“Your clothing and personal items have been sterilized, XPD-154. You will find them on the tray to your left.”
She looked automatically toward the voice and saw a man standing off to the side. Instead of the white outfit that had been so prevalent elsewhere in the complex, this gentleman was clad in black—shirt, slacks, and shoes, even his lab coat. His white face seemed to float between the collar of his black shirt and his dark hair. She knew who he was from the photos she’d seen of him, although the photographs had clearly been “made nice” for promotional purposes. This guy was the Chief of Research here at the L.L.D.D., and he was pretty pallid and spooky-looking. In any case, if he was conscious of her nakedness, he gave no sign; she waited for him to turn away but he didn’t. Her lips tightened with irritation, but she finally redressed while he stood there with an impassive expression. It was more than creepy—he almost seemed blind to the fact that a naked beautiful woman was only a few feet away.
When she was done, he finally turned his back and said, “Follow me, please.”
He didn’t bother to check if she’d done what he ordered, assuming she would. Obediently, she fell in step behind him as he led the way out of the octagon room and down a long corridor that echoed with every footstep. Embedded into the tile floor at three-foot intervals was the international black and yellow symbol for hazardous materials. The triple broken black circle on the screamingly yellow background played odd tricks with her eyes as she walked, bringing back a slightly different version of the sensation of vertigo she’d had a little while ago in the scanning chamber.
The man in front of her suddenly spoke, but he didn’t turn around to look at her. “May I ask you a question?”
One eyebrow raised but she didn’t miss a beat in her answer. “Feel free,” she said. She kept her voice carefully bland.
“Do you know what this is about?”
“Should I?” she countered. Parents throughout the ages had told children not to answer a question with a question, but in the adult world and the era of avoidance methods, that tactic was always good for buying time.
“No.” She could almost hear the sneer that crept into his voice, an I’m so much better than you attitude that he could barely conceal. “It’s highly classified. But I’ve been cleared to debrief you because your consciousness of the gravity of this situation may increase your motivation to complete.”
“I’ve never failed to complete.” This time she made sure the irritation was clear in her voice. They needed to know that even the implication of her failing was an insult.
“And that is no doubt a significant factor in why you were chosen,” he said in an almost soothing tone of voice. Apparently he had decided it was worth it not to piss her off. “However, it’s of critical importance to every uninfected human on earth that you not fail this time, either.” He slowed his pace so that he fell into step at her side; she risked a glance in his direction, but so far he was impossible to read. He was just a white face, as emotionless as a marble statue, floating on the air above a moving black suit.
“The Hemophages are a dying species, on the verge of nonexistence,” he told her. There might have been the faintest trace of triumph in his tone. “Under the supervision of Vice-Cardinal Daxus at the ArchMinistry, we’ve developed a weapon that will push them past that verge . . . and into extinction.”
This was finally interesting, and she raised one eyebrow as she kept up the pace alongside him. “If this weapon’s so important, why not have it delivered by armored convoy?”
“The armored convoy to which you refer is leaving the facility as we speak,” he said. A self-satisfied smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Still, despite his lecture about the importance of this mission, the Chief of Research sounded about as excited over this as a bored computer science teacher in front of a roomful of sleepy students. “The Hemophages will do everything in their power to stop and immobilize it.” For the first time, she saw his smile widen to where it was actually noticeable. “It is, of course, a decoy. Our statisticians have calculated that our best chance of delivery lies in reliance on a single person . . . such as yourself.”
She nodded but said nothing. The corridor, with its row after row of biohazard tiles, was beginning to seem endless.
“May I ask you another question?” the Chief asked again, Without waiting for her to answer, he threw out the next query. “What is your opinion of the Hemophages?”
“I’m apolitical,” she said flatly.
“Recoiling at the sight of a cockroach is also apolitical.”
Now she did turn her head in his direction. Her brow furrowed as she tried to understand what he meant. “I’m sorry?”
“A cock—” He paused. “Never mind.” When she still looked bewildered, he shrugged. “Extinct insect,” he explained. “We wiped them out, too. Severely damaged the ecosystem, but . . .” He waved off the rest of his words and finally paused at a door on his right. Without bothering to finish his tale, he pulled a keycard from his pocket and swiped it through the scan box on the wall. The door opened with the same odd swoosh that the one back at the scanner had made, but he made no move to step forward. “My clearance ends here,” he told her instead, and extended his arm in a go-ahead gesture.
She didn’t bother to say good-bye as she started to step over the threshold, but before she could do so, the Chief of Research had snapped on a latex glove and grabbed her by the arm. “XPD-154.” Something in the way he said it made her pause and look back at him. “You’ll be receiving a case containing the weapon. I don’t have to tell you that under no circumstances should you open it.”
She looked at him blankly for a moment. “You’re right,” she said in a voice just as emotionless as his. A vaguely pleased smile slipped across his lips—she knew he could guess what she was going to say. “You don’t have to tell me.” She brushed off his hand and walked through the doorway.
SIX
At last, there was a splash of color in the midst of the white, gray, and black expanse that was the Laboratories for Latter Day Defense.
The room into which she’d stepped was tiny, but at least it was red, a gloriously deep scarlet that seared the eyes, tickled the adrenal glands, and made her heart pump with excitement. Really, there was way too little in the world today that had color to it—the ArchMinistry had made sure of that. For an organization that claimed to have come into existence specifically to care for and protect the people, it had effectively sucked the life out of nearly everything in its path and left a trail of dust and death as its aftermath. This tiny room—really, not much more than a hallway entrance into something else she had yet to see—was a reminder of how it felt to be alive, of the vibrancy that had once been the right of every living person on this planet.
She crossed the small expanse of space to where another door waited, marveling that even the floor, a smooth expanse of easily sterilized tile and dark-colored grout, was crimson. Next to the door on the opposite wall was another card reader, and she wasn’t pleased to see that when she raised her ID to insert it into the slot, the flesh on the back of her hand was shiny, the skin covered in a thin sheet of perspiration. Even worse, her fingers were visibly shaking—not good.
Stopping her hand from shaking took an iron act of will and the grim mental reminder that somewhere, certainly, she was being watched and videotaped. She concentrated for the barest of moments and watched her hand steady itself, then pushed her identification card into the slot and spoke. “XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier.” She’d said it so often it felt like her name. One thing was good, at least: this was the last door.
The response over the digital speaker was immediate. “Copy, XPD-154. We’ve been expecting you.”
Now this final door slid open, and finally she was walking into the inner vault of the L.L.D.D.
By the time she was taking her third step, she had a massive, heavily armored Medical Commando on each side of her, the kind who’d once populated the rings of the
now banned blood sports like boxing and wrestling. These two fell into sync like impeccably programmed robots, matching her footsteps right down to length and timing, never missing a beat. She couldn’t help wondering: if she were taking mincing little steps, would they be forced to do the same? There were at least a dozen more of the Commandos stationed evenly around the room, and while the glare of the overhead lights on their visors made it impossible for her to see their eyes, she could feel each one of them tracking her movement, automatically analyzing her, preplanning how to kill her if the need arose.
But she forgot all that when she saw the briefcase.
The white alloy container waited on a tall, simple white podium in the center of the vault. The case was about the size of a medium pizza box and no more than an inch thick, and it looked like nothing more than a briefcase a businessman might use to take his papers to work. She walked up to it without asking anyone’s permission and the Commandos broke off and stepped back about three feet; for a moment she couldn’t believe that she had finally, finally, been able to come this far. Then without warning she staggered slightly.
On one side of the podium was a Combat Reserve Doctor, and he looked at her curiously. With her heart pounding, she made a show of glancing down at the floor and frowning, as if she’d tripped over her own feet. A nice effort, but it didn’t stop him from asking about the stumble. “Everything in order, XPD-154?”
She glanced once more at the floor to hide it when she swallowed, but she managed to keep her voice flat and clear. “One hundred percent, Comrade Doctor.”
He stared at her critically for a moment, then turned his attention to a trio of keypads on the front of the podium. Until she’d gotten right up in front of it, she hadn’t realized the briefcase was actually set into a locking station. Working from memory, the doctor began rapidly keying in the series of complex codes that would release it.
It felt like he was taking forever. The room seemed to throb around her, another damnable white box that wanted to mess with her sense of equilibrium. Her fingers wanted desperately to flex, and she finally nonchalantly slid her hands inside the pocket of her overcoat so she could clench her fists. The coat itself—a stupid, stupid choice of outer attire for this mission because of its damnable mood fabric—was beginning to shift its color. Had they noticed? Probably not—the men in this room had never seen it while it had radiated that ridiculous aura of sunshine, the visible evidence of how positive she’d been when she’d started on her way this morning. Now, however, it was a sort of muddy gold, steadily working its way down the color scale to brown. If she was lucky they wouldn’t pay attention to such stupid things as the latest available fashion fabric; then again, they were trained to monitor people and every indication of a threat, no matter how minute. Beneath her hair, at the junction where her hairline met the skin beneath her temple, a bead of sweat broke free of her increasingly too-hot skin and suddenly slid down and into her ear.
Her hand was shaking—she could feel it—but she would not let it show as she casually pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her pocket and slipped them on. Her breathing steadied as the glare of the fluorescent lights lessened from laser-beam quality to the not-so-average but bearable intensity of automobile high-beams.
The Combat Reserve Doctor stopped his code execution and looked at her strangely. “You’re quite certain everything is in order?” he finally asked. He sounded uncertain if he should proceed and that was the last thing she needed right now. Getting him to release that briefcase was an absolute necessity.
She stared back at him, unmoving and outwardly cool, hiding behind the safety of her dark lenses. Her fingers were stiff and on the verge of spasming but she’d slipped them back into her pockets. “Positively.”
Again the doctor studied her, and it took every single ounce of determination she had not to move. At last he shrugged, then entered a final set of numbers into the last keypad. The titanium levers holding the briefcase in place released with a snap! but he made no move to pick up the case and hand it to her. Instead, he pulled a small, clipboard-mounted hemoglobin reader from one of his oversized pockets. He glanced first at it, then her; frowning slightly, he turned the clipboard around and held it out so she could touch it. “Enter your DNA to confirm receipt,” he said. Despite his uncertain expression, he sounded bored, as though this was just one more task in a series that he had to do to get him through to his waiting lunch hour.
She opened her mouth to reply, then had to lick her lips. Her mouth was dry as dust and her lips felt wrinkled and cracked. She found the rehearsed words and ground them out. “I can only confirm receipt of the container, not its contents.”
He nodded and his gaze sharpened, as though he was finally remembering the importance of this particular task. “That’s acceptable. Opening the case is strictly forbidden. You understand this?”
“Perfectly,” she said as she withdrew one hand from her pocket. She reached up and fussily brushed an invisible strand of hair off her forehead. His gaze tracked the movement and she could see him process and dismiss it as nothing more than vanity. By doing so, he completely missed the hand she casually rested on the edge of the podium to steady herself.
The Combat Reserve Doctor nodded slightly and turned his attention back to the white briefcase. “The contents are set to self-destruct in the event of nondelivery in . . .” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “Exactly nine hours from now.” To punctuate his words, the doctor reached out and pressed a button on the podium. On the briefcase, a set of black LCD numbers on a nearly invisible side panel lit up and began counting down. Her pulse jumped as the man finally lifted the case from the podium and handed it to her. Her hand closed around the handle, then she looked up sharply when he didn’t release it. He was studying her, a frown deepening across his forehead as he focused on her too-pale skin. It would be a devastating error to underestimate this man, to assume that because he was less than enthusiastic about his job duties he was also less than competent. He was probably as highly trained as the deadly Commandos who were strategically placed around the room and whose gazes had never strayed from her back.
Giving credence to her thoughts, the doctor asked, “What is your condition, XPD-154? Are you functional?”
She forced back a wave of nausea and kept her face utterly blank of expression despite the anxiety burgeoning inside her. By her estimate, the real Classified Courier would be pulling up to the guardhouse any minute. A woman with long blond hair, she’d be driving the same model Ninja motorcycle, but hers would be black—the color of death. It was easy to mentally play out what would happen then—
She would cut the motor to the bike and lower the kickstand, then pull out her papers, papers that would identify her using the same words—“XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier.” At first it would be no big deal—no doubt there were plenty of classified couriers who came in and out of the L.L.D.D. every day. She would wait, hiding her impatience as any good little government employee was expected to, while the guard typed in the codes that were on her ID. The computer would take about two milliseconds to process the fact that this person was there to pick up something already assumed to have been given over to a different courier, then the monitor on his desk would go an obnoxious red with the blinking words Security Violation! Duplicate Classified Courier! Code 99! and all hell would break loose.
The guard’s eyes would widen, then he would yank his rifle off his shoulder and train it on the unsuspecting courier. There were four robotic machine guns at the gate, one at each corner of the square in which she waited, and all of them were IR-tied to the movement of his rifle, so they, too, would instantly rise into position and home in on her. The guard would scream, “On the ground! On the ground!” and she would comply instantly by dropping to her knees and raising her hands. She would be too smart to protest, and even if she did and was shot, it would all end up the same, anyway. Her eyes would narrow and she would demand to know what the hell was going on. The guar
d would approach her cautiously, watching for any offensive movement, and tell her “You came through this gate fifteen minutes ago!”
And the real XPD-154 Clearance Classified Courier would sneer at him and say, “Then it wasn’t me you dumb son of a bitch. Check my ID—you’ve got a Mite!”
Any minute now . . .
Both she and the doctor each had a hand on the titanium briefcase, and neither was inclined to release it. Her nostrils flared slightly as she tried to take a calming breath without him noticing. She gave him an arch look and put a heavy note of impatience into her voice. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Comrade Doctor. I’m one hundred percent functional.”
But his grip only tightened—he’d gone beyond the vaguely concerned to the outright suspicious. Damn. “Then you won’t mind if I perform an examination.”
Her mouth tightened. “I’ve already submitted to every test required for entry,” she reminded him tersely. She could feel heavy lines of sweat gathering beneath her breasts, pooling beneath the layers of fabric. “Now, as you’ve made clear, I have a timetable. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just—”
Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah! Blaaaaah!
Across the small width of the white briefcase, the doctor’s body jerked in surprise at the scream of the alarms. His gaze snapped back to hers just in time to see the dark lenses on her reflective sunglasses clear. Her eyes blazed into his at the same time the color of her coat morphed into a deep, fiery red.
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