by Jeff Sampson
“Not unless you’re at some upscale ball and need to seduce a trade prince,” I said.
Something thudded against the side of the car. I turned to see Dalton, who had apparently just punched Spencer’s mom’s minivan.
“Let’s go already,” he said again.
Dalton and I leading, the four of us ran behind the fence surrounding BioZenith. The hole in the fence was actually still there, surprisingly. Considering all the checkpoints and the armed guards, apparently the place had never had to deal with actual intruders before.
Lucky for us.
We went through the fence one by one, then leaped to the ladder to climb atop the roof. Tracie needed some goading, insisting someone might look up and see her unmentionables, but we finally got her to join us.
This time, there were no guards. Dalton smashed the palm reader and the door opened easily, revealing a stairwell.
Much like in Dalton’s dad’s office, there were dim fluorescents lighting up the stairwell. I took the lead, Dalton behind me, Tracie behind him, and Spencer in the rear. He let the steel door click as quietly as possible. I turned to them, a finger to my lips, and crept down the steps.
I reached a door that read BUILDING A, LEVEL 2. Much like the door above, this had another panel to read fingerprints.
“I’ll smash it too,” Dalton said, trying to shove past me.
“No,” I commanded. “The one on the roof was noisy enough. Let me try something.”
I grabbed the handle. It was cool to the touch. Wiggling it just to be sure, I confirmed it was, of course, locked. Gripping the handle tightly, I shoved down as hard as I could.
The lock broke, and the door swung inward with a loud squeak that echoed through the stairwell.
We all froze, tense, listening. My pulse was pounding deliciously fast. I loved it, the thrill of it all, of actually getting in here. Daytime Emily certainly hadn’t approved of my—our—original attempts at getting the adrenaline rushing, but this? Yeah, this was something we could both get behind.
There were no footsteps, no alarms. I wondered if perhaps BioZenith could afford only the two guards we’d taken down the night before, one of whom was probably so not up for work that night. Strange, for a place that seemed so determined to give off the vibe of a prison. But I wasn’t going to question it.
I led our little group into the hallway outside the door. We found ourselves in a maze of cubicles separated by glass partitions. Each one had a desk much like the one back in Mr. McKinney’s office, and all came equipped with computers and flat-screen monitors. The monitors showed a blue haze that filled the room. Beyond the cubicles were hallways leading to back offices and meeting rooms and bathrooms.
I looked around, taking it all in. Each monitor had its own screen saver, and many of the desks were stocked with personal photos, stuffed animals, potted plants, even little candy machines and the occasional action figure or two. It was a strange bit of total humanness that I didn’t really expect from the place that had turned me into a monster and had sent a man to murder us.
Quietly, we each went to a computer and began to click through the files and folders. All except for Tracie, who clung to Spencer as if he was the only thing anchoring her to the world. She sat at the edge of a chair in the cubicle he worked at, hands over her eyes, completely still.
I clicked at a couple of computers myself, but there was nothing here. Whatever this part of the building was, it must have been administrative or something equally boring. Guess even mad scientists need an HR department.
“Ugh, screw this,” Dalton said. He shoved back from the desk he’d been typing at, the chair slamming into the wall of the cubicle. Some framed photos fell over, but he didn’t bother to put them back in place.
“Agreed,” Spencer said. “More useless junk. This is a waste of our time.”
My eye caught a framed piece of paper on the wall next to the door we’d come in. I got up from my chair and went to it. It turned out to be a map of the facility, showing fire exits and escape routes.
I grabbed the frame and tore it from the wall. It came free in a cloud of white dust, a piece of plaster ripped off with it. I found where we were, then looked over the rest of the map. It seemed that beneath us would be the main lobby of the building, which was probably similarly useless. Back behind the cubicles were some fancier offices, which could be handy but which could also be just as dull. Tracing with my finger, I found an exit here on the second floor that went across the glass walkway I’d seen outside and into Building B. There, on the top level, were a bunch of rooms labeled “laboratories.”
The first floor of Building B apparently and strangely had no exits. It also had no rooms, at least none that were marked. That seemed highly suspicious. My curiosity was officially piqued.
By this time, Dalton, Spencer, and Tracie were all heading back toward me. I dropped the map to the carpet at my feet, not wanting to carry it around anymore, then looked to them.
“Okay, new plan: no more messing around with desktop PCs. Come on.”
We ran through the center of the floor, between the cubicles, toward the glass-paneled door that led to the walkway. There was another fingerprint pad, another handle I easily broke with my hand. This time, the glass on the door cracked from the force of the blow.
“Oops.”
“Well, it’s not like we care about leaving a trail,” Spencer said. “Though it occurs to me we should have brought gloves.”
Gloves. Huh. Well, it was too late now, and I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t thought of it. I shushed Spencer, then motioned for the four of us to crouch down. Leaning forward, I looked through the glass windows of the walkway.
No one outside. Perfect.
Still crouching, we more or less ran the length of the walkway. One more door. Handle twisted. Lock broken. Glass crunching from the force. The door pulled open toward me, and with it came a blast of cool air that smelled weirdly antiseptic, like a hospital.
I stepped through the door, taking a look at my surroundings. “Now this is what I’m talking about,” I said as the others crowded around me.
We were in a hallway, on either side of which were glass walls and glass doors—everything was glass here in BioZenith, as if whoever was in charge wanted to make sure no one would have any privacy, could never hide from the eyes of their bosses. The hallways extended back deeper into the building, row upon row of glass rooms in which to do experiments.
To the immediate left and right of me were labs filled with plants: a small apple tree, a stalk of corn, various other root vegetables, exotic flowers. There were long tables covered with beakers and magnifying glasses and petri dishes, computers and scrawled notes. Whiteboards with formulas written on them.
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t actually expect they’d be working on plants. I thought it was just a cover story.”
“Not much of a cover story if they can’t back it up,” Spencer said, peering into the dimly lit lab opposite the one I was looking at.
I turned to find Tracie staring into the same lab, her face pressed against the glass. Her breath steamed the glass, fogging it up.
“Look at it,” she said, her voice whimsical. “It’s alive, isn’t it? I can see it moving.”
“Alive, maybe,” I said. “But I doubt they can move very far.”
Spencer tilted his head musingly. “What if they’re wereplants? Human by day, plants by night?”
I barked a laugh. “Let’s not go there just yet.”
“Yo!” Dalton shouted, and we all turned to find him farther down the main hallway. He leaned against a white concrete wall next to a gray steel door, with yet one more level of security via a keypad and palm reader combo. “Come on!” he yelled, his leg shaking, his lips in a tight line. “I don’t care about plants.”
Motioning with my head, I went to Dalton, Spencer and Tracie behind me. Dalton had already grabbed the handle of the door, and when he twisted it, it broke completely free from the metal
frame, leaving a gaping, jagged hole.
Dalton laughed. “I guess I don’t know my own strength,” he said in an affected, high-pitched voice, then laughed again as if it was the wittiest bon mot that had ever been bon motted.
Blinking rapidly, Tracie grabbed my arm. “I—”
“What?” I asked her. “What is it?”
She just shook her head. “I lost it. It’ll come back to me.”
Dalton raised a leg and kicked open the door. It flew back and slammed loudly, sending the glass walls back in the main hall shuddering. He stalked through the doorway, and the three of us followed.
And found what we’d been looking for.
There were more labs here on either side of us, with the same white workbenches, the same polished steel equipment.
Only the samples in here were not of the flora variety. It was fauna all the way.
In the lab to my left, on a multilevel shelf built into the walls, were jar upon glass jar of preserved organs. Hearts with weird, ropy black growths encasing them. A brain with one hemisphere larger than the other. The pickled remnants of some sort of fetal creature that was definitely not human, or if it ever was, it had mutated into something unrecognizable.
It was here, in all its gory glory. Absolute proof that BioZenith was doing some sort of tests on what looked to be human and animal body parts. For some reason, it was all hush-hush. And I guessed that reason was because no one could know they’d succeeded at some point long ago. Had done something to the DNA of five human fetuses that would eventually cause them to mutate into fearsome beasts.
“Oh wow,” Spencer whispered. “Gross.”
I turned and looked into the opposite lab. My hands immediately clenched into fists. There weren’t jars in this room, no. There were two big glass tubes going floor to ceiling, filled with some sort of green gel.
And inside that gel were the bodies of two small children. No more than five or six. Only they were hardly human now. One’s face had split in two, half its head bulging, much like the brain in the opposite room. A small appendage that could have been the start of a tail was at the base of its back. Its hands were claws that were much too big for its body, gnarled talons like a vulture’s.
The other child’s head was flattened, like a ball of dough crushed by a giant hand, though the skin wasn’t broken; no broken bones showed through. Almost as if she’d been born that way—and I was certain it was a she. Its chest was caved in, the flesh growing into it, forming a cavern of skin. And peeking through that skin was an impression of a heart much too big, one that would have crushed the surrounding organs.
Test subjects. Failed test subjects. Two children meant to transform into who knows what, but who died instead, and were now floating here. Cadavers in the lair of someone who couldn’t just leave nature alone.
Tracie’s hands went to her lips, and tears formed in her eyes. “Oh, what beautiful children,” she whispered.
I wasn’t paying attention to her. I was busy suppressing Daytime Emily, who was screaming in the back of my head, thrashing, trying to unsee the monstrosities right in front of me. I didn’t have time for emotions right then. I had to think. What were these things? Why did they exist? Did they predate me and Spencer and Dalton and Tracie and Emily C.? That seemed absurd, for these people to still be studying failed experiments well after they had obviously fixed the problem.
“What are you talking about?” Dalton spat. “Those things are monsters!”
So if these two children occurred after us, what did that mean? That they’d lost the formula? That they were trying to make more kids like us but didn’t know how? How was that possible? And I could clearly see belly buttons, so that meant these two had been birthed by someone. What mother, or father for that matter, would offer up their own child like this?
Tracie went to the glass, peering through it once more, just like she had with the plants. “How can you call them monsters? Look at his beautiful smile. Her beautiful eyes. They’re so peaceful.”
“Tracie,” Spencer whispered, pulling her back. “You don’t see the boy’s face split open?”
She rounded on him. “Don’t you try to mess with my head, too, Spencer!” she shouted. “I see no such thing. And—” She paused and cocked her head, ear aimed toward the ceiling. “Oh, there it is again. What I forgot earlier. Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I asked.
There came a hissing and whooshing as above us, ceiling panels rushed open. Four metallic orbs, the size of basketballs, dropped through and began to hover in the air over our heads. Red lights on their fronts darted back and forth throughout the dark hallway, like some obnoxious kid with a laser pointer. All at once, each orb cast a light on one of us.
A panel beneath the light opened. A tiny black metal barrel protruded.
Tracie pointed a finger up at the orbs. Flatly, she said, “That.”
And the orbs began to fire.
18
THEY CAN’T HELP IT IF THEY’RE MURDEROUS ROBOTS
The sound of gunfire cracked through the air, and blasts of orange flame lit up the hall. The four of us ducked in unison, and I felt a rush of air as bullets flew over my head. Glass crunched behind me as they tore clean through the walls in front of the labs.
Bullets. These things weren’t messing around.
“I knew this was too easy!” Spencer shouted over the bursts of gunfire. The robots or whatever they were fired their spray of bullets over our heads, their sensor lights apparently not picking up that we were no longer in the line of fire.
“So they want to play, huh?” I shouted back. “Well, I’m here to play, too.”
Dalton laughed and whooped. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
“You two are insane!” Tracie screamed, cowering beneath her arms.
The gunfire ended abruptly, and the mini red search lights blinked back on. They scoured beyond where we’d once stood, aimed toward the ground now, apparently looking for bodies.
I picked myself up in a crouch, then tumbled forward, behind the searchlights. The others crawled after me.
“Dalton, turn into a pommel horse,” I hissed.
He nodded, then got on his hands and knees so that he was more or less a platform. I got to my feet and spun to face the robots. They still searched where we no longer were. Apparently when the AI was programmed for these suckers, the technology hadn’t been all that advanced.
I wondered, briefly, if the things worked off sound and vision alike. I figured I’d try ’em both.
I bunched my legs, then shoved off. As Spencer and Tracie watched, I jumped onto Dalton’s back, then sprung myself up into the air toward the nearest robot orb. It slammed into my gut, and I gripped it with arms and legs both. My weight brought us back halfway toward the floor, the thing spinning as though to shake me off.
“Gotcha!” I shouted as loud as I could.
The nearest orb whipped around in the air at the sound of my voice, its little red dot appearing on my shoulder. Before it could fire, I heaved my entire body, forcing the orb I held to spin me away. The red dot now glowed on the robot’s metallic surface.
And the other orb fired.
Bullets penetrated the robot’s hull in a flurry. Sparks flew and smoke belched from the rapidly growing wound. The force of the blasts and an electric shock shot me free of the orb, and I fell to my back on the floor.
A moment later, the orb I’d grabbed fell to the ground in front of me, flames licking its useless interior hull. The robot above ceased firing.
“One down,” I said.
Letting out a weird sound almost like a screech, Tracie got up and began to race down the hall, toward the door that would lead down to the floor below. At the same time, Dalton leaped to his feet, jumped over me, and ran in the same direction. While Tracie fussed with the door handle to break it, Dalton leaped up higher than even I had jumped. He grabbed another of the robots in both beefy arms, and the massive weight of the muscly boy brought
it slamming down to the tile floor. Face red and veins bulging on his neck, he shouted and raised a foot—then stomped on the machine. It crumpled beneath his sneakers as though he’d just smashed an aluminum can.
The other two robots, meanwhile, had found a target. Two pinpoints of blood-red light appeared on the side of Tracie’s off-center headband as she put both hands on the door handle. Her face went steely cold, focused, and she shoved down.
“Tracie, get down, now!” Spencer shouted.
The door lock broke with an echoing thunk.
Tracie whipped open the door toward her.
And the machines fired.
The sound of the gunfire was like thunder, the bullets hitting metal like fist-size hail pounding against windows during a winter storm. Tracie had darted through the doorway just in time—though she left it wide open, the door resting against the end of the hall.
Much faster than I’d thought they could move, the remaining two orbs rushed forward, propelled by whatever invisible force let them hover like UFOs. Their AI must have recalibrated or something, because there was no confusion as to where their target had gone. They were following Tracie.
Dalton was too busy stomping on his orb over and over to notice what was happening. Bits of robot shrapnel flew out from the force of his shoes. I got to my feet, as did Spencer, and side by side we ran down the hall toward the stairwell door. The glass walls on either side of us were pockmarked with bullet holes, cracks snaking out to the corners.
We weren’t going to be able to make it before the robots darted into the stairwell. I cursed Tracie silently. Why had she been so stupid? She shouldn’t have made any move unless I’d said it. I was her alpha! Me! She was going to get killed just like Emily Cooke, another of my pack dead, and I couldn’t bear it, I—
Right before the orbs reached the open doorway, a hand lashed out from the darkness and grabbed the broken door handle. Tracie swung the steel door closed, and the two orbs hovered in front of it, their little laser eyes scanning the blank door, confused as to what had just happened.
