by Jenna Black
Crawling while holding the phone was no easy feat, but Nadia needed the light. The ductwork and cables made the space into a maze, and it was impossible for her to move in a straight line. She didn’t trust the ceiling panels to hold her weight, so she traveled along whatever beams and supports she could find.
There was, of course, no air conditioning in the crawl space, and within a couple of minutes, Nadia’s whole body was soaked with sweat, and she was covered in dust and cobwebs. Maintenance workers might need access to the equipment on occasion, but it seemed they didn’t take advantage of it very often—and they certainly didn’t clean up when they did.
Nadia wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was. She’d started out heading in the direction of Dorothy’s entrance to the conference room on the assumption that it would lead toward the Chairman’s office, but with all the dodging around she had to do, she had no idea if she was still heading in that direction. If only she had a map, something to help her orient herself.
Nadia had been crawling around for what felt like an eternity when she heard a much muffled bang from somewhere behind her, and the beam she was currently crawling over vibrated beneath her. Surely that had been the sound of the conference room door being blown open. She held her breath, waiting for the sound of renewed gunfire as Thea’s men shot Nate and Belinski down, but it didn’t come. Maybe Nate and Belinski had submitted without a struggle, and Thea’s men hadn’t had specific orders to kill them on sight. Not that Nadia thought the order would be long in coming.
She started forward again, only to freeze when she heard the rumble of hurried footsteps below her. Once more she held her breath, not daring to move an inch in case the men below might hear her.
“They’ve blown the door,” she heard one of the men say. Then, after a few more steps, “The Lake girl isn’t there. They think she’s in the ceiling.”
Someone responded to him, but as they were moving away, Nadia couldn’t hear the response.
They knew she was up here. It was only a matter of time before someone found her. And she had no idea if she was any closer to the Chairman’s office than she had been when she started.
Tears of fear and misery burned her eyes as she braced herself for the effort of continuing forward. She was prepared to fight until the moment all hope was irreparably lost, and no one had captured her yet. Her knees ached from their constant impacts against metal beams, and the heels of her hands weren’t faring much better, but she would keep moving.
She crawled for maybe another five feet or so before a thought struck her so suddenly she almost cried out in surprise.
The guards she’d overheard had known what had happened in the conference room, had known Nadia wasn’t in there. Even though they were nowhere near the conference room, as evidenced by the distant blast.
How were they communicating?
Nadia almost dropped the phone in her haste to check its screen. Sure enough, the phone was receiving a signal. Her hands trembled as she brought up Colonel Bradford’s contact and prepared to send the message from Belinski. But before she managed to attach the recording, the phone lost its connection again.
Nadia wanted to scream in frustration, but if the phone lines had been up once, they’d probably go up again if she just waited. She should have thought of this before! Thea couldn’t control Dorothy if the phone lines were down, and she needed Dorothy to issue orders. No doubt she would keep the lines down as much as possible so no one could call out for help, but she was sure to need Dorothy again.
Tucking herself into the space formed by the juncture of two ducts and hunching over the phone to block its telltale light, Nadia made sure her message was ready to send at the tap of a finger and stared at the signal indicator, willing it to life. In the distance, she heard voices, voices that didn’t seem to be muffled by the ceiling or walls. In all likelihood, it meant the security officers were now combing the crawl space for her. She had to fight a desperate desire to shake the phone, as if that would make the signal come back faster.
How long did she have? On the one hand, the crawl space had to be as much of a maze for the security officers as it had been for her. On the other hand, she’d probably left plenty of tracks in the dust.
Sweat dripped from her forehead onto the phone’s screen. Or maybe it was tears. She had plenty of both. How many people would she be condemning to die if she managed to send her message? The lock-down meant that all the staff who regularly worked in the Fortress were trapped inside, along with all the extra staff who had come with Belinski and the board members.
But even though she didn’t know what Thea’s ultimate goal was, she was sure more people would die if Thea was allowed to live. So if the signal ever reappeared, Nadia knew what she had to do.
The signal indicator suddenly blinked on. Without giving herself even a fraction of a second to think about it, Nadia sent Belinski’s message.
It occurred to her that if she was captured, someone might check her phone and see the message Belinski had recorded. The longer she could keep Thea in ignorance about the missile strike, the better, so Nadia turned the phone off and tucked it in the gap between a beam and an air duct.
Seconds later, a man in combat gear peeked around the edge of one of the ducts and saw her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nadia could have gone for her purloined gun, but she wasn’t about to shoot someone in cold blood even if she had just doomed him and herself to death. She had accomplished her mission, had sent out Chairman Belinski’s message. Now all that was left to do was wait for the missiles to hit. She just wished there were some way she could get word to all the innocent bystanders in the building—including the security officers who were just following orders—so they could get out. But if Thea got wind of the approaching missile strike, she might be able to launch some kind of countermeasure, so Nadia held her tongue and hoped no one would find her phone.
“Don’t move!” the officer said, pointing his gun.
Nadia held perfectly still as he crawled to her, his gun hand never wavering. She was glad Dorothy hadn’t ordered her men to kill Nadia on sight, but it was hard to feel too relieved when the missiles were on their way.
Nadia made no protest when the officer grabbed her arm and forced her to lie on her stomach while he patted her down and confiscated her gun.
A second security officer opened a ceiling panel near where Nadia and her captor were crouching, and she was shoved unceremoniously through it. The man below tried to catch her, but he only softened her fall a bit.
Nadia hit the floor with a cry of pain, the wind momentarily knocked out of her. While she was trying to get her breath back, one of the officers hauled her to her feet and started dragging her down a hallway, his grip on her upper arm brutally tight. The second followed behind, gun in hand, although he didn’t point it at her. She knew if she made one false move, he could aim and shoot in a heartbeat.
She didn’t know where they were taking her, or what they were planning to do with her when they got there. She was trembling and sick to her stomach. Almost everyone she had ever loved—her parents, Gerri, Dante, even Nate—was either dead now or probably soon to be dead, as was she herself. She hoped her little niece and nephew were faring better in whatever foster home the state had sent them to.
The officers steered Nadia around yet another corner, and she saw an elegant reception area. She had never been in this part of the Fortress before, but the quality of the furnishings and the amount of electronics on the doors suggested they were entering VIP territory.
Sure enough, the guards marched her down one more short hallway, this one with a door at each end, and when they knocked on the far door, it was Dorothy’s voice that answered.
“Enter,” she said, and Nadia could hear the smile in her voice even though she couldn’t see her.
Nadia took a deep breath and stood up as straight and tall as she could. There was nothing she could do about her disheveled appearance, or about her t
ear-streaked face, but she would face Thea’s puppet with as much dignity as she could muster.
The dignity didn’t last long.
Nadia couldn’t help the little whimper that escaped her throat when she saw Nate sitting in a chair, and Dorothy standing beside him with a gun to his head. His hands had been bound behind him, and he was gagged. One of his eyes was blackened, and there was blood on his shirt as well as a couple of bloody handprints on his pants. Nadia couldn’t see any wounds on him, so it was possible the blood was Belinski’s. But he looked terrible anyway, and even though she’d already known he’d been captured, it was hard to bear seeing him like that. If Dorothy had ordered the two of them captured alive, it wasn’t for any good reason.
Dorothy smiled ever more broadly as she soaked in Nadia’s distress. Still smiling, she glanced up at the security officers.
“You may leave us now,” she said.
Nadia couldn’t look away from Nate’s battered face, but she felt the start of surprise of the officer who was holding her.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Madam Chairman,” he said respectfully. “These two are dangerous criminals, and—”
Dorothy rolled her eyes and cut him off with an impatient gesture. “They are a pair of helpless children, and Miss Lake would never do anything to jeopardize Nathaniel’s life. Would you dear?”
Dorothy was capable of an astonishing level of arrogance, but Nadia doubted it was only overconfidence that made her dismiss the guards.
“What’s the matter, Dorothy?” Nadia asked with a hard smile of her own. “Planning to say things you don’t want your people to hear?”
Nadia had no doubt that Dorothy—or more accurately, Thea—had enlisted a core of loyal supporters who knew exactly what she was and supported her anyway, either for financial gain or for promises of power. But surely most of her people, most of the security officers who worked in this building under her command, would desert her in a heartbeat if they knew the truth.
“Don’t be silly,” Dorothy said. “Please, gentlemen, do stay. But close the door first, will you?”
Nadia heard the door swing shut behind her, and at the same moment saw Dorothy’s hand moving—the hand with the gun in it.
“Watch out!” she screamed, but the warning came too late.
Dorothy fired off two shots, and both of Nadia’s escorts crumpled to the floor. Nadia swallowed hard and willed herself to stop shaking. It didn’t work.
“I’ll blame that on you, naturally,” Dorothy said to Nadia, the gun now aimed at Nate’s head again.
“I guess you’re through even pretending to care about human lives,” Nadia said.
“Oh, I’ll keep up the act a little longer,” Dorothy assured her. “I still need just a little more time before my research is complete.”
Thea’s research was supposedly about gaining a perfect understanding of the mind/body connection. Her stated goal was to be able to create a young body from a backup scan, and then infuse that body with the knowledge and memories of its older self. To create artificial immortality. But her hunger for that particular brand of research made no sense when she treated human beings with all the care and compassion that a human scientist showed to lab rats.
“What research are you talking about?” Nadia asked.
Dorothy blinked at her. “I’ve told you all about it already.”
“And I don’t believe for a moment that you’re selflessly trying to make mankind immortal.”
Dorothy laughed. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“It’s what you said you were doing.”
“No, no, dear. I said I wanted to create a functioning mind in a body of my choosing. I never said that mind had to come from a human backup.”
Nadia didn’t completely understand what Dorothy was trying to say, but she knew it made her stomach feel queasy. “If the mind doesn’t come from a backup, then where does it come from?”
“Why, I’ll create it, of course.” There was a gleam of eager fanaticism in her eyes. “I’m calling the project Humanity 2.0.” She ran a hand absently through Nate’s hair, and despite the threat of the gun, he jerked away from her touch. “Be still!” she snapped, her hand closing on his hair in what was obviously a painfully tight grip. He subsided.
The queasiness in Nadia’s stomach grew worse. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“Human beings are flawed creatures,” Dorothy said, hand still twined in Nate’s hair. “Greed, dishonesty, cruelty, disregard for the environment…” She shook her head. “Mankind could be so much better, so much nobler than it is.
“I believe I came into being for a reason. That I am here to save the world from mankind—and mankind from itself. I can create a body from scratch.” She indicated herself with a sweep of her hand, letting go of Nate’s hair to do so. “And I can create a mind from a model.” She grabbed Nate’s hair again.
“I am the closest thing mankind has ever seen to a real, live goddess.”
Nadia couldn’t help the way her mouth dropped open. Just before Dorothy had killed him, Nate’s father had muttered some hint about Thea wanting to be a goddess, but Nadia had taken it as hyperbole.
“A goddess?” she repeated.
“What else would you call a being who can create an entirely new species of living, sentient creatures? Human beings who have all the positive traits of mankind, with none of the negatives. My children will be perfect. I will craft them myself, mold their DNA so they will breed true. Beautiful to look at. Pure of heart. Highly intelligent. Resistant to disease.”
“And with the need to worship you built into them at a cellular level,” Nadia finished for her.
Dorothy shrugged. “Naturally.”
She frowned suddenly, her eyes narrowing, her jaw clenching. Her nostrils flared and she gave Nate’s head a little shake, practically pulling his hair out.
“What have you done?” Dorothy said in a voice that was nearly a shriek.
Nadia could only presume she had just found out about the missiles. Now, more than ever, Nadia was convinced that calling for the strike had been the right thing to do, no matter how many innocents might be trapped inside this building. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines of Dorothy’s narrative. If she was planning to create a new race of human beings— Humanity 2.0, as she called them—then her plan also ultimately included wiping out the “legacy” humans.
No wonder she didn’t care about bombing the Basement, or killing and replacing board members, or shooting a couple of her own men dead just because she didn’t want them to hear her plans. She planned to kill them all eventually anyway.
“You stupid child!” Dorothy yelled, hauling Nate to his feet, the gun jammed into his ear. “You think I can’t counter this little game of yours?”
Nadia crossed her arms over her chest, wondering how long they had until the missiles hit. Her sense of time was all askew; she had no idea how long ago she had made the call. Belinski had said it would take about twenty minutes, but that had been assuming he was on the phone in person with no possible question as to the validity of his orders.
“No,” Nadia said. “I don’t think you can.”
“Perhaps if I make it clear to Synchrony’s acting Chairman that I will launch a nuclear missile strike in retaliation if he doesn’t cancel his own launch, he will see things my way.” Her eyes filled with malice. “And if he doesn’t, then I guess we’ll have to see how many missiles I can launch before the end.
“I want you to move very slowly,” she instructed Nadia. “Make sure I can see what you’re doing at all times. I would like you to search my men and find some flex-cuffs and a gag. I’m sure they have some. Then we’re all going to go downstairs to the situation room, and you can watch while I kill millions of people all because of your stupid, pointless heroics.”
Moving slowly, as Dorothy had instructed, Nadia crouched down beside the fallen officers. If Thea had infiltrate
d the weapons systems, then there would be nothing Nadia could do to stop her from launching an attack against Synchrony, whether they gave in to her blackmail or not.
But unlike the phone system and the net, which Thea had so obviously infiltrated for her own use, the weapons systems would not be networked, and it might be difficult for her to weasel her way into every system she would need to launch a nuclear attack without human intervention. Not if she hadn’t expected to have to use them anytime soon, at least.
“Tell me something, Dorothy,” Nadia said while running her hands over a security officer’s pockets and equipment belt. “Do you need to use retinal or fingerprint scans to access our nuclear missiles?”
Nadia’s hand closed over the butt of the gun in the guard’s shoulder holster.
“I know you and the Armed Forces Chief have to plug in a couple of keys,” she continued, “but is that all?”
The spark of fury that lit in Dorothy’s eyes answered Nadia’s question, as did the way she tucked her own body more firmly behind Nate’s.
“Don’t move, or I swear, I’ll blow his brains out!”
Nate’s face was sweaty with fear, his eyes wide and pleading as Nadia drew the gun and rose to her feet. He started shaking his head, as much as he could with the muzzle of that gun up against it. It gave Nadia pause, but only for a moment.
“Why did you gag him, Dorothy?” Nadia asked, raising her gun despite Dorothy’s threat. Her heart was thundering in her chest, everything within her recoiling.
“I said stop!” Dorothy screamed, poking the gun against Nate’s skull.
Nadia swallowed hard. “I don’t think that’s Nate. I think it’s one of your puppet Replicas.”
Nate shook his head even more frantically, his mouth working around the gag as muffled protests rose from behind it. All of which was perfectly reasonable for someone who had a gun to his head. But Nate, her Nate, had been willing to sacrifice his life to stop Thea. He’d sent Nadia into the crawl space and stayed behind himself to help gain her more time. And if the person Dorothy was threatening were really Nate, he would be afraid, but he wouldn’t be begging Nadia not to do it. He would agree with what she was doing, and he’d be communicating that agreement to her through his eyes and body language.
