Dauntless (Lawless Saga Book 4)

by Tarah Benner

  Soren had never heard of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Seed Repository, though that wasn’t exactly surprising. Before San Judas, Soren had never given much thought to what he ate or where it came from — just as long as there was enough of it.

  According to Dr. Griffin, the university had established the seed bank twenty years before to catalog, store, and safeguard as many plant species as possible. The vault was meant to act like a giant freezer, with solar-powered generators serving as a backup power supply. It was modeled after the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, though Griffin admitted that it was somewhat less secure due to its location.

  The seed vault stood out from the rest of the academic buildings on campus. It was a boxy modern structure that rose five or six stories tall, towering over the old brick buildings from the mid-1900s. The exterior was constructed from decorative beige concrete, and, according to Griffin, the outer walls were eighteen inches thick.

  They circled the building twice before parking the truck and got out near the back entrance. The space beyond the thick glass doors looked dark, and Soren wondered when the seed bank had last seen a visitor.

  Axel kept his rifle trained on Griffin’s back as they climbed the steps up to the door. First Griffin tried his old faculty key card, but the card reader wasn’t even functioning. There was a very solid-looking silver lock mounted in the glass, but Soren already knew that Griffin didn’t have a key. Physical keys would have been reserved for top-level personnel — not disgraced former professors.

  “Looks like we’ll have to do this the ol’-fashioned way,” said Axel, fishing around in the bed of the truck for something he could use to break the glass.

  “That won’t work,” said Griffin as Axel produced a rusty old monkey wrench. “The facility is very sec—”

  But he never got a chance to finish his sentence. Axel hurled the monkey wrench at the door like a tomahawk, but instead of shattering the glass, the wrench bounced off with a deafening bang and clattered onto the steps.

  “Shit!” yelled Axel.

  “Did you really think it would be that easy?” asked Griffin, unable to conceal the smug tone of his voice. “This is meant to be a highly secure facility to safeguard humanity’s —”

  “Yeah, whatever,” mumbled Axel.

  Griffin fell silent for a moment, and then his face lit up as if he’d just had an epiphany. “I have an idea.”

  Axel let out a long sigh. “This oughta be good . . . Dr. Nutty’s gon’ tell a buncha ex-cons how to break into a buildin’.”

  Griffin ignored him and turned to Soren instead. “Drive us around to the chemistry building, would you?”

  Soren glanced at Portia, who looked just as confused as he felt. Axel scowled. Clearly he thought Griffin was full of it — or that this was just part of his plan to lead them into a trap.

  Unfortunately, Soren didn’t have any idea how else they might break into the seed bank, so they piled back into the truck and drove around to a much older-looking structure.

  “This building is original to the campus,” said Griffin in a low, excited voice. “It was built in 1929, predating most of the buildings here. When they began construction on the seed bank, they decided to connect it to the university’s central heating and cooling plant, with a separate ancillary backup system for the seed bank.”

  “So?” grunted Axel.

  “Small piece of Texas Tech trivia,” said the doctor, now quivering with excitement. “The university has an underground maze of tunnels designed to carry utilities to all the buildings: hot and cold water, telephone lines, Internet. Over the years, several of the old tunnels collapsed and had to be filled in, but the one under the chemistry building . . .”

  “You think it connects to the tunnel under the seed bank?” asked Portia.

  “I know it does,” said Griffin. “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “Yeah, we might hold ya to that,” said Axel darkly.

  The chemistry building was an ancient-looking brick structure that stood three stories tall. It had ornate details around the arched windows and a stately open-air corridor.

  Axel wasn’t listening as Griffin pointed out all the hallmarks of Spanish Renaissance architecture. He just threw a rock through a window leading to a basement stairwell, kicked the shards of glass aside, and climbed into the building.

  It was warm and eerie inside the stairwell. The chemistry building didn’t have power, and it felt much too quiet without the hum of the air-conditioning and overhead lights.

  Soren guessed that it had been at least a year since the building had seen any students, but it still had that smell he always associated with schools: industrial-grade floor wax, old books, and pencil shavings.

  Axel flipped on his flashlight, and they followed Griffin down the stairs and into the basement. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the space around them, and Soren felt a strange prickle on the back of his neck.

  In the dark shadows of the unfamiliar building, he had a fleeting thought that Griffin might be leading them into a trap. The basement looked as though it had been used for storage. Three large trash cans were pushed up against the wall to their right, and the floor was littered with soggy cardboard boxes filled with books and copier paper. He could hear a steady drip, drip, drip, but apart from that, the basement was quiet.

  “Where’s this tunnel, Griffin?” Axel asked loudly. It seemed that Soren wasn’t the only one feeling a bit uneasy.

  “Just through here,” Griffin called, his features flickering in and out of Axel’s flashlight beam.

  He led them deeper into the darkness toward what looked like a narrow hallway blocked off by a metal cage door. Conrad pushed the door aside with a loud creak, and Axel shined his flashlight down the tunnel.

  By the looks of things, this tunnel had not been updated in at least a hundred years. The name of the tunnel was painted in peeling yellow letters near the ceiling, but the paint was so chipped and worn that it was no longer legible. A crumbling concrete wall stained with mildew flanked them on one side, while enormous metal pipes crowded in on the other. The bottom of the wall was covered in splotchy brown stains, and the air around them hung heavy and damp.

  The flashlight seemed to grow dimmer with every step they took. The air was colder down there, and Soren could hear the scurry of a rat running along the wall.

  “Wha’ makes you think they wouldn’ta cleaned this place out already?” Axel grumbled.

  “This isn’t a federally run seed bank,” said Griffin. “It was donated as part of an industry-affiliate program the university participated in. Can you guess which corporation made such a generous donation?”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Not GreenSeed,” said Soren. It seemed like too much of a coincidence to be true.

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Those motherfuckers,” Portia hissed.

  “So what . . .” Soren pressed. “They built this seed bank on university grounds but then shut it down the second the seeds might actually be useful?”

  “It’s . . . complicated,” said Griffin. “For one thing, the seed bank was enormously expensive to run. Certain tax incentives allowed GreenSeed to oversee the facility’s operation, but with the university shutting down —”

  “Cut the crap, Nutty,” said Axel. “They jus’ wanted to make sure that people still needed their seeds when the FDA finally got around to givin’ ’em the green light.”

  “Well, I d-don’t think anyone anticipated the amount of s-scrutiny the FDA would impose on its p-p-products. The company decided that it would be best to reduce the facility’s operations to cut c-costs.”

  “Which meant that no one would be able to access the seed anymore,” Soren finished.

  “What a bunch of bullshit,” said Portia.

  “S’no wonder they were able to get you fired so easy, huh?” Axel chortled.

  Griffin’s face hardened, and Soren cringed. Losing his job at the university was clearly a very sore subject. �
�That did occur to me, yes.”

  Axel opened his mouth again, but to Soren’s relief, they reached another folding cage door identical to the one they had come through on the other side. Griffin fumbled with the latch and pulled it open, and they filed through a doorway to a much cleaner, more modern-looking basement.

  To Soren’s surprise, lights flickered on above them automatically, and he remembered that this building was running on emergency generators. They clanged up a metal staircase to a landing, and Conrad led them through a heavy steel door.

  As they emerged onto the ground level, Soren got a strange disorienting feeling that he’d just been dropped into another world.

  Inside, the seed bank more closely resembled a museum than an academic research building. The lobby was airy and open with a shiny white floor and larger-than-life photos of corn fields and plows mounted on the walls. Little plaques situated below the images explained GreenSeed’s mission in pseudo-friendly corporate speak, and large 3D letters snaking along the ceiling read, “Innovation . . . Sustainability . . . Stewardship.”

  “Where’s all the seed?” asked Portia, her voice echoing through the lobby.

  “On the upper floors,” said Griffin. “The first floor was meant to serve as a buffer in the event of a flood.”

  Since the elevator wasn’t working, they took the stairs up to the second floor, where they emerged into a much smaller lobby with industrial gray carpet and nondescript white walls. Ahead of them lay a heavy steel door with a sophisticated-looking keypad, and Soren got a shiver of excitement. He could feel the steady hum of electricity emanating from the room beyond, and he knew that this must have been where the seed was kept.

  “Now what?” said Axel, staring at the door as if he planned to break it down with sheer force of will.

  “Allow me,” said Griffin, stepping up to the door and punching in a four-digit code. A little red light flashed from the keypad, and his shoulders fell.

  “Well?” said Axel.

  “I thought that would work,” he said, more to himself than Axel. “The code belonged to a colleague of mine whom I had . . .” He cleared his throat. “Let me try again.”

  He punched in another code, but the keypad continued to blink red. Soren let out a breath of frustration. He had a feeling that such a secure building gave you three tries max before the system locked you out, and he felt little hope that Griffin would produce a miracle with one more chance.

  “This was your plan?” growled Axel. “Just punch in random codes ’til it lets us in?”

  “N-not random codes,” said Griffin, who was starting to sweat a little around the collar. “I have one more that I want to try . . .”

  “I swear to gawd, Griffin . . . You better have a plan B.”

  But as it turned out, plan B was not needed. Griffin punched in his third code, and a green light illuminated on the keypad. Soren breathed a sigh of relief, and Griffin turned the handle.

  A sudden gust of cold air greeted them as Griffin pulled the door open, and Soren felt goosebumps erupt all over his skin. The seed bank was definitely fulfilling its purpose as a giant freezer, which gave him hope that the seeds they needed would still be usable.

  As they piled into the vault, a row of emergency lights along the ceiling flickered on. As they did, they lit up what looked like a warehouse of staggering proportions.

  Rows of shelves at least twenty feet high stretched toward the unfinished ceiling. Each shelf was stocked with hundreds of grayish plastic crates, all meticulously labeled with a name, a genus, and a serial number stamped above a bar code.

  While Soren was busy soaking in his surroundings, Griffin opened a sliding metal door and withdrew a heavy down coat that was at least two sizes too big. He passed coats to Soren, Axel, and Portia before setting off down the center aisle, scanning the crates for some idea of where they were.

  Soren, for his part, had no idea where to begin. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the organization of the boxes, though he knew there had to be a method the researchers understood. Griffin had begun whistling softly to himself, and for some reason, the sound echoing throughout the seed bank set Soren’s nerves on edge.

  “What’re we suppos’ to be lookin’ for?” called Axel.

  “See these first four numbers?” said Griffin, pointing to a label at eye level.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Ah! Here is another crop we worked with for quite some time. These tomatoes thrive in arid conditions.”

  “We’ll take those, too,” said Soren, grabbing the crate and pulling it out onto the floor.

  Griffin consulted a diagram mounted on the end of a shelf, which was color coded and labeled in a way that reminded Soren of the Dewey decimal system.

  “Ah, yes,” said Griffin. “The millets will have a fifty-eight hundred number, and the sorghum will be filed under thirty-two hundred.”

  “They’re not alphabetical or nothin’?” called Axel.

  “It’s quite a bit more complicated than that . . . Ooh, chard!” A look of childlike excitement flashed across Griffin’s face, and Soren and Axel shared an eye roll. “Now this beauty we call desert chard because it can tolerate unbelievably harsh conditions.”

  Soren didn’t think twice. He pulled the crate onto the floor and kept walking, searching both sides of the aisle for either of the numbers Griffin had mentioned.

  Axel rolled his eyes and bumped past him, scanning the lower shelf of boxes. Soren turned in the opposite direction and walked down the next aisle, wondering why no one had thought to break into the seed bank before. It seemed that the vault contained every crop imaginable.

  The boxes nearest him bore the numbers 3758, but the 3700s took up the entire aisle, and he couldn’t tell which way the numbers went. Griffin was still scouring his original aisle, which led Soren to think that he was simply reveling in the joy of being back in his old stomping grounds.

  They each searched on their own for twenty or thirty minutes. Soren could hear Axel’s heavy breathing coming from the next aisle over, and Portia was scanning the bank of boxes just ahead of him.

  Soren looked around, listening for a fourth set of footsteps, when he realized that Griffin was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t seen which direction he’d gone. He hadn’t even noticed him slip away from the group.

  “Griffin?” Soren called, straightening up and listening for any sound of movement.

  Nothing.

  “Griffin?”

  Still nothing but silence.

  Axel had stopped shuffling down the next aisle. “Hey! Griffin!”

  Nobody responded.

  A jolt of apprehension shot down Soren’s spine. How had he not noticed that Griffin was not with them? Had he sneaked off on purpose, and if so, where had he gone?

  Soren shook his head, trying to banish the disturbing thought that had just occurred to him. Griffin wouldn’t have ditched them. It didn’t make any sense. Why would he have gone to all the trouble of leading them up to the seed bank when he could just as easily have lost them in the chemistry building? Why go through the motions of looking for the seed at all?

  But then Soren heard a loud bang! that made his heart shudder. It echoed through the entire room before dying somewhere in the rafters.

  “Shiiiit,” said Axel from the other side of the shelf.

  “Griffin?” yelled Soren. But he didn’t wait for a response.

  Instead, he took off at a sprint back the way they’d come. He saw the door with the keypad looming in the distance, but before he even reached it, Soren knew what Griffin had done.

  There was a small red light mounted above the door, and it was blinking slow and steady. It was a silent alarm.

  “Mother — fucker!” Axel wheezed as he came huffing after Soren. “Where’s he got to?”

  “He left us here,” Soren panted, jiggling the door handle. “He locked us in and set off the alarm.”

  “You think the cops’ll come?”

  “I gues
s we’ll find out.”

  Soren couldn’t believe it. He was out of his mind with fury. Griffin had betrayed them, and they should have seen it coming. They’d known all along that Griffin was a spineless coward, so why had they been so quick to believe that he was actually going to help them?

  “How long you think we have?” asked Soren.

  “I dunno.”

  “Hey, morons!” called Portia.

  Soren and Axel turned.

  Portia had not come running to see what all the fuss was about. She’d kept searching for the numbers Griffin had rattled off. She was standing off to the right, four aisles down, with a triumphant look in her eyes.

  “I found the millet.”

  “Any sign of another exit?” he called.

  “Nope. That fucking creep knew what he was doing.”

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “There’s gotta be another door,” said Axel.

  “You’re right,” said Soren. “They wouldn’t build this place without an emergency exit. It’s too big. You and I will find another way out. Portia, keep looking for the sorghum.”

  Portia didn’t say a word. She just disappeared back down the aisle.

  Soren sprinted around the perimeter of the seed bank, scanning the endless white walls for another door or a glowing red exit sign. Axel scrambled off in the opposite direction, his face red and sweaty from exertion.

  The seed bank was enormous. It took Soren a few minutes to get halfway around the room, and according to Griffin, there were two more floors above them.

  As he searched for the exit, it occurred to Soren that there were probably dozens of agricultural gems hidden there, but without Griffin, it was like searching for a single grain of sand at the bottom of the ocean.

  Finally, to his relief, Soren found what he was looking for. The vault had a loading bay with a roll-up garage door.

  “Found the seed!” Portia yelled from somewhere in the far corner of the room. This time, Soren couldn’t even bring himself to feel relief. The crops they’d unearthed might be of use to Homeland Security, but he and Axel would be looking at serious jail time if they were caught.