“Officers at every possible point of egress. Teams of officers and security guards searching the building. And, I imagine, those you dealt with will be regaining their senses soon enough to call in and confirm that we are, in fact, in the building.”
“So basically, we’re fucked,” I grunted.
“Basically.”
I drew a deep breath, thinking it through. We were so damn close. We needed a way out, any way out. “Sewers?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No access, Detective.”
“Rooftop?”
“We can get there, but we have no way of getting anywhere from there. And, if you will recall, all of the aircraft belong to the opposition.”
“If all other paths are blocked, then we must go out the door,” Al’awwal said. He had poured some water from a canteen and was busily cleaning the blood off of his face. He was being none too careful with water or discarded gauze, I noted, and much of it was splashing onto the other three occupants of the elevator. The bound and gagged security officers had all regained consciousness and were glaring pure hatred at the three of us.
I ignored them. “We can’t walk out the door without being recognized. And if we’re recognized, it’s over. We got lucky before, but there’s no way we can cut through all the officers out there.”
“We don’t have to. We’ll only be noticed if we stand out. And we won’t stand out if the entire building is being evacuated. Surely, by now, Silas has hacked into all the pertinent systems. How hard would it be to trigger some sort of general fire alarm, or some such? If there is a press of people all trying to leave…” He trailed off, and I nodded.
It was risky. Very risky. All it took was one guard, one cop, noticing that we didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the office personnel, and we would be done. But I didn’t have a better plan. “Can you do it, Silas?” I asked.
“Trigger the fire alarms? Yes. A simple enough matter. But perhaps I can do more than that as well.” He was back among his screens now, fingers working furiously over the surfaces, voice distracted.
“More?” I prompted when nothing else was forthcoming.
“They work with numerous biological agents in this building, Jason. Any bio-lab runs the risk of some level of contagion. And I doubt that Walton Biogenics is so pure as to not be dabbling in some of the more dangerous areas possible in the biological sciences. It is almost guaranteed that the labs here have some sort of alarm system. A fire alarm is nice, but easy enough to ignore if you do not see the smoke or feel the heat. But if I can trigger one of the lab alarms… Well, it is much more difficult to convince people to stay in their offices if they believe a biological agent might be filtering through the air conditioning system.”
His fingers hadn’t slowed as he spoke, and by the spreading smile on his lips, I knew he was getting close. There was a long, pregnant moment where no one spoke. All of us—including the bound security guards—simply watched Silas work, our gazes drawn to the lodestone of his concentration. That moment was shattered as the lights in the elevator shifted from white to blood red and a piercing whistle sounded over a heretofore unnoticed speaker. After the whistles, a monotone and vaguely feminine voice said, “Warning. Warning. There has been a breach in containment unit seven. Please proceed to the nearest exit in a calm and orderly fashion. Warning. Warning.” The whistle repeated, and then the warning.
“I believe if we give it a minute or two, we should be able to join the ‘calm and orderly’ procession of people exiting the building.”
“Not like this, we can’t,” I noted, waving one hand at the bloody lab coats. “And not under arms.” I hefted the sub-gun that I had retrieved. “Can these be traced back to you?” I asked Al’awwal.
He shrugged. “Does it matter? Unless you plan on killing these,” he waved toward the bound security guards, “they will have an excellent description of all of us. I imagine they’ll know who, if not what, I am soon enough. No matter, though. I didn’t accept this task without understanding the potential consequences.” He gave a little shrug and a slight smile.
I nodded. On some level, I’d already known that. The fact that Al’awwal, who lived a life of relative luxury, was willing to throw that away with a shrug and a smile to help serve the cause… Well, it said a lot about the man, and maybe a lot about the cause. “Then we leave them behind. Along with all the other gear. They already know who I am, and I doubt they’ll care much about another faceless synthetic.” I gave a half-apologetic nod to Silas. “If you’re not worried about them finding you, then we abandon everything but what we came for. And I think a wardrobe change is in order as well.”
“While you see to that,” Silas said, “I shall see what can be done about arranging transportation. We may be able to walk out of this building, but we do not want to be on the streets for very long. There are far too many watchful eyes, electronic and otherwise.”
“Right,” I said, eyeing the bound security guards, trying to determine which one was closest to me in size. “Let’s get to work, then.”
* * * *
It was only a few minutes later when the freight elevator—which should have been locked down as part of the standard building evacuation procedures—dinged. The doors opened into a crowded and chaotic warehouse. The large loading bay doors were one of the main egresses for emergencies, and people were streaming not only from the stairwell but also from adjoining doors that led, I assumed, deeper into the labs.
The three of us, clad now in the blazers and ties of the security guards still restrained on the floor, stepped from the elevator. I did my best to use my body to shield the view to the elevator’s interior, but I needn’t have bothered. No one in that warehouse had the slightest interest in looking back. That made me wonder just what it was—apart from researching how to make better and cheaper synthetics—that Walton Biogenics did here. I had expected the thought of a biological contaminant to properly motivate people, but I saw real, deep fear on the faces around me. The kind of fear that would only be present if they knew that there was more going on here than met the eye.
I filed that thought away. Now wasn’t the time. We had more important matters to attend to—like getting the hell out of Dodge before the cops snapped us up. We joined the press of people, though I did catch Silas surreptitiously entering a command on his screen. That sent the elevator doors closing behind us and locked the elevator down once more. I felt a brief flash of guilt over the security guards tied up inside, but it wasn’t as if there was a biological agent loose. They would be found, eventually. They might be a little uncomfortable in the interim, but it was certainly better than the other alternative we had for dealing with them.
The wave of bodies carried the three of us toward the doors. I could see a trio of officers there, trying to watch the press of people. I’d worked door duty more than once on my way to detective, and I knew just how futile their task was. In the sea of panicked faces, it was all but impossible to pick out one individual, unless that person happened to pass right by you. And given that the bad guys—okay, me in this case—knew where the good guys were, and the reverse wasn’t true, it was easy enough to make sure that didn’t happen. “We need to separate a bit,” I said in low voice to Silas and Al’awwal. “The three of us together might draw some attention.”
They didn’t bother with a response. Each simply angled away from me, cutting across the crowd at a new angle. We were all headed to the massive garage doors; the twenty feet of open space was all but impossible to effectively watch, but they each headed a little wider. I stuck straight to the middle, slouching a bit to conceal my height and keeping my head down. The press of people was tight around me, and I went with it, letting the river of office workers carry me across the concrete floor and toward the portal. There was a slowdown as we reached the doors and the officers did their best to vet the exiting staff, but they were a few rocks in the stream
. The crowd flowed around them in all directions, only those within arm’s reach truly hindered by their presence.
I felt a moment of stomach-twisting tension as I approached the door. Even knowing the odds, there was always a chance, however slim, that one of the cops would turn at the wrong moment. That they would catch sight of me out of the corner of their eye. That some well-meaning staffer of the lab would stop at the wrong time. There were a hundred ways it could all go wrong. A thousand. My stomach churned, but then I was through, past the cops at the doors. The soulless fluorescent lights vanished, replaced by the warm glow of the morning sun.
The streets outside the lab were every bit as chaotic as the warehouse floor. Protesters, now more interested in the goings-on at the lab than in their protest, had shifted into gawker mode, signs and placards forgotten as they pressed closer to the building. Where the stream of evacuating lab staff met the wall of protesters, confusion met concern, anger met panic. The violence was inevitable.
I don’t know how it started. From the middle of the crowd, I had no view of the front lines. But whatever sparked the surging mob quickly exploded. One minute, we were streaming out of the lab, moving away from the building and toward the street. The next, I found myself in the middle of a violent melee as pushing and shoving gave way to punching and clubbing. The Walton employees wanted nothing more than to get away from the lab. The protesters… I had no idea what they wanted. To interfere with Walton’s operations, I supposed, and ordinarily, I would have wished them well of it.
At the moment, however, their enthusiasm was causing me some trouble.
My steady advance away from the labs—and the cops—had come to a halt as one wave of humanity crashed against another. Worse, the confrontation was sure to draw the attention of every camera in the area, and doubtless a drone or three for good measure. I wouldn’t be able to hide for long.
Which meant I had to get through the crowd.
Which meant I had to play dirty.
I stopped worrying about blending in and starting cutting my way through the throng. Where I could, I simply slipped between people, using my bulk like a splitting wedge. Where I met resistance, I attacked. The press of people was far too tight to throw individuals out of the way, so I targeted knees, ankles, groins, and kidneys. I tried to avoid permanently injuring anyone…but I knew that when they fell, and fall they did, in the press of people, they were at the mercy of the crowd.
Mobs were not known for their mercy.
I put that thought from my mind as I made my way through the rest of the Walton employees and into the crowd of protesters. I shed my security blazer—it would only make me a target on this side of the battle lines—and kept going, moving against the flow of bodies, looking for a break in a sea of grasping hands and flailing limbs.
Then the pressure eased, and I was through them, standing on the outskirts of the crowd. A steady trickle of others had done as I had, moving away from the confrontation rather than toward it. I was aware, in a distant sort of way, of the cries of panic and anger, but I ignored them. I focused on trying to scan the crowd while simultaneously keeping my head ducked, to avoid any prying eyes that might be pointed in my direction.
I could hear sirens in the distance, closing in. Whether their priority was the biological contamination alert, the burgeoning riot, or me, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Any way around it, I needed to get my ass out of sight. But I couldn’t leave without Silas and Al’awwal.
I caught a flash of alabaster skin across the thinning crowd. Silas. I headed immediately in his direction. Al’awwal beat me there.
“Time to di di fucking mao,” I grunted.
“You think?” Al’awwal asked, a wild excitement burning in his eyes.
“Follow me,” Silas said. “The car is waiting, but I cannot get it close enough to the lab. With a sense of purpose, gentlemen.” He put action to his words, turning on his heel and striding off. He moved quickly, but he did not run. There were enough people high-stepping it away with more than a bit of alacrity—that sense of purpose Silas mentioned—that we fit right in.
We’d gone less than a block before Silas turned to a vehicle parked along the side of the road. It was a simple panel van, the type still nearly ubiquitous on the city streets for the endless interior configuration possibilities. The doors popped open at his approach, and he slid into the front seat without breaking stride. I took the passenger seat, and Al’awwal dropped into the back. The doors closed, and as if we’d planned it that way all along, the car slid away from the curb.
“You are certain we got everything we came for?” Silas asked.
“As certain as we can be without going through it,” Al’awwal replied.
“Whatever ‘it’ might be,” I added. “Documents. Old electronic data storage. We’ll have to go through it. Sort it out. See if we can figure out how best to distribute it.” I counted in my head. “And we have to do it all in about four days. At least if we want to be able to use it day one.” I thought about Thompson. Dr. Larkin. The security guards and cops we’d injured along the way. “And we’re going to have to use it soon, Silas. We did enough damage to get this information that we’re going from hackers to violent terrorists.” I waved one hand, dismissing the argument I knew was forthcoming. “Yeah, yeah. I know we were there already with Walton Biogenics and their sycophants. And I know there’s a contingent of ‘lunatic fringe’ that we can do no wrong with. But neither of those are the people we have to convince. We need the fence-sitters. The moderates. The people who can see both sides of the issue and who have honest cognitive dissonance as to how to feel about it all. If we can’t win them to our side, then we’ve got no shot at pulling this off.”
“Then, Jason,” Silas said, “as you would say, we had better get to work.”
Chapter 23
“You’re back!” I grunted as Tia hurled herself bodily into me, arms clamping around my waist like a vise. The exclamation drew the eyes of the gathered synthetics, seated in the ramshackle remains of the restaurant-turned-safe-house, to us, but with Tia in my arms, I ignored them. She hugged me, and the warm press of her body against mine felt…good. Not like that. Okay, not just like that. But it felt safe, somehow.
Then she was pushing me away, hands going to my face, fingers probing at the broken and swollen wreckage of my nose. That felt less good. “Ow!” I half-shouted as her fingertips poked and prodded. “That hurts!”
“Stop being such a baby. It’s broken. We’re going to have to set it, or it will heal all crooked.” I let her lead me off to the kitchen while Al’awwal and Silas headed deeper into the dining area, no doubt looking for La Sorte.
In short order I found myself rather firmly sat down on the kitchen prep table that had, only a day or two ago, been used to perform an autopsy. “You’re too tall,” Tia accused. Given that with me sitting on top of the table, her head barely reached my midchest, I could see her point. “Lie down.”
I resisted the urge to bark like a disobedient dog and instead did as she suggested. The table was cold, even through my shirt, but it felt good to lie down and just be still. The past few days had been a torrent of constant action constricted by the dual pressures of stress and low-grade fear. And it wasn’t over. We’d found some information, maybe even a smoking gun, buried somewhere in the data that La Sorte, Al’awwal, and Silas were probably digging through already. We maybe had a shiny new weapon to deploy against Walton Biogenics and their sycophants. But would it be enough to head off the literal war that I still believed was coming? Would it be enough to sway the multitudes that had grown fat and complacent on the backs of the synthetics?
Somehow, I didn’t think so.
“This is going to hurt,” Tia said, her hands once more running over my face.
“It always does,” I replied, fighting to keep the air of resignation—not about the pain of setting my broken nose, but about t
he enormity and maybe futility of our situation—out of my voice.
She didn’t bother responding. Her hands moved with swift, sure pressure, and I heard the crackle of shifting cartilage. A sharp spike of pain flashed through my nose and sinuses, followed almost immediately by a flood of relief as the flash faded, taking with it most of the residual pain.
“Thank you, Tia,” I half-whispered, my eyes closed, the twin siren songs of exhaustion and lessened pain urging me to sleep. Couldn’t do that. Too much left to do. Too many miles left to go.
“No time like the present.” I felt a moment of confusion at Tia’s words. They’d been spoken clearly, but not to me. More like she was talking to herself. Then the moment of confusion turned into a giant blaring symphony of confusion as I felt lips press against mine. My eyes snapped open, and there she was, leaning over me from the front of the table on which I lay. Her hands were flat on the table on either side of my head, her dark hair falling in a curtain around our faces.
For a moment I could only stare into her eyes in stark surprise. Then something gave and I kissed her back.
Time lost all meaning. I’m not sure how long we stayed like that. Maybe it was only a few seconds. Maybe it was hours. But when Tia finally straightened up, I was out of breath.
“Well,” she said with a dreamy little smile. “Well, well, well.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Despite being more than a decade her senior, I would never be the suave ladies’ man. My experience in that department was limited—Annabelle’s death had done some fairly permanent damage to my view of relationships, and neither the military nor the force had helped in that regard. Fortunately, I was spared the near-certain embarrassment of opening my fool mouth as the door to the kitchen swung open. Silas stood in it, surveying us for a long moment. At least he hadn’t walked in a few seconds before, but he would have had to have been blind and deaf to not notice that the atmosphere in the room was…off.
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