The Jackie in my head was right. The corridor was at least two hundred feet long on this side. Unless they were running, no one would have been able to make it through the front door and all the way to the computer room in the time we’d been in the basement.
When I came skidding to a stop at the top of the stairs, however, I found, to my intense horror, that there was someone in the hallway. One of the nurses, given her uniform. She was about fifty feet from me, walking slowly, looking left and right into the dormitories themselves.
Hardly daring to breathe, I backed up against the wall, keeping my eye on her through the slit of the open door. Even if she started walking toward me, I’d be out of sight—unless she got back into the entryway and looked back.
I was just moving to get a better view of her when the comm stuttered in my ear.
“Come on down and get suited up, Robin. I’m sending a replacement lookout up,” Nathan said.
I stayed for just a moment more, watching. The nurse continued down the corridor away from me and eventually disappeared through a hidden door on the computer room’s end of the hall.
Of course. The staff had been told to stay in their quarters during the update. I breathed out a quick note of thanks, and then turned and dashed toward the stairs. I passed Jace halfway down and did an involuntary double take.
He was no longer wearing the white cleaning crew suit but was now clad in the bright blue uniform of the Authority, complete with the disturbing logo affixed to his right breast pocket: a blood-red serpent twined around a black X on a white background. With the pistol and electro-stunner on his belt, he was the epitome of an Authority solider. It was startling and uncomfortable… but it worked.
“There was a nurse about fifty feet away,” I hissed, grabbing at his arm to make him pause. “I think she headed into the staff quarters, but keep an eye out for her.”
He nodded and then darted away, and I continued my descent into the basement. I came to a quick stop when I reached the floor below and saw everyone dressed in Authority garb, including Nathan
I yanked out a uniform that looked about the right size and held it up against my body. A quick nod from Nathan and I was stripping out of the white coveralls and sliding into the blue uniform. Once I had it on, I darted to a drum and yanked out the one remaining gun. I made sure the safety was on, then shoved it into the holster built into the uniform at my right hip. The electro-stunner went into the holster on my left. My pouch of grenades went around my chest like a bandolier, their heft a strange comfort. I also moved the lockpick from my inner pocket to one of the outer ones.
“What are we doing with the old uniforms?” I hissed.
“Leaving them down here with the cleaning supplies,” Nathan replied. “For now. I don’t know whether we’ll need them later, so I’d rather not destroy them.” He looked around at the rest of us, surveying our new outfits. Then he put his hand up and, to my surprise, moved back toward the lockers. He swerved to the right and threw open a door in the wall I hadn’t noticed before.
“A shaft to the incinerator,” he said simply. “It’s…” He paused, and a pained look crossed his face. “It’s where we’ll put any bodies we might collect during our mission.”
He shut the door without waiting for a response to that grisly statement and glanced at his watch.
“We have seven minutes,” he said quickly. “We’re going to need to get down that hallway more quickly than I would like. Let’s hope we don’t run into anyone to delay us. Helmets on.”
One by one we donned the Authority helmets that came with the outfits and flicked the visors down over our faces.
Yes, we were wearing printed masks, but we’d also come into the center as a cleaning crew, wearing those masks. We didn’t need anyone putting two and two together.
We turned and hurried back up the stairs, arriving seconds later at the top of the staircase, breathing heavily with both effort and stress.
“The nurse?” I asked Jace.
“She came back this way but passed right by and went into the reception area,” he answered. “Looked like she was in a hurry. I’m guessing they’ve got orders about places to be when the systems go down. Don’t want to get caught out of place and get in the way.”
“Exactly,” Nathan said, leaning out the door and glancing right and left. “Ready, team?”
We all nodded, then we stepped out into the hallway, turned right, and started walking toward the computer room. Now that we were dressed as Authority soldiers, we all fell into the role, stalking along in a quietly menacing pack. The one nurse we saw on our way averted her eyes and hurried past toward reception.
I tossed a glance to the left and right on occasion, despite myself, curious to see what the dormitories looked like at night—curious about what Hope might have seen while she was in here. Not that she would have seen much, being only weeks old. But that thought aside…
They were… dark. Completely dark. My heart squeezed painfully at the thought of those kids in there without any light, particularly the ones still old enough to be frightened of it. Nighttime had to be a true horror for them. Trapped in those boxes with no way to see what was going on outside.
I shuddered and turned back, focusing on the comforting breadth of Jace’s back in front of me… and then saw the security team heading for us. Their faces were caught between suspicion and obsequiousness, their hands hovering by the guns on their hips.
They weren’t Authority, I could tell that much. Instead of blue they were wearing a deep forest green. Ministry then.
“You’re here early,” the lead security guard said gruffly, looking us up and down as they came to a stop in front of us.
I was glad of the visor over my face, certain my nerves would have been blazing in my eyes.
Nathan made a show of glancing down at his watch and tipping his head while the rest of us came to a stop around him, blocking the hallway.
“Not by much,” he drawled. “And I always say it’s better to be early than late. Less chance of disappointing anyone. I often think that philosophy is what got me to the top at such a young age.”
He left the statement hanging there, and I wondered, terrified, if these guys, whoever they were, were going to ask for our identification. We didn’t have any of the branded leather badges like the one we’d seen on the Authority agent in Trenton, and we certainly didn’t have any written orders for being here.
We’d known there might be security personnel in here, had been sure there would be an Authority team somewhere in the building. We just hadn’t thought we’d run into them while the cameras were still on. Those cameras were definitely going to make it more difficult to take care of this particular problem. I didn’t think shooting security personnel in the middle of a Ministry holding center was going to go down very well with whoever might be watching. And I knew for a fact we didn’t have time to stand around discussing things with these guys, whoever they were. We had to be down to five minutes now until the system update began. That didn’t leave much time for us to get to the computer room, get the techs into it, and then find our way through the other door and up two flights of stairs to the executive suites.
I snapped back to attention to hear the lead security guy asking Nathan whether everything had been up to snuff on our way in, or if we’d seen anything out of place.
“We’ve been having some trouble with some of the employees here,” he continued. “Some of them aren’t following the rules as they should be. Getting sloppy, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t have to look at my teammates to know everyone else was probably feeling just as antsy as I was by this time. This guy must have known all the systems were about to go down, and everyone was supposed to be in a certain place at a certain time. Wasn’t that Ministry protocol? Wasn’t that what Nathan and Corona had said? But he was standing there chatting like we had all the time in the world.
He didn’t believe we were the real Authority soldiers. And we w
ere about to be discovered and taken to jail by the Authority team who would be here momentarily. Oh God. Oh God, oh God—
“Actually,” Nathan said casually, “now that you mention it, we were just in the basement and did see a bit of a mess down there. It looks as though a cleaning crew left their uniforms laying around for some reason, and quite a bit of cleaning equipment. I don’t know where that cleaning crew is now, but I would certainly look into it, if this is your usual assignment. Don’t want to take the blame for the people here failing to pass muster. If you know what I mean.”
He pressed his lips out and lifted both eyebrows, clearly insinuating that if there was a problem with the building, it was because this very team didn’t take their job very seriously.
It was a dangerous play, but it would be a good one…. if they believed him.
Their leader, much to my surprise, bought it hook, line, and sinker.
“Ah, that won’t do. We’ll get right on it, sir, thank you for the heads up. And thank you for bringing it to my attention rather than reporting it to anyone else,” he added, a hint of embarrassment creeping onto his face.
Nathan tipped his head once. “I feel it is a military man’s right and responsibility to look out for his fellow military men,” he said, voice stern but friendly.
The Ministry team parted to allow us to pass, the other two giving us nods of acknowledgement.
We had only gotten about ten feet farther along the hallway when the lights around us went down three notches and a piercing alarm sounded three times.
We all froze, ready to start running.
“The systems have just gone down,” Nathan muttered. “They’ve started early, dammit.”
Without warning, he whirled around and dropped to his knee, yanked out his gun, and shot three times, bringing down all three of the security personnel.
The gun was quieter than I expected, letting off only a soft pop as Nathan squeezed the trigger, his hands steady, his breathing even.
For a second or two, watching the bodies fall, I forgot how to breathe. I remembered again the Authority soldier I had shot when Jackie was lying broken and unconscious at my feet near the burning wreck of her motorcycle.
That moment, when I’d turned and fired and killed, had felt unreal. This moment, with the three green uniformed bodies on the ground, my teammates around me, all lit in an eerie orange light, felt too real.
Nathan, as if sensing the group’s shock, clapped sharply once. “Jace, Kory, get those three to the basement and down the chute. Be as quick as you can, and then make tracks for the computer room. The rest of you, follow me. Our timeline just got a whole hell of a lot shorter.”
38
We raced down the hallway as quickly as we could, not bothering with subtlety or stealth.
“What are we going to say if anyone sees us running like this?” I huffed in Nathan’s general direction.
“That the test started earlier than anticipated and we don’t want to be late on the exchange with the execs,” Nathan answered, sounding unruffled.
We luckily hadn’t been too far from the computer room when we met the security team, so it was only a moment before we were sliding to a stop in front of the door that led into the room we needed to access, all of us breathing heavily. Unfortunately, we got there just in time to hear locks slamming into place.
“Dammit,” I breathed.
It made sense that the Ministry would want to keep everyone in place during the update. They were vulnerable and would want to restrict movement.
While we might be posing as Authority agents, it didn’t mean we had the security badges or codes to get through the doors. However, we’d come prepared for such an emergency, each of us wearing gloves etched with the fingerprints and palm markings of a real exec from this very holding center, courtesy of the magic printer.
Nathan muttered a curse under his breath, gave our group a glance, and shoved his left palm against the blue security screen just to the side of the door.
We all waited, breathless. This was the moment of truth
The pad beeped twice, and Nathan pulled his palm away to expose a line across the pad that read “Approved.” A second later, the door began to open again.
We took only seconds to get through it, and then I turned around and hit the button that would close it again. I didn’t want anyone sneaking up behind us while we were in here, and Jace and Kory could get in on their own.
The room was dimly lit and empty of people. All around us, computers and various other pieces of tech I didn’t recognize hummed and blinked.
“So, next,” I said, focusing on the business at hand.
Nathan had pulled off his helmet and was already getting into his bag and pulling out equipment, laying it on the table next to him. Savannah, I noticed, was there with him, her nimble fingers organizing the tech as Nathan laid it down.
“We figure out which of these computers is the main hub,” Nathan said. “And when we’ve got the hub, we hook up to it with our own drives, which house the virus we need to get into their main operating system while everything else is down. Their firewall has to be inactive during this process so the new software can be transferred from the Ministry’s headquarters. That makes them vulnerable to any downloads happening in-house as well. We get in there and get the virus uploaded, and then I get into the system and activate the virus. We grab everything else we can while your team does its job, and then we get the hell out of here. I want to be through the process and leaving the building within less than ten minutes of the protocol ending. Hanging around any longer than that gives us too much chance of being caught.”
Nathan moved with some of the equipment to the first computer in reach and sent Ajax and Savannah to other computers with identical equipment. They all plugged the devices into computers, while Lux and Rio ran to a set of keyboards and started tapping away.
“We’re going to use a program I developed myself to prevent anyone seeing us,” he said. He shot me another glance and frowned. “Go! Get up to the exec suites, get the people we need, and make sure our operatives are there to take over. We have seventeen minutes left, Robin.”
Right. I jumped as the door behind me slid open and whirled around to see Jace and Kory back from the basement, their eyes as wild as mine felt. And no wonder, considering they’d just been towing dead bodies around.
“Kory, you stay here to keep an eye on the techs,” I said. He made a protesting movement, but I held up a hand. “I don’t want them surprised by any other Ministry personnel. Nelson and Gabby, you’re here as well. Jace, Alexy, let’s go,” I snapped.
I turned on my toe, located the door on the left that led to the executive suites, and ran toward it, leaving the techs to their mission and Gabby and Nelson to their responsibilities as plan B. There would be five execs, and they wouldn’t have any cause to fight us. Alexy, Jace, and I could handle it by ourselves. If anything happened down here, I trusted Kory to be able to figure it out on his own.
We were three steps from the door when the one on the other side of the room slid open, revealing a team of five Authority soldiers, all of them with their guns out.
They took one look at our suits and paused.
“Badge number and ranking!” shouted the guy in the lead.
I looked at him, mouth gaping as my mind raced frantically through my knowledge base. We hadn’t covered this in the mission prep. Why hadn’t we covered this in the mission prep?
“Badge number and ranking!” he repeated. “What are you doing here? Who’s your commander?”
I opened my mouth to answer with… something, but I’d already hesitated too long, and that told them everything they needed to know.
The first guy pulled the trigger, his gun aimed at my chest, and I dove out of the way, putting my hand up at the last minute to yank Alexy with me. Jace started shooting immediately, and a moment later Kory was right there with him. In the enclosed space, the noise of the guns was immense.
&
nbsp; The Authority team was streaming through the door, all five of them with guns blazing, and I flipped over on my back to start shooting at them, though my hands were shaking too hard for me to aim.
I saw a bullet ricochet off one of their chests and paused for a fraction of a second to gather myself and aim more carefully. Of course they were wearing armor under their uniforms, just like in the streets of Voceville, and then again in the Authority compound. The Little John operatives who had rescued us then had fought the Authority with clubs and swords and their bare hands.
We had guns. And a rapidly shrinking window of time.
The desperation brought me focus.
“Aim for their heads!” I hissed. “They’re wearing armor!”
Unfortunately, my shout drew the attention of the soldier closest to me and Alexy, and he whirled around, opening fire on the two of us.
We scrambled in opposite directions, making for any sort of shelter. There was a metal desk nearby, and I moved toward it, staying in a crouch so low my thighs screamed at the effort. I was almost there when I felt something hit my hip, lighting my entire body up with pain.
I staggered and fell to my knees as I shouted in shock. The pain was more intense than anything I’d ever felt before, and when I looked up again, my vision had gone hazy around the edges. My ears didn’t seem to be working right anymore, either, considering how quiet the room had suddenly become. Then, in a burst of sound and movement, everything came roaring back.
I somehow made it to the desk and slid behind it, then turned and moved back toward the edge to peek out. The Authority agent who had shot me was a mere five feet away, his gun aimed in my direction, steps stealthy and quick.
He was within my range, and I pulled my gun up and aimed for the spot between his eyes.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Who gave you the authority to be here?”
I could hear guns firing and people shouting all around us and wondered why the hell he was bothering to ask such questions when his fellow agents were evidently hell-bent on killing the lot of us. What, did he think I was going to start a calm conversation with him in the middle of a gunfight?
The Child Thief 4: Little Lies Page 29
