“Grace, I appreciate you wanting to help, but I didn’t realize it was so heavily guarded. This is one of those times where one person is better than two. I know about espionage. I can defend myself. I don’t want to be worried about your safety. I’ll capture what I find on camera and bring it back.”
“Espionage sounds so serious.”
“It is.”
“But the girls that stay behind in horror flicks get slashed.”
“The car will keep you safe. Wait, you watch slasher films?”
“A long time ago. I think maybe that’s where my fascination for blood and the human anatomy started.”
Evan couldn’t help himself and laughed.
“What? Don’t laugh. This is a serious moment. Anyway, I haven’t had time to watch movies since I became a doctor.”
“Yeah, we’re going to fix that. Watching movies is a great way to blow off steam. You need more of that.”
She gave him a coy smile. “Well, that’s what I have you for, isn’t it?”
Her smile hit him in the heart, and all humor fled. “Doc, please stay.”
She closed her eyes and wrung her hands. “Okay. Fine. But if you’re not back in twenty, I don’t care how heavily guarded it is, I’m coming after you.”
Twenty-Eight
Grace sat in the car for five minutes and then started to panic. The concern wasn’t for Evan’s welfare, but her own. Before long, the small space inside the car without him closed in, she imagined water dripping from somewhere, and she knew that if she didn’t get out soon, she’d have an anxiety attack. So she cracked open the car door to let the air in. Once the door opened, she thought she may as well stand outside, and then once she stood outside, rubbing her arms to stay the cold, she thought… a walk down to the gate would keep her warm.
What’s the harm in taking a look-see?
She could assess how heavily guarded it was. Before she knew it, she’d pulled her hoodie over her head and tightened the drawstrings around her face. That should hide her features enough in case she got caught on camera. She jogged up the street, careful to stick to the cover of bushes and trees, until she stood where the neighboring building finished, and the fenced GODC complex began. Taking stock, she cast her gaze around the dark landscape and let the brisk night air and pine scent soak into her. The chain-link fence went on for about ten meters until it hit the main driveway and gate. The soft glow of yellow light came from the interior of a security booth set to monitor traffic in and out of the complex. The guard inside watched something on his phone, you could tell from the small blue glow flashing across his face.
So how did Evan get in?
She didn’t have far to look. Nearby, a hole had been cut in the fence, the metal links rolled back, and Evan’s duffel bag lay beside it. She snuck up, crouched and rifled inside for something to use as a weapon. Bolt cutters, a tripod and some sort of surveillance device. He must have taken everything else with him.
A glance at her watch told her it had already been fifteen minutes, but not twenty yet.
Did she dare?
The path to the laboratory warehouse was clear. A ladder ran up two levels to the flat roof. She’d bet that’s the way Evan went. The hospital had rooftop access from a stairwell, maybe this place had something similar. A quick check to the guard in the booth, and down the driveway confirmed the way was clear. She crept through the fence, nearly cut herself on the metal, and darted across the grassed open space to the ladder. With heart pounding fast, she climbed quickly and breached the top with her lungs bursting from the suspense. Did anyone see her?
She ducked low and peeked over the rim of the roof. All she could hear was a distant owl, her own deep breaths and the soft wind whispering in her strained ears. No. No one saw her.
She jogged across the roof to the stairwell door propped open by a brick. Surely that was where Evan went. Who else would leave the emergency door propped open?
Taking it as a sign, she entered the dark stairwell and tiptoed down, surprised she had the wits to pull out her phone and activate the video recorder. Maybe she was getting the hang of this espionage thing after all. She wanted to notify Evan she was there, but worried it would vibrate his phone and give his location away, so she kept to herself. She was seriously buzzed with adrenaline, and couldn’t stop thinking that someone could catch her at any moment. Upon reaching the ground level, she exited into a lit hallway lined with closed doors. Any of those could lead somewhere incriminating, or none could. She had to remind herself, this escapade could be a bust. There might be nothing incriminating within these walls.
Grace edged along the corridor and took a peek inside the window of the first door. Offices. Empty desks cast in dull light. She kept going to the next. A lab. Definitely a lab. She recognized equipment used for testing biological samples. Microscopes, incubators, and petri dishes. Not unusual for a lab that might research disease. A glowing light deeper into the room hinted at more.
She had to get closer. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside. The lights were on half power, casting a soft ambiance. Hopefully the scientists had gone home. With her fingers on the door knob, she took a deep breath, twisted, and pushed until the door popped open. Air rushed out as though it had been equalized by a filtration device, and she’d broken the seal. Whoops. Oh well, if she’d just entered a bio-hazard area, it was already too late for her. But no alarms went off, so she continued through and closed it softly behind her.
A hand covered her mouth, and she almost screamed, but then a male voice hissed: “What the hell are you doing here?”
Relief flooded her veins, and she turned to accept the force of Evan’s demanding, wild eyes. Okay, maybe he wasn’t so relieved. He looked down right pissed as he removed his hand from her face.
“It’s been twenty minutes?” she ventured with a shrug.
“No, it hasn’t.” His jaw worked, and he adjusted his ball cap. “I was just about to come back. Goddamn it, Grace, you should have waited.”
Uh-oh. No Doc this time. Just Grace.
“Okay, well, now I’m here. What did you find?” She kept her voice low, taking his lead. “What’s in those tanks down there?”
They cast their gazes down the length of the large room. Along the side walls were small aquariums filled with animals. Snakes, rats, insects… and those were just the live ones. Dead animals and animal parts floated in specimen jars. Gross. Grace shivered and crinkled her nose. The smell reminded her of the mausoleum at the hospital.
A sealed, plastic room sat to another side where she guessed a separate sterile environment was needed. Perhaps that’s where the contaminants were. What really caught Grace’s attention were the enormous cylindrical tanks shrouded in more dull blue UV lights toward the rear end of the room.
“I think you were right.” Evan’s mouth set in a grim line. “About the genetic engineering. It’s too much of a coincidence. This lab is more than a center for disease control.”
Her intuition twisted. “What’s in those far tanks, Evan?”
“You’d better come and see.”
Grace shuffled after Evan, trying to keep quiet like him, but the sticky floor made tiny squeaking sounds under her sneakers. With every passing step, queasiness rolled in her gut like the ocean tide. Any minute, an alarm could go off and they’d be toast. By the time she stood in front of a tall cylinder, she’d lost all coherent thought as her brain tried to make rational sense out of what she found. Floating in glowing, cloudy water were naked human bodies with tubes down their throats and stuck to their bellies—like umbilical cords. She stared at them with morbid fascination. It was as though they slept. Their chests moved up and down, like a baby breathing amniotic fluid.
“They look like embryos but fully grown,” she said, pulling her hood off to see better.
Evan nodded, then frowned at her and pulled her hood back to shroud her face. “Keep that up. It’s protecting your identity.”
“Sorry. Thanks.”
Evan gestured down. “Look at the labels.”
At the bottom of each tank was a white label. On each label, a human name. Peter McKinley, Silis Davidson, Astrid Samson. She read on, and on.
“There’s more.” Evan waved beyond the first row of tanks. “Some of them are young, some are older. Children and adults, all at different stages in their life cycle. None beyond their twenties.”
“Oh my God.” She was going to be sick. Children. Rows and rows of tanks filled the warehouse. She couldn’t see where it ended. Grace crept in the shadows, reading the labels. “They’ve got dates on them. These with fully grown bodies have a date of almost two years ago. And these smaller ones aren’t that long ago… do you think they’re growing people? Is that even possible?”
“My father used to work in the tech department of the lab that created us. He had a friend in bio-engineering who could regrow a limb from stem cells so, yeah, I think it’s possible.”
A hissing sound came from somewhere as more air equalized. It was the jolt Grace needed to remind herself of their time limit. She took out her phone and took a snap of a tank, then focused on the labels and took another snap. “Lilo would kill to get her hands on these photos.”
“Lilo?”
“My friend. She was with me at Heaven, but you didn’t really get a chance to meet her. She’s a journalist at the Cardinal Copy.”
Evan’s eyes narrowed. “We can’t leak this yet. Not until we figure out what Sara’s got to do with it all.”
He was right. Evan walked next to Grace as they inspected more tanks, walking deeper and deeper into the eerie warehouse. The lights weren’t all on here. Some tanks were used and discarded.
“Evan.” Grace paused at an empty cylinder. The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
“What is it?” He came up behind her. “It’s empty.”
“Look at the label.”
There, on the bottom of the first empty tank of an entire empty row, was the name Sara Madden, and the date listed was the day after the bombing, just over two years ago.
“Fuck,” Evan said.
“If these… people are growing in here, and it takes two years… and, oh my God.”
“What? Doc, what?”
“Evan. The Sara who turned up to your exhibition, the day after the two-year anniversary of the bombing, wasn’t the original Sara. It was the one grown in this tank.” Grace took a photo. The flash illuminated the empty cylinder.
“Fu-uck.”
“You keep saying that.”
He pulled the peak down on his cap and looked down at his boots, thinking. “A clone. Sara is a goddamned clone. With the same memories as the one before.” Evan’s eyes lit up. “And more. She knew how to fight. The old Sara didn’t.”
He rushed over to the lab and moved stacks of papers around on a desk with a computer. “I saw something here before… where is it. There. Look.” He held up a piece of paper for Grace to read. “Muscle memory. They’ve got schematic mark-up for a muscle memory program from martial arts experts.”
“This is insane!” Grace’s mind boggled.
Evan’s posture stiffened, and he turned to face the exit. He morphed from energized, to deadly, like a beast in the wild about to pounce on prey.
“Grace,” he said softly. “I want you to listen very carefully and do everything I say.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to her. “Take this. It has photographic evidence of this place on it.”
“Okay,” she said. “Why are you giving it to me?”
Stupid. So stupid. The minute the words were out of her mouth, she knew. Alarm spiked in her body and, for the first time since a building collapsed around her, she felt helpless. She wasn’t talking about the walls closing in, and not enough air, helpless. This was heart pounding, mouth drying, anxiety.
He didn’t think he would make it out of there alive.
“It’s safer with you,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you, but you’ll need to get yourself out. ”
Grace blinked rapidly, trying desperately to get her surgeon’s brain to kick into action. She could handle this. If she ever wanted to get back to the operating theater, she had to learn to master her mind as well as the scalpel. Back in the day, if she felt anxiety before a procedure, she would take stock of her tools, and check items off a mental list. She could do that now. What did she need for an escape? C’mon, Grace. Snap out of it. Think. But she couldn’t. She stared at the phone in Evan’s hands, held halfway to her.
He put the phone in her pocket and then took her face between his hands. “People are coming, you understand? I sense them.”
She nodded.
“When they get here, I’m going to disarm them. We’ll run back the way we came and get out of here. If that doesn’t happen—”
“No. No, it will happen, we’ll get out of here.”
He shook her gently to get her to refocus, but she couldn’t see because of the tears blurring her vision.
“Grace. If this place is like the one that created us, Mary had to infiltrate it for two years before she was able to get us out alive. We lost the lives of two people in that escape—two very important people to us.”
“Oh, God, Evan. Not helping.”
“The point is, this place had ex-military security guards at the front. If the alarm gets triggered, listen to me, if that happens, then I’m going to create a distraction, and you need to get out of here on your own. Take the car back to Lazarus House. AIMI will know how to get into HQ.” He darted a glance at the door, then hurried on, over Grace’s whimpered protests. “The important thing is you get out of here alive, and with the evidence.”
“But—?”
“Grace. I’ll be fine. I can do this stuff blindfolded. Literally. You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. More than anyone.”
“Then get yourself out. Whatever happens, I want you to promise me you’ll do that.”
Despite her better judgment, she nodded.
Evan pressed his lips to hers in a frenzied, passionate move, then was gone.
“The important thing is we both get out of here. Alive. Together,” Grace hissed at his retreating shadow.
He turned at the last moment and nodded. “We get out together.” Then he positioned himself next to the front door and waited.
Just then, the lights switched fully on, shocking the lab into brightness. A group of scientists in white lab coats walked in, chattering amongst themselves. Just like he’d surprised her when she’d entered, Evan darted out from behind the front door like a wraith. He pulled the closest scientist into a stranglehold, silently cutting off her airway until she slumped to the ground. The other three scientists, two men and a woman, realized their friend wasn’t talking. All three pivoted.
Evan darted an almost imperceptible glance at Grace, then meaningfully down at the woman at his feet. He wanted Grace to know something about the woman.
But she looked pretty average. Grace checked out the other scientists. One woman had long gray streaked hair, and a proud face with a long nose. The second man was of Indian descent and in his fifties. The third and final man was white, young and had short brown hair.
Oh God, so what? What was it about them he wanted her to know?
The young male scientist launched himself at the big red alarm trigger on the wall. Evan drove his fist into his stomach, winding him. While he was occupied, the older scientist triggered the alarm and sirens blared through the building. Evan made short work of detaining the remaining scientists and shouted at Grace: “Put her coat on. Get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
Right. That’s what he was doing when he looked at her weird. Grace ran to the woman he’d dropped first and tugged her out of her white lab coat. It was harder to move her limbs than it appeared, but she managed to get it off and onto herself. Before Evan could relieve the coat from one of the men, a pair of scary security guards entered. Muscles bulged from their black
tactical uniform. Their jaws were locked tight, prepared for action. They moved fluidly, half crouched, ready to shoot.
Immediately, they saw Evan as the threat. Assault rifles trained toward him. They hadn’t seen Grace standing behind the door with the other woman. Evan bolted to the rear of the room—He’s going the wrong way!—and picked up a metal stool. This was his distraction. He was going to break the tanks.
Grace’s hand covered her mouth.
“Miss, are you okay?” said another guard to her as he stepped inside the lab.
She gulped. He thought she was the scientist. Grace nodded, eyes wide.
“I’m going to need you to evacuate. Follow fire drill procedures.” He roughly shoved Grace out the door, launching her down the corridor, past another two soldiers running toward her.
That made five. Evan didn’t have his swords. What did he have to protect himself? Would the electricity be enough? But he’d said to go. No matter what, he’d be fine.
He’d be fine.
He faced off with those robed attackers effortlessly. He’d be fine. The best thing for him would be for her to get to safety so he wouldn’t worry.
She forced her legs to move until she jogged and her arms pumped. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Then she ran. The last thing she heard was the sound of glass breaking, then guns firing, as her palm slammed the emergency stairwell door open and she bolted up the steps. With her lungs on fire, she burst through the rooftop exit and into the cold night. Two minutes later, she got down the ladder and through the fence to the car. She slipped into the driver’s side, thinking if—when—he got out, they’d need a fast getaway. She could drive.
“AIMI, it’s Grace.”
“Good morning Grace. It’s early for a drive.”
“Start the engine in stealth mode.”
“Yes, Grace.”
The engine purred to life and idled.
“Where would you like to go, Grace?” AIMI asked.
“To the Lazarus House HQ.”
Envy (The Deadly Seven Book 1) Page 22
