by Morgan Bell
“In a pinch a cut jock strap and a stone works too,” Blaise informed him, retrieving his gun from behind the column.
The team proceeded down the corridor to the main building.
∞
Rosen and Drake had entered the kitchens before the power went on. The kitchens, which were a series of stainless steel benches, a walk in secured storage unit, a heater unit and dispensing stations where food bags would be hung and pressure plates would dispense the food through plastic udders, were all clean, empty and secured.
“No knives or pots,” Rosen observed.
“Nope,” Agent Drake said. “Haven’t been any utensils in fed psych facilities, lock ups or airport kitchens since a senator snuck a steak knife onto a plane from an airport terminal restaurant at Tampa International in 2016 to show the risk.”
“Really?” Rosen asked.
“Yep. He’s still in a federal lock up for that stunt,” Agent Drake added, advancing to where the kitchen opened out into a service corridor.
The power flickered off and then on again. Then they heard the alarm.
∞
“Visitor center clear!” Agent Ganos announced, coming out of the blue-gray room adjacent to the corridor.
“Holding room clear!” Jamie said, rolling out of a room where patients were kept to wait for their visitors.
“Guard station is clear,” Blaise added, and motioned for the two of them to join him in the guard room.
Jamie came in first and Blaise directed him to go to the monitor panels. Jamie saw the text scrolling up on the monitors. Over and over again it read “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
“Anything?” Blaise asked.
“I don’t think it’s a technosis, if that’s what you mean,” Jamie said. “It just says ‘There’s no place like home,’ over and over again.”
“Anything else?” Blaise asked.
Jamie looked at the other monitor panels and saw that surveillance monitors had been tracking them, and he saw other monitors that were tracking Rosen and Drake. The rolling message on the panel stopped and was replaced by a single line.
“They are tracking us and they’ve sent us a new message,” Jamie explained, coming out of the guard station.
“What’s that?” Agent Ganos asked.
“Welcome to the house, Team Lemming.”
As they progressed up the corridor they heard a series of pops behind them, followed by a crackle, and then the guard station burst into flames.
∞
Rosen and Drake continued up through the service corridors into the patients’ care bays. Each bay had six semi-private beds, the mattresses of which were missing. All that was left was the bed frames and the restraints. Drake and Rosen cleared seven bays by the time they reached the center of the building.
“Freaky,” Rosen said, as they started to clear the eighth bay.
“How?” Drake asked.
“All of these cuffs and crap, it looks like an S&M convention hall,” Rosen answered, smiling.
“Stay focused.”
“Um…” Rosen began.
“What is it?” Drake asked.
“Remember that convention I was talking about?”
“The one your mama goes to?” Drake smiled.
“No, Drake. This is some serious shit here,” Rosen said, advancing with his gun fixed on a point at the end of the bay.
Agent Drake backed in toward the unit where Rosen was focusing his attention. He turned and faced the bed; beneath a sheet was the figure of a woman, her hands and wrists manacled to the bed. Drake motioned for silence and moved forward. He reached for the edge of the sheet and pulled it back. The figure was nude, eyes covered, stretched out on the steel bed frame. Drake noticed her chest wasn’t rising or falling. Drake held his breath.
“It’s a doll,” Rosen said.
“What?” Drake asked, finally breathing.
“It’s one of those ‘really dolls’ the Chinese used to churn out. With the tech, the sound, really skin, complains after sex.”
“How do you know so much about them?” Drake asked.
“Fuck you. Everyone knows about them and the sili-clap that the buyers contracted,” Rosen snapped.
“What is it doing here?”
Rosen pulled the mask off the doll and saw its eyes. They stared at him and then they blinked. “Oh, please, please,” the doll started to talk.
“One of the stupid fantasy routines,” Rosen said.
The doll started rocking from side to side.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Drake asked.
“Probably some bondage routine program.”
The doll stopped, arched its back, twisted the head under itself and stared at the two of them.
“Shit, it’s flexible,” Drake remarked.
“One, two,” the doll said.
“What?” Drake asked.
“Run!” Rosen yelled, running out of the unit.
“Peek a boo!” the doll said.
Drake was just outside of the unit when the doll erupted in flames, followed by an explosion.
“Get to the central stairwell,” Rosen said. “It touched off the oxygen line.”
Bays eight and nine were quickly engulfed in flames and smoke was filling the service corridor.
∞
“Damn it!” Fenwick swore as he tried to make entry into the hospital’s security code. “I keep getting locked out.”
“What can you do?”
“There’s a trapdoor in the federal code. But I’m sure that they are there already,” Fenwick said.
“Do whatever you can,” Lieutenant Marshall advised.
“I am.” Fenwick was sending streams of code as quickly as he could. “Ok, I’ve got the oxygen lines shut down.”
∞
Smoke and soot were filling the hall behind Rosen and Drake as the flames receded behind them.
“Uneventful walk through,” Blaise said, smiling at Rosen.
“Cake walk,” Rosen agreed. “I noticed you rung the bell on your way in.”
“Just being neighborly. How about we take a stroll topside and find out who’s home.”
“Sounds good to me, captain.”
“I’ll take point,” Blaise said, and pushed open the stairwell door.
The stairwells were illuminated by spiraling light bars. Jamie looked up the central well and saw that there were landings at each of the floors with a terminal landing that he presumed let out onto the roof.
Blaise ascended quickly to the first floor landing and laid on his stomach. He pulled something small and flat from his pack and slid it beneath the door. Blaise gave a signal for them to retreat down the stairs.
“Here,” he said, passing each of them foam balls.
“What are these for?” Jamie asked.
“Squeeze them tight and stuff them in your ears. Leave a bit out so you can pull them out later,” Blaise told him.
Jamie and the rest of the team plugged their ears. Blaise signaled for them to stay where they were, halfway up the stairs to the second floor. Blaise went back to his position at the door, this time in a crouching position, his wrist rocket in place.
Jamie saw the door open. Then there was silence. He saw Blaise disappear through the door and then he heard the sound. The air in the stairwell vibrated with the sound and Jamie felt his teeth aching down to the roots and his joints swelling with pain.
∞
“Ok, I’m in,” Fenwick announced.
“Great, what’s going on?”
The monitor displaying the outside surveillance systems scanned the outside of the building. There was a shaking of the display, and the windows of the second floor burst outwards and two of the surveillance cameras went dark.
“Something blew out the second floor.”
“An explosion?” Lieutenant Marshall asked.
“More like a shockwave. I’m moving up the floors. Shit!”
“What?”
“Third, fourth and fifth are loaded with explosives. They’re our tech antipersonnel gear,” Fenwick said, now frantically sending streams of data down the line.
∞
Then there was silence. Blaise came back out to the second floor landing. He motioned for them to follow him and went on up to the third floor. Blaise took out his earplugs and signaled for them to do the same.
“Why aren’t we clearing that floor?” Jamie asked.
“The little gift they left for us means there is no point. They rigged the second floor with shockwave units. I tripped them off and they blew the second floor out. There is nothing there to clear,” Blaise stated.
∞
Fenwick slid in a few more codes. “I hope the captain understands.”
“Understands what?”
∞
The lights went off in the stairwell and the team was submerged in absolute darkness.
“Get down! Ear plugs in!” Blaise shouted.
In the darkness Jaime struggled to find the balls of foam in his pocket. He had managed to jam one in his right ear when he saw the flash. The third floor door blew straight back across the landing above them and came tumbling end over end down the stairs. It came to rest on the second floor landing. Debris came raining down of the team and Jamie threw up his arms to shield his head. His left ear was ringing. Disoriented and nauseous, Jamie fumbled with the other foam ball. He couldn’t feel his fingers; he couldn’t…he couldn’t feel his left ear. He pressed until he thought he’d reached his ear. He willed his fingers to open, hoping to feel the ball expanding in his left ear. He felt nothing. He looked up in the partial light cast into the stairwell through the now demolished third floor landing door well. On the stair next to his feet was the foam ball. He looked up at Captain Blaise who was signaling for them to move up to the second floor landing. In a silent, ringing world, eyes wobbling, Jamie climbed the steps and followed Blaise through the second floor doorway. Blaise grabbed Jamie by the collar and pulled him to the ground. Jamie looked around and saw Ganos, Rosen and then Drake come in through the doorway. Drake dove to the floor. Everyone was covering their heads. Jamie watched in a daze as the central stairwell filled with a burst of light, the floor shook and smoke rolled in from the stairwell. Jamie felt it, but he heard nothing. He looked around him and saw that he was lying on broken glass and shards of shattered concrete.
∞
“Damn,” Fenwick said, and sent more code down the line.
“What’s happening?”
“I managed to blow the tech personnel devices on the third and fourth floor. But they overrode my code for the fifth floor unit.”
“Are they still alive?” Lieutenant Marshall demanded.
“I can’t tell. There’s no working surveillance in the stairwell and on the third and fourth floors. I’m going to try and get into the sixth floor surveillance and scan for heat signatures below.”
∞
Lights flickered on in the stairwell. Blaise looked around at his team. They were all there and intact. Jamie rose to his feet and looked at his hands. He still couldn’t feel them. There were slivers of glass pressed into them, but they’d not broken the skin. He saw Blaise signaling, but Jamie couldn’t understand. He wandered off into a corner and began to vomit.
∞
“They’re alive!” Fenwick said. “I’ve got five heat signatures on the second floor, all still moving.”
“Thank God!” Lieutenant Marshall exclaimed.
Fenwick sent another series of codes down the line and surveillance picked up something else. On the sixth floor there were five figures whose outlines looked like those of the HDMP uniforms that Blaise and his team were wearing.
“The hostiles are on the sixth floor,” Fenwick said.
“How can you tell?”
“They’ve got the tech that the HDMP sent them out with when they arrived. Five hostiles. One is on a data panel. I’m getting a roof top scan. What the…. They’ve got a copter up there!” Fenwick said. “A copter?”
“Black copter, looks like a short flight unit, HDMP issue. I’m going to get municipal and federal to close the airspace…” Fenwick was saying, when his world went black.
∞
Blaise helped Jamie to his feet. He signaled to him that they were going out into the stairwell. Jamie shook his head and vomited again.
∞
“I’ve tucked in mother hen,” was the message Lieutenant Marshall sent from the data port. “Deliver the package and leave.”
Lieutenant Marshall received a confirmation message on the panel. He cleared the data screen, typed in a code and then picked up the keys to the limo. Lieutenant Colin Fenwick lay on his side on the floor, unconscious, blood seeping from a gash at the back of his head where Marshall had struck him. On the panel was a single word; Cronus.
∞
The building shook and the stairwell filled with more smoke. Blaise left Jamie’s side and signaled to Rosen to follow him. They rushed up the stairs to see that the fifth floor door, like the third and fourth, had been blown off its hinges. Smoke was still licking at the obliterated doorway as they moved up past the fifth floor landing. Two floors up, they saw a flash of light. Someone had opened the door out onto the roof. Blaise saw a figure framed in the door way; took a bead on them and then fired. The figure spun out of the doorway and the door swung on its hinges, sending in small shafts of light.
Rosen and Blaise rushed up to the rooftop landing. Crouching, they nodded at one another, then on a silent count they pushed open the door and laid themselves out as flat as possible, guns pointing upward. There was a popping sound, as gunfire strafed the doorway. Rosen fired back at where the shots had come from.
Another strafing round of shots erupted lower in the door frame. Blaise saw the copter gliding away along the roof top. He rose to his feet, turned, and ran after it, firing a tight round at the gap in the armor over the main rotor. The helicopter disappeared over the edge of the building, then rose and pitched, moving away from the hospital. Blaise watched it for a few seconds, then turned and walked back to the rooftop entrance, where Rosen was pacing. Rosen signaled him and pointed at the roof. Blaise looked down and saw the blood. There had been a series of small drops near the doorway, and there was a large pool that had been deep enough to have been sprayed by the props’ lift.
Rosen took out his ear plugs. “Looks like you hit one.”
Blaise took out his ear plugs. “Femoral artery,” he said.
“Based on the blood spatter?”
“Based on where I was aiming.”
“You think Fenwick knows about the copter?”
Blaise shrugged. “If anyone could, he could. For now we’ve got to finish up.”
“Finish up?”
Blaise went back to the door of the stairwell. “You don’t think they just dragged us all the way out here and played with us for no reason? I’ve got a feeling they’ve left behind a gift.”
“What do you mean gift?” Rosen asked, following Blaise down.
Blaise returned to the second floor where agents Drake and Ganos were waiting, weapons trained on the doorway. “How’s Baxter?” Blaise asked.
Ganos and Drake signaled that they still had their ear plugs in. Blaise signaled for them to take them out.
“How’s Baxter?” he repeated.
“Vomiting blood. What is the status?” Agent Ganos asked.
“I think we can safely say floors three through five are clear and the hostiles departed via helicopter. But they are going to be having some trouble flying as I damaged their prop angle cable,” Blaise informed them.
“Then let’s follow them,” Drake said.
Blaise shook his head. “We’ve got to clear the sixth floor.”
“Why?”
“I’m pretty sure they left something they wanted us to find. Get Baxter on his feet, I’ll need him on point,” Blaise said.
Jamie’s head was still ringing and the
left side of his face was numb. Hands reached under his arms and raised him to his feet. Fingers pulled the plug from his right ear, and he heard waves of sound.
“He’s got blood coming out of his left ear,” he heard someone say in the distance.
“Baxter. Baxter! Can you understand what I’m saying?” Jaime heard the words then saw Jericho Blaise’s lips moving.
“I couldn’t get the other plug back in before the door blew,” Jamie tried to say, but he couldn’t hear his own voice.
“Baxter, I need you to focus. You are having percussion trauma. Your equilibrium is going to be impaired for a little while. But I’ve got to have you with me to sweep the sixth floor. It might be a technosis hot zone,” Blaise said.
“No worries,” Jamie mumbled, and staggered forward.
“Rosen, you help Baxter walk,” Blaise said.
Rosen took Jamie’s arm across the back of his neck and then took Jamie’s weight across his shoulders. “Baxter, you remember the first rule?”
Jamie made a few steps, then stopped. “Don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed.”
“Good,” Rosen said, and walked him out onto the landing.
By the time they reached the sixth floor landing Jamie’s equilibrium was returning. The world was still a series of strange noises and waving sensations. But he could identify left, right, up and down, which had only been vague options a few minutes earlier. He was also feeling more clearly the pain from what his brain was informing him was his deafened left ear. He took his weight from Rosen’s shoulders.
“Are you sure you can?” Rosen asked.
“Rule number one, don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed,” Jamie quoted, and took out his weapon.
The sixth floor was marked with restricted area notices. Some notices informed individuals of the fact that they were on the floor with violent patients and others specified security level clearance requirements to be in restricted areas. These were odd, as Jamie had never seen them in the healthcare campus he practiced in or any of the ones he had trained in. The rooms that were to be found in this section of the building were smaller than the private rooms they had for post operative recovery stays and ICU. These were rooms built for a different purpose. Jamie tried a door and it opened. In the room was a single bed, with restraints, a skull harness and single lead going to a panel. Jamie had seen a similar device when he’d done his psychiatric rotations, but it had been experimental and was later deemed “Unsupported” by the federal practices board. The device, if it was what he thought it was, was an entrainment unit. But this one looked newer than the ones he’d seen fifteen years ago.
