lost it in Neotech. If you find one though ... it’s mine.”
Someone from behind her called out to everyone to take their places. A horde of boots clattered across the floor.
“Alright, let's go,” Gabe ordered, handing her handguns to one of the officers in charge of handing out weapons. The row of open cases and cleaning tables he was remaining behind to sentry was a testament to the firepower the SWAT teams had with them.
“I want those back later.” She pointed at the officer, glaring at him to make her point as she walked away. He stared at her indifferently as he tossed them into a foam-lined case and closed it.
Following Gabriel and the crowd, she climbed into the back of the van. The bench seating along either side had her sitting across from Gabriel. They were the second two in; six more people with side arms stepped in and sat down on the bench seating along the sides.
Crossing her arms, she leaned back and glared at Gabriel.
“Don’t be angry, Olivia. You know the rules.”
She looked away out of the back of the van as the last person mounted up and the doors closed, sealing them away in the dark. Voices chattering away nervously told her that the van was full of federal agents who were there more to secure evidence than to kick doors in. She longed to be in one of the vans up front in the convoy.
The vehicle slid forward as the vehicles rolled out the large door that she and Chuck had entered through. Olivia wondered for a moment if Chuck was driving this particular van. Light blazed through the tinted windows of the rear doors as they emerged into the daylight.
Occupying herself, she listened to the conversations of the group. Discussions were obviously a nervously repeated game plan on how to secure the workers in the main foyer and away from the equipment.
She could feel the vehicle speed up, and the tires thrummed on the asphalt of the highway. The police had staged near the building, and it wouldn’t be a long trip at the rate of speed that the van was traveling.
As fast as it had sped up, it began to slow. Gravity seemed to shift toward the front as the driver braked hard. She braced for the turn, putting her foot on the bench across from her. Her boot firmly placed between Gabriel’s legs. He looked her for a moment quizzically then grabbed the edge of his own seat. Tires groaned against the warm pavement as the heavy van turned hard to follow the lead vehicle.
Many of the people inside the van braced late, and one even fell into the middle of the aisle. The nervous laughter echoed for a moment as arms helped the person back up to the bench seat. She lowered her foot, watching the officers regain their composure.
Someone’s uneasy laughter in the shadows told a tale of bruised pride.
The vehicle began to slow to a stop. Outside, the screech of rubber followed by doors exploding open as the first two vans emptied their weaponized contents out onto the street. Waiting patiently, Olivia knew that the greatest risk was at the first stage of the entry. If Neotech's private police force attempted to repel them, an orgy of violence and death would ensue.
She swallowed hard and waited for the familiar popping sound of gunplay. Surprised, she blinked and realized she had been holding her breath.
Olivia looked at Gabriel. His face was awash with concern as he listened to the radio through his earpiece.
“No resistance?” she asked. “I was expecting some opposition from security.”
Gabe shook his head at her and held up a hand as he monitored the radio communications in his ear.
“What is it?” she pleaded. Others in the van were all silent, each with their own headset. They were giving each other concerned looks, but none spoke. Each was listening to the radio chatter in their earpieces. Olivia felt wildly out of the loop. She wanted to snatch one away from the others.
“What the hell, Gabe. What’s going on?”
He looked at her with confusion and concern. “The breaching party is saying that they are finding bodies everywhere.” His hand pressed to his ear. “Everyone in the building is dead.”
Chapter 17
Olivia walked through the security gates to the building, ignoring the alarm from the metal detector. The others had pushed on ahead through the lobby to join the teams clearing the floors above them.
Looking around, she could see bodies lying on the ground everywhere, as though they had just collapsed midstep. Little to no blood. No bullet casings. No smell of death. Just bodies.
“What the hell?” She bent down and checked the nearest corpse. The young woman was face down in the hallway. The familiar front-desk clerk garb that had reminded her of hotel workers or airport clerks covered her. It was freshly pressed, with no marks of a struggle.
Rolling the body onto its back, Olivia couldn’t see the cause of death. There was no blood, no penetrating wound. A plastic mug was still entangled in the woman's fingers. Olivia felt the warm plastic. Despite the contents being spilled over the floor, warmth greeted her touch. Her own hand covered the cheek of the dead woman, and instead of the clammy feeling of death, more warmth enveloped her skin. Out of habit, she checked the pulse, and as expected, nothing could be found.
Olivia got to her feet and looked around for Gabriel. He was past the security hallway and on the interior of the building. He was talking to a small cluster of federal agents she recognized from their van. His hand pointed to a number of locations beyond her sight as he coordinated with them to clear the rest of the massive building.
Stepping over the body of the woman, she jogged down the hallway, avoiding bodies to get to her friend.
As Olivia stepped out of the hallway, she could see that the familiar open stadium layout and park-like garden that occupied the entry level were littered with the dead. Bodies were slumped on park benches, fallen onto the grass, or draped over railings. They lay sprawled like puppets severed from the hand that had once directed them.
“This happened recently.” Olivia interrupted Gabriel. “The bodies are still warm. There’s no rigor. This happened in the last three hours. Likely less.”
Gabriel said, “They couldn’t have killed everyone in that time.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Me neither. I’ve seen some cult stuff like this, but more group suicide. This looks different.”
“Yeah, this isn’t suicide. This is murder.”
“Think it’s a nerve gas?” Gabriel asked. The rest of the men he had been speaking with looked to her waiting for an answer. They appeared just as confused as she was.
“No, they would have spasmed, vomited, soiled themselves. Nerve gas doesn’t work like that. No one dies midstep like this. It’s like someone just turned them off. Like they threw a switch, and everyone in the building just fell down. There’s not blue from lack of oxygen. There's no blood pooling, either. They just died where they stood.”
Neither Gabriel nor Olivia had answers, and for a while they stood simply staring at the deadly result of some unknown influence, trying to make sense of it.
One of the SWAT members crossed the open patio, stepping over bodies as he moved toward them, crossing half of the distance before calling out. “The teams are finishing securing the upper levels."
Gabriel nodded, then turned to Olivia. "It’s going to take some time to get through the building.”
Ol
ivia turned and looked across the indoor park littered with people. It left her with a hollow feeling.
Wandering away from the group, she moved toward the center of the open space. Occasionally she could hear breaking glass or the crash of wood as the teams broke through open doors.
She found an empty park bench away from most of the bodies and sat down. Every bit of her fought back the urge to yell out and tell everyone to get up off the ground. She half expected them to be sleeping, but the contorted positions over chairs, tangled in bicycles, and lying half in and out of the nearby pond told her they were dead.
Focusing on her breathing, she waited for the teams to finish.
“You going to be okay?” Chuck’s voice came from behind her.
She shook her head.
“Mind if I sit?”
Olivia gritted her teeth and nodded, trying to fight back the tears of anger. She didn’t want to be alone with her dark thoughts.
Chuck lowered himself gently onto the bench next to her. He knew enough not to try and console her; it would only break down the armor she had put up to deal with what she was seeing. They remained there for half an hour, not talking, not moving, just waiting amid the dead for the teams to finish.
Gabriel quietly walked up with a radio. “They’re working through the basement. I’m heading downstairs. Want to come along and point out where they held you?”
“Sure,” Olivia said. She knew it was unhealthy and morose to be sitting there with all the corpses.
Chuck followed the two as they made their way to a nearby set of stairs. The echoing concrete of the fire stairs reminded her of when she had been here only a few nights ago. The legality of her rooftop intrusion seemed to pale in comparison to the heinous mass murder that had just occurred.
A repetitious patter sounded below them.
“What was that?” Chuck asked, peering over the railing and down the stairs.
Again it sounded, but a heavier answering tempo of heavy automatic weapons boomed back in an onslaught of noise.
“That’s gunfire!” Olivia stated, quickening her steps past Gabriel. She bounded downward two steps at a time toward the noise, ignoring both of the detectives’ warnings.
At the bottom of the stairs, the only door was propped open. Olivia could see shattered safety glass spewed across the floor. Peeking around the corner, she leaned out and back in quickly, letting her eye catch the scene while limiting her exposure.
Laboratory workbenches were laid out in the room akin to pews in a church. The metal frame of an open elevator door at the far end was riddled with bullet holes.
Across a dozen or so laboratory benches lay a number of bodies in white lab coats. Each was slumped next to a computer, microscope, or whatever project they were working on. At the far end near an elevator, four heavily armored mercenaries had stepped out and were peppering the thick wood with hot lead. Each alternated bursts to keep a SWAT team at bay.
Hunkered down behind the benches was a small SWAT team of six police officers. Taking advantage of a lull in the gunfire, she moved across to the other side of the doorway. A quick look told her that the six members were down one man who lay on his side. The submachine gun wasn’t in his grip and lay a foot away from the door.
From her angle, she could see that the man had been shot in the face, and from the wound in the forehead she knew he was not alive. As Chuck and Gabriel caught up, she lunged out the door, scooping up the dead man's weapon as she dove for cover.
Rounds punched through the wall behind her as her motion created an available target. Lifting the weapon, she ejected the magazine and was pleased to find it full, with a round already in the chamber. Slapping home the mag she shouldered the weapon, took a deep breath, and popped up.
In one smooth motion, she rose up, found her target, and as the barrel of the submachine gun cleared the top of the bench, she double-tapped before sinking down, safely out of sight. Even as the returning fire zipped overhead, her brain was still processing what she had seen. She saw the hits as they had pushed through the skull of the distant mercenary. Giving it a moment, she side-stepped and popped up again, firing two more rounds. They pattered against the far wall, but another officer had used the distraction and found his mark, and another merc doubled over.
Shifting to the edge of the bench, she leaned out to fire. Wood splintered around her, and immediately she pulled back. Working her way to the opposite side of the bench, she bounded forward and dove behind the next bench.
The room erupted in a cacophony of gunplay.
The police officer hunkered down behind the bench flinched and turned toward her. She raised her hands, and the man turned back to the fight. She could smell the familiar scent of sweat and fear on him.
Rising again, she tapped out a rhythmic tempo on the trigger, suppressing the two remaining mercenaries. She could see someone bound forward to her right, and she continued to fire. It was dangerous being up and exposed for so long while antagonizing her enemy, but the rest of the SWAT team immediately took advantage.
The explosion of an ill-timed flash bang caught Olivia in the eyes, and her ears rang.
She could only lower herself behind the bench in an effort at self-preservation. Blinking and popping her ears, she forced herself to rise up again.
As she lifted the muzzle of her weapon over the edge of the lab bench, she could see that the SWAT team had advanced to corner the remaining merc in a hallway off of the room. By the time she had moved forward, their lethal rounds had found their mark.
She lowered her weapon, listening as they called out the all-clear. Behind her, Olivia could hear footsteps and turned to see Gabriel and Chuck appear from the stairwell. Their feet kicked spent brass and broken shards of glass across the floor as they moved toward her.
Chuck stopped and inspected the dead SWAT member as Gabriel came over.
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
“Yeah, no holes,” she said, taking a moment to self-assess.
Chuck rose up angrily from the body of the dead police officer member. He looked around for someone to punish. Olivia knew the look; it was one she had worn herself many times.
The rest of team had moved forward and had checked the hallway and adjacent rooms. The lack of gunfire and the calls of “Clear left” or “Clear right” indicated that no other enemies remained.
Tracing their path, Olivia followed them. Rooms with empty shelves bordered the hallways. The floor was littered with small plastic tags that reminded her of recipe cards. Bending down, she picked a few up. The bar code and serial numbers on them seemed to indicate that whatever they were attached to was inventoried and cataloged. A few of them had permanent marker on them, but Olivia didn’t recognize the scientific descriptions.
“They must have come off whatever they took,” Chuck stated from the doorway.
“Well then they made off with a lot of stuff.” Olivia tossed the tags back to the floor and continued down the hallway. “Whatever it was, it was worth committing mass murder for.”
At the far end of the hallway, two heavy metal doors were propped open, defeating the purpose of their airlock-style setup. Stepping through, Olivia noticed the cameras overhead.
“This is the first time I’ve seen cameras aside from the entrance,” she said, pointing it out to Chuck.
“Probably tighter security because of what they were working on.”
She stepped out of the airlock and into a large room. The tall ceiling was covered in industrial venting and cables, without the aesthetic appeal of the rest of the building. In the center sat a raised transparent room with an attached Plexiglas airlock. It gave the impression of an aquarium.
Across the room sat the metal body of a biped drone. She raised her weapon slightly as she recognized it as the same as the lethal type she had encountered in the hotel. This one, however, was unmoving. Next to the drone was a second empty charging station. The wires and hoses hung like the cut strings from an absent puppet. Her
weapon hand relaxed for a moment.
Her attention turned back to the central transparent room. Inside it, a single chair occupied the center of the floor. It reminded her of a dentist’s chair. Above it a wiring harness dangled from the ceiling. A large work table lay along the wall behind the chair.
Around the periphery, benches and shelving were filled with testing equipment and apparatus that Olivia didn’t recognize. The absence of bodies here raised questions in the back of her mind. Something felt out of place.
Near the far wall was a bank of computer servers, each humming away, indifferent to the carnage.
The team spread out, confirming that there were no more adjacent rooms or hallways. Olivia could see the team’s lead checking his radio, confirming that the building was clear of enemies.
Movement caught her eye, and she spun and instinctively raised the submachine gun to her shoulder. The police officers flinched and raised their weapons.
Inside the glass room, a cabinet door in the workbench inched open, and a sweaty face peered out. The small man’s face was awash with perspiration. The long lab coat he was encased in looked much worse for wear. An equally wet arm unfolded from the confines and reached out to brace unsuccessfully against the floor. The man collapsed against the floor and gulped at the cool air as he watched them suspiciously.
Olivia could see the panic, and she relaxed her aggressive stance, raising her hands above her head with her hand still on the grip of the weapon. She mused that it was like watching a steel cabinet give birth to a full-grown man as she watched him finish spilling out, exhausted, onto the floor.
“Gabe, I think you have a witness,” she said.
“Let's get him out of there.” Gabriel pointed to the box, encouraging the team to move toward the room.
The scientist’s trembling hands picked at the buttons on the front of his coat as he knelt there. Stripping it away, he tossed it to the side. Watching the team attempt to enter the airlock, he shook his head and in a burst of energy lunged to his feet. His hands were held out for them to stop.
Dark Crypto (Thorne Inc. Book 1) Page 18
