Something had been bothering me, though. Since he was currently locked up, I guessed that Jeff must not have been infected by the alien virus, although he’d managed a fairly good impression of someone stoned out of his mind when I had last seen him at Lampson Labs. So what exactly had happened to him? Obviously Raymond wasn’t much use as a source of information. I had to hope that Jeff would provide more illumination if and when we were able to free him.
I didn’t know whether the guards on the detention level were the same ones — minus the couple Lance & Co. had taken out — who’d been watching over things when we freed Paul, but I guessed I’d have to try something different this time. What, I wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe my revival-preacher trick wouldn’t work on the hybrids to pull the alien influences out of their bodies, but possibly it could knock them out for a little while.
When the doors opened, though, I didn’t have time to decide, because Paul moved out in one clean rush, a gun in each hand, blasting away at the hybrids before they even had a chance to react. Four of them down, and that seemed to clear the hallway. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of spares.
“Hurry,” Paul said. “Cell five.”
Déjà vu all over again, except this time it was Jeff Makowski’s less-than-lovely face blinking back at me as I opened the cell door. He stared at me, then glanced past my shoulder to Paul and Raymond. “What the — you need to get away from him!”
“It’s all right,” I told him, in the most reassuring tones I could muster. “He’s all better now. But you need to move it.”
At least Jeff knew when to keep his mouth shut. He rose hastily, and we hurried down the corridor and on into the stairwell.
“We need to access the mainframe,” I said, once we were all safely inside. “They do have a mainframe here, right?”
“I don’t — ” Paul broke off and started rummaging around in the little tablet computer. “Yes — Level 4.”
“Let’s go, then.”
As we hurried toward the stairwell, I turned toward Jeff. “They never infected you.”
“No,” he said shortly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. Raymond getting infected was an accident. I almost got the impression that they didn’t want to waste any of it on me.” His jaw tightened under its scruffy three-day growth of beard.
“But back at the lab — you were acting like you were on something.”
“Yeah, because one of the hybrids injected me with something — not the virus, obviously — almost as soon as they arrived. I could barely remember my own name.” His expression darkened. “Once they had you, they tossed me in the back of one of their trucks and brought me here. They kept pumping me full of crap, asking me questions.” The first expression of genuine concern I’d yet seen from him flitted across his face. “Is…is everyone in L.A. okay? I seem to remember telling them things…”
That was one answer I didn’t have. I didn’t know what had happened to Justin and Troy. Best case scenario was that the agents had just left them alone once they realized Paul and I had already fled the restaurant in Santa Monica, but that might be wishful thinking.
Since I didn’t know what to say, I only shook my head. Jeff’s mouth tightened, but he remained silent as we entered the stairwell.
Despite the white light that had powered my healing from the alien virus, pounding up six flights of stairs after everything I’d already been through that day wasn’t exactly a picnic. But I didn’t want to show Paul that I was flagging, and I tried to tell myself it could have been worse. They could have kept the computers on Level 1. Besides, Raymond Lampson didn’t seem to be in very good shape, either. His gasping breaths echoed off the metal stairwells, and when I glanced back at him over my shoulder, his face was pasty and gleaming with sweat. I had no idea whether he was suffering the after-effects of the alien infection, or was just out of shape. It really didn’t matter one way or another; we had to keep going.
When we reached the landing for Level 4, Paul opened the door a crack and peeked out, then let it close. “No good,” he said. “That hallway is filled with people.”
Damn. If this whole escapade had been a movie, I suppose we would have just stolen the uniforms off the dead guards and sneaked past that way, but it’s really hard to impersonate a clone, and even tougher when said clone’s uniform is covered with blood and has bullet holes the size of meatballs both front and back. No, it looked as if we were going to have to rely on those powers Otto had referred to — and hope he hadn’t just been blowing sunshine up my ass.
“Where’s the mainframe on this level?” I asked.
“Looks like it’s straight down this hallway, and then down another corridor where it Ts at the end.” Paul lowered the tablet, brows drawing together. “Just exactly what did you have in mind, Persephone?”
“Oh, just another of my Jedi mind tricks,” I replied, as he continued to frown and Raymond and Jeff traded a mystified glance. “Hey, the worst that’ll happen is that we’ll all end up back in one of those cells.”
Paul looked dubious. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“Just follow my lead — and don’t say a word.”
I opened the door, and took a breath. Concentrate, I told myself.
The people in the corridor ahead were a mix of hybrid soldiers, men and women in white lab coats, and dark-suited government types like the nameless agent we’d left dead in a heap on the floor of the conference room on Level 10. That made it a little easier; if they’d all been hybrids or even regular soldiers, we’d be a lot more difficult to camouflage.
As it was, I focused on making it seem as if we were just another group of white-coated lab techs or scientists, on our way to the area where the mainframes were kept. I could practically feel Paul’s incredulous gaze on the back of my neck as I stepped out of the stairwell and into the hallway, but at least neither he nor Jeff nor Raymond said anything.
It was harder than I’d thought it would be, like exercising a muscle you’d never used before. Inwardly I saw the four of us in our nonexistent disguises, and I focused on projecting that image outward into the minds of those who passed us by. Although I wanted nothing more than to break into a run so I could limit the time I had to maintain the illusion, I knew that was the worst possible thing I could do. Instead, I moved forward calmly at a purposeful but not hurried pace.
The three men trailed along behind me, like ducklings following their mother to water. Difficult as Raymond and Jeff could be, they were not stupid, and caught on very quickly that the best thing to do was to walk down that hallway as if they had every right to be there.
Even so, every foot seemed to become more and more agonizing. A dull ache descended on my temples, and niggling little droplets of sweat began to trace their way down the back of my neck. I began to regret the cardigan I’d put on earlier that morning. Once or twice a passerby would focus on us with what I perceived to be unhealthy interest, and I had to intensify my concentration even further, telling him there was nothing to see here, just move along…
A century or two — or maybe two or three minutes — later we arrived at the doorway to the section that held the mainframe. I pulled out the dead agent’s key card from my sweater pocket, murmured a quick prayer, and swiped it through the reader.
It flashed green at once, and I whispered a quick thank-you to whoever was watching over us — Otto, God, what-have-you — that the agent had had a sufficiently high clearance to be allowed access to this part of the facility. As soon as the door opened, we sidled inside. I noticed Paul held one of the pistols down low at his side, just in case.
However, I didn’t see anyone, and Paul made a quick gesture toward Raymond and Jeff as if directing them to fan out and check to make sure the place was as deserted as it looked.
The walls and roof here were also rock, and it was cold —
chillingly so, turning the sweat on the back of my neck to a clammy weight. Banks of computers lined the walls
.
“Found the user interface,” Jeff called out, and we hurried across the chamber to a work desk outfitted with a trio of large flat-panel displays.
“Can you get in?” I asked.
He cracked his knuckles. “Let’s find out.”
Since I was no computer expert, I couldn’t really tell what he was doing besides typing in strings of incomprehensible code, then watching as windows flashed up and shutting them down almost immediately. We all waited in silence, Paul half-turned toward the door in case anyone decided to come barging in on us.
“Locked down pretty tight,” Jeff commented after a few minutes.
Choking back my disappointment, I asked, “So you can’t get in?”
He shot me a look of withering scorn, followed by a raised eyebrow in Raymond’s direction, as if to share his incredulity with his fellow nerd. “Please. You’re not talking to an amateur here.”
Another burst of staccato typing, more windows flashing. He chewed his lip, dark eyes squinting in concentration. Then —
“Got it,” he announced, as another, larger window opened up. “Sneaky bastards, though. So what are we looking for?”
“I need to know which films and shows they’ve contaminated with their signal, and where they’re being stored. And then I need to know where the virus is being stored.”
“Not asking for much, are you?” Jeff inquired, scowling.
“We’ll have to go after all of them individually,” Paul said, tearing his gaze away from the door for a few seconds.
“No, we won’t.” I smiled at him, then turned back to Jeff. “Just show me.”
Jeff being Jeff, he appeared more than a little dubious, but he only nodded. “Got it.” He tapped away at the keys. “Digital assets are here,” he began, and that was enough.
Only more strings of numbers, numbers I somehow knew indicated a serial code for each property. But the white heat surged out of my body, this time running down my hand as I reached past Jeff and wrapped my fingers around the mouse.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed, doing a passable Keanu Reeves impersonation, and a flare of white light leapt from my fingertips and to the mouse…and from there sparked its way into and through each of the screens.
Somehow I knew that energy was running through the wires, pulsing and shimmering outward at the speed of light, a guided missile tracking down every tainted file. Even when that black signal had been embedded in a physical piece of film or tape, it somehow found the source of the wrongness, burning reels of film from the inside out until all that was left was a pile of fine black dust. Similar lines of energy arced outward along electrical lines, seeking the storage lockers where the virus was being stored, hitting them with a charge I somehow knew deactivated the nanites that powered the virus, rendering it inert.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t as much of it as I had thought. The Raymond/alien’s remark earlier about it being a precious resource seemed to be the truth. And while I realized I could do nothing to help the people who had already been overcome by the virus, at least there would be no more victims.
“It’s done,” I said, and all three men stared at me.
“Done?” Paul echoed. “What exactly did you do?”
“It’s all destroyed. The energy — the power — whatever you want to call it — tracked down all the files the aliens corrupted, deactivated the virus. It’s over.”
“Is it?” inquired a new voice, and Paul and I both whirled.
It had only been a few seconds since he’d turned away from surveilling the door, but apparently that was enough. A group of seven or eight hybrids stood just inside the entrance, fronted by a man in a dark military jumpsuit who I knew at once wasn’t a man at all. In my mind’s eye he seemed to pulse with hideous power, its corrupt strength surrounding him in a black halo.
He smiled, a mere baring of teeth. “Ms. O’Brien, I think it’s time we had a little talk.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
This was a part of the facility I hadn’t yet seen, one on the upper levels, with actual windows buried in the mountainside that let in a truly spectacular view of the sun setting behind Sedona’s red rocks. Too bad I wasn’t in much of a mood to appreciate it.
Another conference room, this one furnished with black leather seats and a large glass table. To one side was a console outfitted with several flat-panel displays. I’d been left alone here after they marched all of us out of the mainframe room. Despite my struggles, I’d been torn away from Paul. I knew he was still alive, and Jeff and Raymond as well — probably back on Level 8.
Why we’d been separated, I didn’t know, but I guessed it couldn’t be good.
They hadn’t bothered to bind me. What would be the point? I didn’t have Paul’s James Bond moves or even Jeff’s ability to sweet-talk a computer into doing anything he wanted. Besides, although I was alone in here now, I sensed the presence of two hybrids directly outside the door to the conference room.
So I stood at the window, and watched the colors of the sky and the rocks shift from a blaze of reds and ochres to dull and brooding purple. As long as I could still feel that Paul lived and breathed, I’d hold it together. And at least I had destroyed the altered film files and the virus-infected liquid. The aliens would have a hard time regrouping from that little setback. God knows how long they’d been working on injecting the media with their tainted carrier wave.
The door opened, and the alien general entered. At least, I assumed he was a general, from the stars on the collar of his black jumpsuit. His rank didn’t matter — it was the aura surrounding him that told me he was the one in power here, strong and cold and noisome as the mouth of a sewer.
“Enjoying the view?” he inquired.
“It’s lovely,” I replied, willing to play the game for now. Where there was life, there was hope, and as long as I was still breathing I knew I had a chance to get myself out of this. “Do the American taxpayers know their money is going to fund your little fiefdom here?”
“You know they think it’s all going to Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “Or for fifteen-hundred-dollar toilet seats. It’s wonderful how funds can be diverted. Coffee?”
“No, thank you.” I knew better than to drink anything he might pour for me.
“Your loss.” His eyes glinted. “Your world doesn’t have all that much to recommend it, but coffee is one of its attractions.”
“If it’s so useless, then why all the bother?”
He didn’t reply immediately, but instead busied himself pouring out a cup of coffee and precisely measuring three dollops of cream into it from a small refrigerator unit located in the console below the flat-screen displays.
“By the way,” I added, “thank you at least for not insulting my intelligence by pretending to be something you’re not.”
Those eyes might as well have been chips of aluminum. He stared at me across the top of his coffee cup, wisps of steam curling up past his close-cropped gray hair. “It’s difficult to insult something that doesn’t exist. At any rate, you have exhibited a certain amount of cunning, I will admit. But don’t think you’ve won. That which has been destroyed can be rebuilt.”
“And destroyed again,” I said, seething somewhat over his implication that I didn’t possess enough intelligence to insult it.
“Ah, now, empty threats are never wise.” He took a deep swallow of his coffee — coffee that should still have been far too hot for a human to tolerate. “Especially if you consider our leverage.”
Without setting down the coffee cup, he reached with his other hand to touch a button on the console. At once the screens above his head flared to life, both showing an identical image of Jeff and Raymond sitting glumly on a lumpy bed in a cell, with Paul seated opposite them in a metal chair. A hybrid stood close to him — so close that it took me a few seconds to realize the barrel of a pistol was pressed against his temple.
“Primitive, but effective,” the alien general said. “You don’t seem to have much regard f
or your own skin, but what about his?”
At first I could say nothing. Fury choked my throat, and for a few seconds I could say nothing, but only stood there, glaring at him and wishing I could somehow reach out and strangle the alien life from its borrowed flesh. Finally I managed to spit out, “You hurt one hair on his head — ”
“And what?” Another swallow of coffee, followed by, “As I just told you, making empty threats is not something you can afford, Ms. O’Brien. If you want this man to live, then you’ll tell me what I need to know.”
“And what’s that?” I knew I wouldn’t tell this — thing — my shoe size, let alone anything important, but I had to stall, had to figure out what on earth I could do to get out of this room, back to the detention level.
The corners of his mouth curved upward in a ghastly approximation of a smile. “Who’s been helping you? I know you couldn’t have possibly managed to destroy those files without assistance.”
“Nobody helped me,” I said. “I guess I’m just naturally gifted.”
I didn’t see him give any kind of signal. Maybe he didn’t need to — maybe the aliens communicated telepathically with their hybrids. But the soldier shifted, and through the speakers on either side of the flat screens I heard an audible click as he cocked the pistol.
“You might want to reconsider your reply,” the alien general said.
There had to be something I could say. Anything to keep him from giving the next command. But I also instinctively knew that I couldn’t betray Otto, couldn’t reveal the fact that a higher power than the aliens had decided to intervene.
“It was some of the people from the Los Angeles group,” I told him. That had to be safe enough; after all, the network had already been compromised due to Jeff’s involvement in it.
“Don’t underestimate me, Ms. O’Brien.”
“But — ”
The sound of the gun going off was impossibly loud. In the screens above me, I saw dual images of Paul slumping forward, then tumbling slowly off his chair.
No.
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