Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

“Well, we still should try to get away. We won’t get another opportunity. Anything is better than staying here.”

  Good advice.

  He reached out and took her hand, and together they walked down the hallway, past door after door. About a hundred feet on, it took a right angle turn, and there they got their first real shock.

  There was a blonde woman lying on the ground, dead, with a single bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.

  “Jesus,” Elisa breathed.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  They walked on. A second dead body, this one a young Asian man, was slumped in an alcove. He, too had been shot, but he’d evidently tried to defend himself. There was a gun lying on the floor next to him, and across the hall there were two bullet holes in the wall.

  He picked up the fallen gun, holding it a little gingerly. He looked down at it, his face an unreadable mix of emotions.

  “Could you use that on someone?”

  “If I run into that old man who tortured me, I think I could. And it’s better than being unarmed.”

  She squeezed his hand, and a little further on, they came to a door with a window. In that entire long hallway, it was the first window they’d seen. There was no exit sign, or in fact a sign of any kind, but through the window they saw stairs. Chris dropped Elisa’s hand to pull open the door, and peered inside, cautiously looking up and down the staircase. He held the gun at chest level, feeling the ridged metal of the trigger against his index finger.

  But there was no one there.

  “Come on.” He led the way, and she followed, taking his hand again. The door shut with a loud clunk behind him, making him jump a little.

  “Shit. What the hell is going on? Where is everyone?”

  “That’s not a bad thing.”

  “No, but it’s creeping me right the hell out. I don’t like what I can’t understand.” Drolezki had said that. We like to have explanations, we humans.

  They walked up the staircase, their footfalls echoing against the tile walls. They went one floor up, only to find another long hallway, then up another, and another. The light three floors up seemed brighter and more natural, so they opened the door into yet another hall.

  Just outside of the door from the stairwell, there were eight bodies, all dead of gunshot wounds. The linoleum floor was slick with their blood. Chris tried not to look at them, especially into their eyes, now staring into nowhere. Hands were stretched out on the floor like reaching claws. Several more guns were there, fallen where they’d been dropped.

  He glanced back at her. “Should you take a gun?”

  Elisa shook her head, shuddered, and gripped his hand more tightly.

  The furthest body in the group, lying face up with his chest covered with blood, turned out to be Drolezki.

  Looking down into that cold, immobile face, and a shiver ran through him. “Glad they got you, you sonofabitch.”

  “What?” Elisa looked at him questioningly.

  He nudged the body with his toe. “The asshole who caught me and brought me here.”

  “Oh.” Her voice sounded small and hollow in his ears. They moved forward again, shocked by the continuing carnage. “What happened here? How can they all be dead?”

  “No idea. But whatever went down, went down fast. I can’t imagine people like this being caught unawares. This is almost scarier, somehow.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it implies that however powerful and destructive these people were, there’s something worse.”

  “At least they seem to be on our side. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, you know?”

  They passed two more bodies. He was already getting used to seeing dead bodies, and found the idea repugnant. It was like what happened in war. And it happened amazingly fast.

  “Have you seen the people who interrogated you?”

  She shook her head. “It was a middle-aged woman. African American, with thick glasses. She had an assistant, a young guy, kind of mousy-looking. But they could be anywhere. I had no idea how huge this place is.”

  “How badly did they hurt you?”

  “Not much. They were very clinical. It was uncomfortable but bearable. Certainly not the kind of torture you went through.”

  “I’m glad. When the pain was happening I kept thinking about them doing the same thing to you, and it made me absolutely furious. I was so angry that I couldn’t be afraid, and couldn’t give too much attention to what they were doing to me.”

  “Just hearing that makes me want to cry.”

  “Don’t. It’s over. Whatever happened here, I just know it’s over. Maybe we’re jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but this part of it… this place is finished. It’s a tomb.”

  And that was when a hand grabbed his ankle.

  Chris gave an inarticulate shout and a reflexive kick, and stumbled backwards, almost losing his balance. Elisa stood frozen in place, her eyes huge.

  The hand belonged to an elderly woman, whose face and hand were covered with blood. She wore eyeglasses, but one lens had a jagged crack and a piece missing. Despite Chris’s kick, she held onto his pants leg, looking up at him with a fierce expression, baring her teeth like an animal.

  “You’ve done all this, you two,” she hissed. “It’s your fault. But you can’t stop us. You’re scheduled to be terminated.”

  Chris brought up the gun, and before he could stop himself, he’d fired off three shots. One of them ricocheted off the floor, and he heard a sharp crack as it shattered one of the tiles on the wall.

  The other two struck the woman in the back. She gave a spasmodic shudder, and a hoarse rattle, and then her hand relaxed.

  He stood there, his breath coming in whining gasps, trying to stop his heart from pounding. Inside his skull, like a voice in an echo chamber, came the words, “I just killed someone,” repeated again and again and again.

  He looked down at the bloody handprint on the leg of his jeans. He reeled backwards, dropping the gun with a clatter, and fell to his knees. He retched, but brought up nothing but acrid saliva.

  The dry heaves struck him over and over. For a time all he could do was huddle on all fours, gagging, as the image of the woman’s bloodied, desperate face stared back at him. Elisa knelt next to him, her cool hands on the naked skin of his back, centering him, bringing him back to the present. The feeling passed, leaving only a sick, helpless shivering. And she said quietly, “Chris, it’s okay. You’ll be okay. You had to do it. But we’ve got to get out of here.”

  He looked up at her and nodded, but couldn’t manage words. With her hand on his arm, steadying him, he struggled to his feet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He staggered a little at the first step, then scolded himself for being weak. He cleared his throat, and managed a faint smile at her.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “I know.”

  She kept her hand protectively on his upper arm as they went forward down the hall. It was like the cave all over again, only the other way around. Here, Elisa was the strong one.

  Five minutes later they heard sounds ahead of them. Other than the woman that Chris had killed, the only sounds they’d heard since leaving confinement. Running footsteps, an angry shout, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

  They both flattened themselves against the wall. There was nowhere to hide. They were in a long hallway with only a few doors, none of which were nearby, and which were likely to be locked in any case. But a little further up was a turn to the right. It seemed to be the direction from which the sounds had come.

  Chris motioned for her to stay where she was, and edged his way forward. There was now only silence from ahead. He got to the angle of the wall and cautiously peered around it. He could see a huddled form, probably another corpse, a little way ahead.

  Then suddenly three men wearing black riot gear, including helmets and visors, crossed the hallway. They
moved quickly and silently and didn’t turn his way. Chris gave a gasp, then winced, hoping he hadn’t been heard.

  They must be the people who had destroyed the base. If so, were they on their side? Had the old man been lying about who had killed Gavin and Glen and the others? Either way, jumping out in front of armed men on a search-and-destroy mission seemed inadvisable. It’d suck if they were trying to help him, but shot him only to discover their mistake afterwards.

  He slipped back to where Elisa was still standing. “There are some men up ahead. Armed. They must be the ones who did all this. They weren’t coming this way. They crossed the hall and kept going, I think.”

  “Is it safe to keep going?”

  “Probably not. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  They got to the turn in the hall, and once again peered around the corner. Other than the dead body, it was completely empty.

  Only a minute later they turned another right-angle bend and ahead of them was the unmistakable pale glow of daylight. Two more bodies lay prone, one against the wall, the other sprawled face down in the middle of the floor. Chris gave them wide berth, but they showed no signs of life. And then past them, beyond all hope or guessing, what they most wanted to see…

  An exit.

  They broke into a run, and Chris’s bare shoulder punched the doorframe, flung it outward. A cool gust of wind, carrying a spray of drizzle, slapped them in the face.

  “Hey!”

  They slowly turned together, Chris’s hand still clasping Elisa’s.

  A car was driving slowly toward them. A gray sedan. Behind it was a small fleet of other vehicles. Leaning out of the driver’s side window of the sedan was a handsome young man with a tanned face and sun-streaked brown hair that Chris had last seen in a tollbooth on the Indiana state line. He gave them a broad grin.

  “We thought we were going to have to go inside and search the whole building for you two,” he said. “Get in.”

  Chapter 21

  “Aren’t you cold?” The boy’s tone was conversational, unconcerned. His name was Keller Davis, and he himself was dressed in a long-sleeved t-shirt and a sleeveless fleece vest, driving with one hand casually draped on the top of the steering wheel, the wipers swishing back and forth across the windshield like a metronome.

  “I lost my shirt in there. They didn’t give me another one.”

  “Yeah, we know about that.” Keller flashed another grin. “That’s how we were tracking you, you know. A bug on your shirt, powered by your body warmth. But when you took your shirt off, we didn’t know where in the building you were.”

  “My shirt was bugged?”

  “Yeah. That’s why we found your shirt, even though you were no longer in it. It was in bad shape, unfortunately. I’m guessing you didn’t take it off voluntarily.”

  “Very much the opposite.”

  “That sucks. I can turn up the heater if you want.”

  Elisa had her arm around Chris’s shoulders, and he leaned into her. “No, that’s okay. I’m fine. But if I can get another shirt at some point…?”

  “Oh, sure. I called ahead. I’m sure they’ll have one for you.”

  “They? Who are they?” Oh, boy. More mysterious new people.

  “The people I’m taking you to see. The ones who engineered your daring rescue. Sorry you had to get out of the building under your own power, but it’s a big place, and like I said, we didn’t know where exactly you were. When we realized that it would have taken too long to find you, we hacked into their security system and disabled the locks. We sent some of our people in to try and find you, and then hoped for the best.” He grinned. “You got out before you got found, which is pretty amazing, considering. I don’t know if you got the grand tour of it while you were there, but it’s mostly underground. From the outside, it looks like a little office building, nestled amongst the trees. An insurance agency, or something.” Another grin. “Impressive place. It’s like an iceberg.”

  Chris looked out of the window. It was still drizzling, and the road wound its way through craggy hills covered with Douglas fir and thick undergrowths of salal and salmonberry. He saw a turnoff that said, Skykomish 10 miles, which told him that he was somewhere northeast of Seattle, but not much more than that.

  He had no intention of ever coming near this place again. If he got out of this alive, he vowed to never set foot within a hundred-mile radius of that place. He shivered again.

  Elisa pulled him close. “So, these people you’re taking us to see. Are they also eager to torture us for information and then kill us? Because if so, you might want to know that the people we got away from didn’t get much in the way of useful information for all of their time and effort.”

  Keller laughed. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Well, I’m not in charge. But we wouldn’t have kept you alive all of this time if we really wanted to kill you, would we?”

  “I guess not,” Elisa admitted. “But why did you keep us alive? What was in it for you?”

  “I think I’ll let my boss explain that. She has more information than I do. I’m a flunky, really. Odd jobs.” Another flash of white teeth. “Like taking over for tollbooth operators when they get unexpectedly delayed while coming to work.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be reassuring, but at the moment, it’s creeping me right the hell out.”

  Keller laughed again. He did that a lot. “Well, it worked out in your favor, didn’t it? Don’t knock it.”

  The drive continued, winding northward along the western Cascade foothills. Chris suddenly felt exhausted. Not surprising, considering what he’d been through. Whatever more they had planned for them, he decided that he’d deal with it after he took a nap.

  —

  He awoke some uncertain amount of time later when the car braked to a stop, its tires crunching on gravel. It was completely dark, and the drizzle had shifted into full-blown rain. There were lights on in a nearby building, partly hidden amongst the silhouettes of shrubbery. To Chris’s eyes, still a little blurred from sleep, it looked strangely like the place he’d just left, and he had a sudden clenching fear that they’d driven in a circle.

  That was ridiculous, though. If he was supposed to be killed by those people Deirdre Ross was working with, he would have been left there, not put through the charade of a fake rescue. This place had to be opposed to the people who were trying to hurt them. It was more like the equal-and-opposite of the people who tortured him. Yin and yang, light and dark, black and white, good and evil.

  “Sorry, you’re gonna have to make a run for the door.” Keller gave Chris an apologetic smile. “It’s freakin’ cold for July, but you know, that’s western Washington for you. We can get you some warmer clothes once we’re inside.”

  “No problem.” Chris opened the door. The smell of wet vegetation struck him, along with a wind-blown spray of rain, and he got out, following the kid at a jog toward a brightly-lit front door, as the chilly drops stung his skin. Keller held the door open for them, then followed them inside. Chris rubbed his cold arms again, still trying to get warm.

  The kid turned to a tall, lanky man wearing a neat white shirt and dark tie who was standing inside a reception booth against the far wall. “Did you get a sweatshirt?”

  The man held out a brand new University of Washington Huskies t-shirt and sweatshirt. “Yep. Just got back from the gift shop.”

  Chris took them and pulled them both over his head. “Thanks. Much better. Even if the colors suck.”

  “Don’t want you to catch your death out there.” The lanky man smirked. He must not have been a Huskies fan, either.

  “Yeah.”

  “Got you some food, too.” The man handed Elisa a pair of plastic-wrapped sandwiches. “Tuna fish. Hope neither of you is vegan.”

  “Wouldn’t stand on principle at this point even if we were.” Elisa gave a sandwich to Chris, then unwrapped the ot
her and took a grateful bite.

  “This way.” Keller gestured toward a hallway that led off toward a series of doors. Too exhausted to argue, Chris followed.

  This place really was a close counterpart of the one they’d just left. What if they were walking blindly into the hands of people who were worse? But however much his logical mind sounded the alarm, his emotions couldn’t respond. It’d have to be whatever it was. He couldn’t run any more.

  Keller stopped in front of one of the last doors in the hall, and opened it. They stepped from the tile hallway floor into a plushly carpeted office, with tasteful furnishings and a large teak desk. More welcoming, at least, than the tile-floored laboratory/torture chamber in the other place.

  The kid shook Chris’s hand. “I’m leaving you in good hands. Glad you made it here safely.” He smiled again, then left, closing the door behind him.

  Chris turned. Sitting behind the desk, her hands folded primly in front of her, was an elderly woman, smiling at them in a maternal fashion.

  He goggled at her. “You?”

  “I don’t expect you thought you’d ever see me again. Peru, Indiana, wasn’t it? I gave your doggie a biscuit.”

  “And…” Realization dawned, and he reached up and touched his shoulder. “You’re the one who bugged my shirt.”

  She nodded. “Excellent memory, Mr. Franzia. A friendly pat on the shoulder is all it takes if you are skilled in such things. There were three bugs, actually. All powerful, high-tech, waterproof, virtually indestructible, and able to keep running indefinitely if kept warm. We try not to put all of our eggs in one basket. The one on your vehicle was not my doing. We’d placed it there weeks earlier. When you abandoned your car in Missouri, we lost that means of locating you. The other two, however, I placed. One of them, on your dog’s collar, you found and removed immediately. A smart bit of work, that was, and putting it in another car was clever. It put us off your trail only for a few hours, though, because the one on your shirt remained with you. We used it to track you all the way across the country.” She stood, and reached out a hand, and shook Elisa’s hand, and then Chris’s. “In any case, welcome. We’re very glad you’re here. My name is Mrs. Dorothy Hargroder.”