by Gini Koch
It was a fully automated assembly line. Lots of impressive, gleaming machinery, conveyors, vats, and more, all being run by robotics. It looked like everyone’s vision of The Factory of the Future. There were two staircases down—one near us and one on the opposite side.
My phone buzzed in my hand. Lorraine wanted to know where we were. Told her, and they joined us. We all looked for a while, then Buchanan had us back out. He closed but didn’t lock the door.
“Well,” Claudia said, “that answers the one question we had.”
“Which was where were they making the actual drug?” Lorraine explained.
“There are liquid and powder forms,” Serene added. “And while the liquid forms are being created in the labs down below, they weren’t making enough to explain the amount of the finished product we found.”
“We did find pipes and tubing going up here,” Claudia said. “This factory must take the raw serum from the science labs, duplicate the liquid form, dilute it for consumption, take some of it and reduce it to powder form, then package and feed the final products into the interior rooms below.”
“I have a question. Do we know who Doctor Feelgood actually is?”
There was a distinct pause. “Ahhh, I don’t follow you, Kitty,” Serene said politely.
“So few ever do. I want to know if we know who created the newer version of the drug, who’s behind it all. Is this all based on stuff Amy’s dad created originally? Or on what someone else created originally? If so, who’s making the new stuff? One person or a collective? Who has the formulas? Who comes up with the ideas for how to make the new versions? Because we need to not only get all of their data and notes, we need to stop them from creating the next level of this stuff, whatever it’s going to be.”
“Could be anyone out of Somerall, Gardiner, or Cross,” Amy said. “They’d be my top picks.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. They’re the people running things at Gaultier now, yes. But that doesn’t mean they’re scientists, and even if they are, it doesn’t mean they’re scientists with the skills to create Surcenthumain and its scary derivatives. It takes a skilled scientist to create a drug that works, especially a superdrug like this.”
“Do we want to go down and examine everything?” Abigail asked.
“No. Not yet.” This was the start of the tour. We still needed to know what was at the end.
“Can I be sick now then?” Amy asked. “I’d be proud, if this was creating things like cancer cures or something. But this is creating nothing but death.”
“Do we know that for sure?” Naomi asked.
“Well, we haven’t tested any of the samples yet,” Lorraine admitted. “But, who does this kind of work in this kind of facility if what they’re doing is for the greater good?”
“Why didn’t this show up on the blueprints?” Adriana asked.
“There were, what, five or six sets of blueprints?” I asked. Amy nodded. “They didn’t want this to be discovered by anyone. The schematics sort of match up, but not that well. I think the blueprints were there for them to have as a sort of guide, but whoever built this either did it without a final blueprint or they destroyed the final. My bet is on destroyed, by the way.”
“I’m sure my father didn’t do this on his own,” Amy said.
“No, I’m sure Antony Marling, Madeleine Cartwright, and Ronald Yates, at the very least, all added in. This seems very ‘them.’ And that begs another interesting question.”
“What’s that?” Adriana asked.
“What’s under all of their various buildings and the rest of the Gaultier buildings throughout the world? More hidden, underground facilities? This one has to have been built using some kind of cloaked material or cloaking device, since no one’s ever found it.”
“How much cloaked material could there be?” Buchanan asked.
“No idea, but if it’s the same stuff that the tunnels are made out of, then it’s Z’porrah created, and God alone knows how much they gave to our friends in the Evil Genius Society.”
“We don’t know that no one’s found it,” Buchanan added. “Just no one on our side.”
“Good point, Malcolm. Depressing, but good.”
“What do we do?” Abigail asked.
“It seems obvious to me.”
Everyone looked at me. “Doesn’t seem obvious to us,” Naomi shared.
I sighed. “We find out what the hell they’re doing down on the lowest level, and then we burn this place to ash.”
“That’s easier said than done,” Serene said. “They have an impressive sprinkler system in place, as well as some other sophisticated equipment to prevent accidents, protect against natural disasters, and so forth.”
“How can you tell that from just looking around?”
She handed me a manual. “I found it in one of the labs. It’s listing all their emergency procedures.”
“You read it already?”
“We all did,” Claudia said. “Hyperspeed.”
“Right, right.” Still wasn’t good at reading with hyperspeed. Christopher was a lot more focused on training me on the active side of things. He seemed to feel that this was both more important and more likely for me to actually use.
Flipped the pages. Something near the end caught my eye. “Huh. ‘Foremost should be the protection of the Omega Level and all personnel within it. In case of a full facility shutdown, enact Evacuation Omega and ensure all data and subjects are preserved.’ That’s interesting.”
“Did they list twenty-three other evacuation procedures?” Amy asked.
“Why?” Abigail asked back.
“Because omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet,” Amy said. “And since there aren’t twenty-four floors, I don’t know why you’d go from Evacuation Alpha to Evacuation Omega unless there were a lot of evacuation options.”
“Oh, there were only a few evacuation plans, not twenty-four.” Serene said. “And none of the others were named for the Greek alphabet. But omega means lots of other things, not just the end. It’s used in a wide variety of sciences.”
Turned the manual over and looked at the title. Emergency Plans, Gaultier Center for the Advancement of Humankind. The type was superimposed on top of a large omega symbol.
Managed not to ask why none of my Dazzlers on Duty had questioned the title, especially after Tito had shared what he thought the bad guys were really after. I also managed to remind myself that, to them, this title probably didn’t bode as it did for me. I was the Gregor Mendel fangirl, after all. The YatesCorp clause that would give anyone who could prove they were genetically a Yates offspring a seat on the YatesCorp Board made much more diabolical sense now, too. But maybe Tito was wrong.
“Um, I’ve got a very bad feeling about this. Girls, if we were talking genetics, what could omega indicate?”
“Like Serene said, many things,” Lorraine replied. “In molecular biology the symbol’s used as shorthand to signify a genetic construct introduced by a two-point crossover.”
“I dread to ask. What’s a two-point crossover?” I had a really, really good guess, but I also wanted to be really, really sure.
“A two-point crossover just means that you select two points on parent organism strings,” Claudia said. “Everything between the two points is swapped between the parent organisms, creating two child organisms.”
Fantastic. I wasn’t wrong. That was indeed my guess, or pretty much. And, double rainbow fantastic, Tito wasn’t wrong, either. “Oh. My God.”
“Kitty, what are you thinking?” Naomi asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“Because I probably am. We need to get downstairs and find whatever’s hidden below.”
“Tell us what you think is going on first,” Buchanan said in a tone of voice that was pretty much brooking no argument. Of course, I heard that tone from Jeff, Chuckie, Christopher, and all the others frequently, too. I was good at ignoring that tone.
Reached into his back pants po
cket. Sure enough, the keycard was there. Grabbed it, then his hand, and headed for the stairs. All at hyperspeed. I was impressed with how well hysterical panic ensured that I was able to control the hyperspeed. Almost as well as if I was enraged. That was good. Wasn’t sure I could get rage going, but hysterical panic was currently a given and terror loomed on the horizon.
Reached the stairs and continued down at hyperspeed. The others were behind us. “I’ll tell you on the way. Basically, I think that we’re going to look back on the idea of Gaultier’s Zombie Army with great fondness for a simpler time.”
CHAPTER 84
WE REACHED THE BOTTOM in no time; I used the keycard and got us all through the bottom stairwell door. Didn’t stop to worry about the bathrooms. If someone was in them, they were likely to be the least of our worries.
Went through the elevator lobby door, inserted the keycard, shoved Buchanan through the door, motioned the others along, took the keycard out, got through the door, grabbed Buchanan, and kept on going. “One of you lead us to the section we couldn’t go to before. We don’t have time for me to lead us around like Moses in the desert.”
Lorraine and Claudia took the lead and we were back in the maze section. We zipped through and came to a stop before a set of double doors that led into a room with “Restricted: Omega Level Only” on it.
Used the keycard, shoved Buchanan and everyone else through, shut the door quietly behind us. Once we were in and the door was closed I stopped, mostly because it was dark and we undoubtedly needed to move forward carefully.
Buchanan opened his mouth, probably to ask me what the hell was going on, but I beat him to it. “There’s a reason they want the Yates Gene, and the work we’ve done on it,” I said in a low voice. “And it’s exactly what Tito said earlier—the clause in the YatesCorp stuff is a lure, the way they get the owners of Yates genetics to show up and freely give them a sample. But what I think they’re doing down here is cloning.”
“Why do they want Tito’s research then?” Serene asked. Her innocence never failed to astound, impress, and sometimes amuse me.
“So they can clone our kids, Serene. And whoever else they want, like Jeff and Christopher, who were out-of-the-regular-womb powerful.”
“Oh.” Serene looked ill. “I liked it better when I thought it was all about money.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Cloning technology exists already,” Lorraine said slowly.
“Yeah, it does. On Beta Twelve, for instance. But I doubt they’re trying to make another Dolly the Sheep and I also doubt they had access to whatever process the Free Women are using. We already thought about what it would mean if someone brought back Yates or Mephistopheles. Now think of what you could do if you could do that, and mix in a little Patrick and Jamie for good measure.”
Everyone looked slightly ill. Glad to see I’d kept the mood light. “Let’s not think of that,” Naomi said. “Let’s go figure out if Kitty and Tito are right and stop whatever it is, whether they’re right or not.”
“Don’t be offended,” Claudia said, “but I’m hoping for not.”
Everyone agreed that we were all hoping I was wrong and Tito was Mr. Imagination. But my gut told me Tito didn’t come up with outlandish ideas—he was a smart guy who paid attention and my gut felt his guess was the right one.
My gut wasn’t sure who all we’d find cloned, but that we’d find someone we didn’t want seemed too likely to be ignored. Vacillated between wondering if it was going to be Yates, Mephistopheles, or the combo, and decided I’d just have to enjoy the excitement of discovery.
We crept down a short, dark corridor and came out into a dark room. Dark was really the watchword for this area. Which was a typical Bad Guy Ambiance Theme. The room was large. At least, it felt large. It was hard to see to be sure because it was also filled with a lot of giant metal boxes.
While the small room we’d entered the facility through originally had been warm, and the other rooms and levels had been comfortable temperatures, this area was hella cold. Took a closer look at the nearest metal box. “We’re in the mainframe center.”
“It’s huge,” Serene said as we trotted along at the slow hyperspeed, going in and out of what was a really big maze of all right angles and lines. “I’ve never seen one this big. I’ve never seen mainframes this big. Ours aren’t this big, at any base, not even the Science Center.”
“That bodes.”
“All of this bodes,” Amy said. “It’s not like this is any worse than anything else.”
“Yet.” Hey, I knew how our luck ran.
It was like we were walking through the Egyptian Temple of Amun from Death on the Nile—huge monoliths on every side, too big to see around, with who knew what lurking at the top or around every corner.
“This place is creepy,” Claudia said. The others murmured their agreement, other than Buchanan, who stoically kept his worries to himself, like a good Scout Leader should. Wondered if he’d tell us the campfire story of Bunny, the Idiot Girl Who Ignored Her Scout Master’s Instructions and Was Eaten By a Giant Metal Box later on. Or maybe he’d go for the Hook Hand guy. The Jersey Devil. Superbeings. Wait, those were real. Time to stop this line of thought—I was starting to freak myself out. No wonder Mom had never really pushed for the idea of me going off to summer camp.
In this cheery frame of mind we made it to the far wall, which led us to a wide corridor that ran along the back but which, thankfully, had no giant mainframes in it and did have the nightlights going, making it markedly less creepy. It’s the little things you treasure.
Naturally this corridor ended at a closed door. Buchanan listened at said door, as did Adriana. Then the A-Cs. Amy and I just looked at each other. As with hyperspeed reading, I hadn’t yet caught up to the advanced A-C hearing, so decided I’d let the others tell me what they heard.
“Nothing,” Buchanan said, after he listened another time. “That doesn’t mean no one or nothing’s there, just could be that they’re either making no noise, or this section is soundproofed.”
He put his hand out. Resisted the urge to slap it. Instead, I gave him back his keycard. He took it from me with a look I could only consider snide. “Thanks so much.” Yep, his sarcasm knob was right there at eleven.
Keycard in, Buchanan opened the door. Which let us into a much narrower but similarly lit hallway. There was a bluish glow at the far end, as if there was a large TV on in the room this hallway led into. We all went through the door. Buchanan retrieved the card, then closed the door quietly behind us.
Adriana grabbed my wrist. “Did you hear that?” she whispered. I shook my head. “A door opened and closed, then opened again, but farther away.”
Heard a loud click. “Door’s locked,” Serene whispered. Buchanan tried the keycard. The door didn’t open.
Buchanan shoved in front of us, presumably to take the bullets. Well, that was nice and noble and all that, but I’d pretty much had it with seeing people I cared about die in front of me. I zipped around him, so I reached the end of the corridor first.
And stopped dead.
What was in front of me and spread out to my left looked like a scene out of Coma, Alien Resurrection, or Wolverine’s origin stories. There were glass tanks along the walls, one right next to the other, bubbling gently with some kind of fluid, all with bodies inside of them. The bodies were floating, all with facemasks on and lots of tubes and such going into them. I was pretty sure they were all alive in some way.
Metal bars crisscrossed the ceiling, strong cables hanging from them, in sets of four. Each set of cables held what looked like a space-aged stretcher up off the ground. And every stretcher had a body in it. They all had tubes and such running into the ground. Again, had the distinct impression they were all alive.
The lights were blue. Couldn’t tell if they were light bulbs or tubes or something else, but the glow was enough to see decently.
To my immediate left was a wall with an opened door. Regular yellow
light washed out from the doorway. It looked jarring against the blue, which was rather soothing. Or would have been if I wasn’t revved up on stress.
There was a teenaged kid standing in the doorway. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Ah . . .” I stepped back and shoved whoever was behind me back as well. “Stay back,” I said in the lowest voice I could. “He’s only seen me.”
“Come out here,” the kid demanded.
I stepped back into view. “Hi.”
The area we were in was separated from the hanging body beds by only open space. The kid didn’t look at the bodies—clearly he was used to them.
“Who is it?” A different voice, a girl’s, came from whatever room the open door led to.
“I don’t know . . .” The kid stepped closer to me. “Oh.” He smiled, and there was something very familiar about his smile, but I couldn’t place my finger on what. “I know you. Katherine, right?”
“Ah, right.” Almost no one called me Katherine. Even White was down to using my full first name only when we were doing something legitimately formal or if he was trying to make a parental-type point.
“You were supposed to be coming the day after tomorrow. You’re early.”
Score another one for Mom. “We like to mix it up, keep the bad guys guessing.”
“Yes, you’re good at that, aren’t you, Katherine? But you don’t go by that name, not really, do you?”
He flipped a switch on the wall near him and the blue lights were overpowered by white fluorescent. The kid’s smile widened. “I know what you like to be called.”
My stomach clenched. I recognized his smile now. And his eyes. I really recognized his eyes. They were kind of slitted and they glittered. He was slender and had a reptilian look to him.
I was terrified of snakes. And there was one person in my life who, more than anyone else, had reminded me of a snake. Not at all coincidentally, it was the same person who’d terrified me more than any other in my life.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” His voice dripped sarcasm and menace. I recognized that, too.
