“Other wing?” Nate inquired from beside me.
I gave him the answer with a fake grin hurting my facial muscles. “Bipedal animals, you could say. They actually housed them in the animal wing. No kidding.”
Looking at the numbers once more, I quickly did the math. “So that’s, what? How many calories does the average human body have? Let’s say we have a more sedentary lifestyle than the average population, and a few fitness freaks to balance that out. How many supercharged zombies can one hundred forty snack boxes feed for twenty-one months? Plus some lab animals as well, I guess. I don’t think they would have ignored a less savory snack after a week or two.”
Hamilton gave me a level stare that was dripping with condescension. “You done with that nonsense?”
I now beamed that same smile at him that Nate had gotten before. “Just calling it as I see it. No sense in deluding ourselves that we’re not the second helping. Or how else do you explain that we’ve been down here for half an hour and checked on a good tenth of the facility and we’ve found not a single sign of any of those one hundred and thirty-eight bodies? They must have ended up somewhere.”
Sadly, my keen observation went ignored, Hamilton instead turning to the screen Cole had pulled up. “Those are the secured doors?” It was a neat diagram with lots of green lines, only the two we had traipsed through glowing red since we’d kept them propped open.
“All others still locked,” Cole reported. “Any I should disengage?”
Nate cleared his throat, not bothering with checking the data. “I wouldn’t. The great thing about a door that locks is that you can slam it shut. Unless you want to set up some kill zones, I’d leave them to manual operation.”
“Gee, so I’m the only one who can go wherever the fuck she pleases?” I summed that up. “Neat.”
Nate and Bucky had their momentary staring match going on until the idiot-in-charge inclined his head. “Keep the doors locked. Except for these two.” He pointed at a spot next to the animal facilities.
“Why, wanna make it extra easy for them to get us?” I jeered, but only got a flat stare back.
“You have your tasks. I have mine,” Hamilton offered, a hint of nastiness in his tone as if the fact that I wasn’t in the know would drive me crazy. Well, it just might, but I did my best to stomp down on the instantly sparked curiosity. But what I couldn’t prevent was me taking a step toward him, thus invading his zone of privacy, which forced me to look up way past what was comfortable, but there was no avoiding that.
“Good. Because you don’t really know what mine are, do you?” He continued to smirk at me but I didn’t miss the hint of doubt that crossed his face, making me grin. “And you don’t, trust me,” I continued. No idea why I was yanking his chain, but I wasn’t in the mood to hold back now.
“I do,” he insisted, putting extra emphasis in his claim—and leaning closer so that his elbow brushed my arms where they were crossed over my chest, as if that would intimidate me. I briefly considered turning this into a real physical altercation but the rules of our previous encounters were still true, the booster making me stupidly aware of shit or not. He was taller and heavier, and had reach and number of fingers on me. Too bad, really.
“You don’t,” I disagreed. “Or did you listen in to the entire time Raynor cut me up and put me back together? I know for a fact you didn’t, else you would have stormed into that room and beat her up, I’m sure. Or in the hangar, when you held your little speech—did you follow the conversation she had with me and Gita? You didn’t. So, yes—I can’t look into your cards but you also can’t look into mine. And considering I’m the only one in here who understands what she’s dealing with, that puts me miles ahead of you.”
“So what?” Bucky jeered, slowly getting his groove back, yet the fact that I’d gotten under his skin, even for a second, made me feel terribly vindicated. “It’s not like you can actively do anything with that knowledge.”
“I can’t?” I posed the logical hypothetical question. “I can grab the newest version of the serum they’ve been developing—or whatever else they’ve been researching—and inoculate myself with it. That’s such a fancy word, now, isn’t it? Simply swallowing it will do the trick. And I even got my backup here with me should one dose not be enough.” I took a moment to pause and look dramatically at Nate over my left shoulder before focusing on Bucky once more. “You still think they’d waste a dose of the updated serum on him just so you can pull your little mind control stunt? Oh, please, don’t be so naive. You know just how much each dose of the stable serum is worth. Enough to fund this entire mission, waste so many resources, and possibly so many people that cannot be replaced. And you know that Raynor can’t stand you. So why should she trust you?”
Sadly, no more doubt followed but I hadn’t really expected to get a second hit in. “Isn’t it the opposite of smart for you to tell me that now?” Hamilton drawled. “You’re bluffing.”
“Maybe I am,” I conceded. “Or maybe I’m telling you so you think I’m bluffing while I’m really not. Maybe someone else is going to do it? Who knows? How sure can you be about everyone’s—” and I meant Richards with that, obviously “— loyalties? So many possibilities, and only three and a half more hours to waste. Tick, tock. What are you gonna do about it, Bucky?”
He didn’t give me the satisfaction of reacting to his nickname that he loved as much as I did the one he’d pinned on me, but I could tell that he didn’t know for sure if he hadn’t misjudged me. A stupid move of me, and one that I couldn’t explain why I’d felt driven to go for it, but hey. What could possibly go wrong?
What he settled on saying was a semi-grumbled, “You have your tasks, I have mine. We both should get going.”
Before I could reply, Cole interrupted our grandstanding conversation. “I got the camera feeds up, if anyone’s interested? Only from inside the BSL-4 cocoon, the others are fried for good. But it’s better than nothing.”
I pointedly continued our staring match for another second before I broke eye contact so I could round the desk and look at the display Cole was pointing at. Everything looked like it was supposed to, I realized after a moment of dreadful anticipation. After all, we’d been breathing that air for thirty minutes now—too late for any measures to save us, and nothing I could have done about it in the first place; but security was security.
“Does the decontamination system still work?” I asked as I continued to check what I could see of the rooms as the camera feeds cycled through them every few seconds.
“Check on the lab,” Cole reported, looking at a different display. “And on the decontamination showers, too. All systems green, and zero breach attempts.” Since the other logs had said the same, I wasn’t terribly comforted by that last statement, but it was something.
Looking at Hamilton, I considered. “We do whatever each of us has to do next, and then we go in there, I presume?”
“Correct.”
“So I have, what? An hour until then?”
Hamilton checked his watch. “One hour and twenty minutes. We go into the hot lab at exactly two hours after breach.”
I didn’t ask whether he’d calculated the insane amount of prep work we’d have to do, but figured that was his problem, not mine. And we did have those extra forty-five minutes on top of the four hours, if push came to shove. “Great. Can you engage the decon cycle from here? And when was the last one?”
Cole nodded. “I can, and just over three hours ago. Next one is scheduled in nine hours.” He paused. “Isn’t that a little paranoid even for you?”
I shrugged. “If it’s my life on the line, I like everything as squeaky clean as I can have it.” Casting another sidelong glance at Hamilton, I patted Cole’s shoulder. “Run the cycle. I’m not going to be the one who breaks his neck slipping in a puddle of formaldehyde.”
I didn’t wait for Hamilton to add anything to that as I walked out of the room, Nate following me, a slight smile playing around his l
ips. I rolled my eyes at him, as if he was the petty one. Burns was waiting for us outside, clearly having watched the spectacle from there, next to Richards, Munez, and Davis. “I presume you’re coming with me to search through Dr. Andrada’s office?”
Red nodded. “And the other two scientists’ as well,” he reminded me. “That is, if you’re done here?”
“Quite.”
Although we knew exactly where we were headed, Richards and Nate still checked on the blueprints once more before we set out, me and Burns trailing behind the others. As soon as we were at the top of the stairs leading to the upper floor and outside of the downstairs view, I let go of the relaxed demeanor I’d tried so hard to keep going, letting my body snap to full alertness. The chuckle coming from behind me let me know that Burns had noticed the difference. Well, good for him.
With only six people, it was impossible to secure the corridors and offices as we passed them, but since the space here was only reaching as far as the area we’d passed down below, not the wings to the sides, it was less of a worry than it could have been. I still strained my ears for any sounds coming from anywhere that weren’t caused by us, but the echoey hallways remained unremarkably so. Within ten minutes, we’d made a quick tour through the entire area and returned to door number 312—Dr. Rosamie Andrada’s office.
Nate did a quick sweep before he let me in—not much work seeing as it was just a desk, a chair, a cupboard, and all available wall space filled with shelves, no place to hide for anything that was larger than a mouse. It wasn’t even a large office as those went, making me guess that she’d been a junior among the senior scientists. There were a few personal items, among them a photograph of a large, beige dog, but everything screamed professional and tidy.
I didn’t even check on the laptop, simply signaled Richards to pack it up. Her lab journals were next, but after the third I checked I shook my head. “We won’t find anything in there that’s not typed up if it’s important. That’s all the official documentation, and you already have that.” I still rifled through two more in another section, then turned to Davis, who was trying to pay attention but seemed really bored. “Can you look all these over? Just check if you find anything out of the ordinary, like a piece of paper that doesn’t belong, or whatnot.”
“Think she hid something in there, in plain sight?” Davis guessed, already setting to the task.
“Got anything better to do?” I asked, then turned to the others. “Do the same with her books. We have another hour, and this is the best place around.” Then I turned to Red and silently pointed at my mic before giving a questioning shrug. He considered, raising three fingers—switch to channel three. Munez and Davis looked puzzled at the order but did so just as Nate, Burns, and I did. There was still a chance someone might be listening in, and we’d get the general alerts on the main frequency, but I didn’t need to make it easy for Hamilton. The fact that we hadn’t heard a peep from him and the others made it obvious that they were doing the same thing, only with a different frequency.
“What do you hope to find, anyway?” Richards asked as I started going through the things filed away on top of the desk.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” I replied, mostly focused on my work. “Not sure there is anything to find here. Her home address would make a lot more sense for anything she might have wanted to hide from the powers that be.”
I checked the desk drawers next, but again, nothing. The only moderately interesting item I came across was a bottle of ink, which made me laugh for the simple fact that it must have been the most useless item in the entire post-apocalyptic world. Fucking ink! Richards meanwhile poked around the cupboard where I could see more files neatly put away. I wondered how a woman that pedantic had dealt with dog hairs.
“That’s old school,” Red muttered, making me look up from my drawer.
“Say what?”
He held up a bundle of envelopes. “Letters. Actual handwritten letters. I didn’t know anyone did that anymore.”
I shrugged, not quite sure what to respond. The only remarkable thing about them was that she’d stashed them in her office, but considering the work hours she must have kept, she’d probably not had time for private correspondence at home. Unless…
“Who are they from?”
“Doesn’t say,” Richards offered after checking the envelopes, then went as far as pulling one out and scanning it. “Signature says, ‘Lee.’”
I was ready to forget all about that but Nate suddenly stepped up to Red, looking at the letter in his hand. “That’s my brother’s handwriting.”
I immediately dropped the inventory note I had been looking over and joined them. “You sure?” I asked quite needlessly. Raleigh. Lee. Close enough, and you’d think that Nate would recognize his brother’s scrawl. Or penmanship, rather, I corrected myself as I got a glimpse at the letter. I couldn’t have written anything that curly and plain legible if I’d tried. “What does it say?”
Nate continued to read the letter while Red started on a new one, leaving the rest of the envelopes on the cupboard. I pulled another one out, checking the date first—a few months before Raleigh Miller’s untimely death. This could be good. Like really good…
Only that it wasn’t.
“What the fuck is this? Some kind of code?” I asked as I finished the first page—of six. It read like a school assignment, What I Did In My Summer Holidays, only way more boring because Miller hadn’t been on vacation. He didn’t even passingly mention his work, or anything else that might have been remotely interesting to us. And it wasn’t a love letter, either, the only other valid option that came to mind.
Nate shrugged, frustrated himself. “No fucking clue. If it is, I don’t think we can decipher it.”
Grunting, I put the letter back, ready to continue searching… but then paused. Something tickled my mind. Something… I’d seen. Just where? And when?
“Gah, I hate this,” I muttered, looking around mostly to distract myself, hoping to jump-start my memory this way.
“Life in general, or just working with people you can’t stand, to accomplish something you don’t believe in?” Richards snidely observed.
He got a brief, sweet smile for his trouble but I talked to Nate instead. If anyone could jog my memory, it would be him. “Do you ever feel like if you could just concentrate hard enough, you’d remember something you really needed to know?” Far be it from me to hope that the reply I had coming for that nonsense would help.
Only that, for once in my life, he didn’t make fun of me for waxing platitudes but instead looked at me with interest. “Booster.”
“Huh?”
“Cognitive enhancement can be a side effect of the booster,” Nate explained. “If you feel like your mind’s going off on something, it probably is.” He glanced at the letter I’d just dropped. “Anything you read in there?”
I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t connected to the contents. Just in general. Like—”
I glanced at the desk, but to no avail. It wasn’t like that cursed woman had left anything out there that could be inspiring, except for those two fancy pens she’d likely written her responses in—
“The ink!” I called out, already making a dive for the bottom drawer. Seconds later I resurfaced, a triumphant smile on my face. “Anyone got any blacklight? I’m sure I saw it in the logistics files at the destroyer for the decontamination protocol in case of getting mauled by something untoward.” Which was exactly what had happened with Rodriguez—and what the French had done when they’d scanned us for injuries.
Richards held out a small stick to me that he fished out of a pocket in his pants. “Here.”
Grinning, I picked up one of the letters and switched the light on. Nothing—until I turned it over, and the seemingly blank backside of the page was covered in softly glowing script. I only needed to read over two lines to know that I’d hit gold. “Gotcha.”
Nate and Red both craned their necks to see. Even to the u
ninitiated, the mention of “virus” and “serum” was a dead giveaway, as were the experimental setup conditions that followed. I started reading the letter from the top, more slowly this time to try to commit the contents to memory. Hey, if my mind was running at one hundred and twenty percent right now, I was getting the most out of that for sure.
Davis seemed absolutely flashed by my congeniality. “How the fuck did you get the idea that anyone would write with invisible ink?”
I shrugged, not quite sure how to explain. “She had two pens. There’s only one bottle of ink in her drawer. Made me wonder with what she’d inked the other pen.”
“She could have simply liked the color.”
“Dumb luck, I guess.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “That got me this far. Not going to let that hold me back now.”
While I continued reading the letters, Nate and Red got busy sorting them by date, and handing me the next one as soon as I finished the one I was occupied with. The earliest dated back almost three years before Raleigh’s death, and they had made quite a lot of progress—if not quite in the direction I’d expected.
I didn’t even notice that I had started rubbing my side absentmindedly with my free hand until Nate’s grunted, “Just don’t,” made me look up, confused. He caught my gaze, perfectly scowling. “Don’t,” he repeated. “The booster will start screwing with your mind if you key up but don’t have anything to burn off the adrenaline. Might be scintillating reading material but not that scintillating.”
I ignored him with a slight snort to myself—but dropped my hand to my side instead. My foot started tapping a few seconds later of its own account, and I realized that I was now rubbing my left thigh where the massive scar tissue from the zombie bites was, with the titanium parts that kept my femur together right underneath.
Red noticed, prompted by our conversation, no doubt. “Are you always this hyper when you’re physically inactive?”
Snorting, I shook my head. “Still not the h-word I’d be using.” So much for that. Back to reading.
Green Fields (Book 9): Exodus Page 18
