by Cliff Ryder
She just needed to find a way out before her own actions were discovered. If she didn’t manage that, she knew she was living her last day on Earth, and that the same was true of Alex. She prayed that Karen would understand when neither of them showed up to claim Savannah that it was time to hit the road.
Brin nearly teared up thinking about it. She knew she might never see her family or her friends again. She wanted to scream. She wanted to slam things around and smash things until there was nothing left to smash.
She wanted Alex.
With a deep breath she turned to the door and entered the number for the cipher lock. She didn’t know if the men who’d come to set up the lock somehow knew what she’d entered for her private code, but from what she’d seen and heard she thought they didn’t. Even if Rand had it, without her thumbprint, he couldn’t get into the lab once it was locked down, and she had no intention of keying it in for him or providing her thumb without putting up a fight. He might force it out of her over time, but she didn’t need that much time. On her way out she stepped close to the wall and once again managed to brush the temperature control.
There was no time to look to see precisely where she’d set it, but she knew she’d raised the temperature. It would set off alarms eventually, but no one would be able to get in to change it. They’d have to break down the door to get in, and by then it probably wouldn’t matter.
The materials in the canister on her bench were delicate. One of the reasons she’d been chosen was her attention to detail, and they’d counted on her to preserve their samples and their research.
They’d set up an immaculate lab with only one flaw. She didn’t want to play their game anymore.
She closed the door behind herself and heard the satisfying metallic thunk of the locks sliding into place. She made a show for the security cameras, straightening out her printouts and staring at one of them for a moment as she steadied her nerves.
Then she stepped into the hall and started for the elevator for what she knew would be the last time.
She had one chance to convince Rand he was crazy, and just enough time, she hoped, to make sure that, crazy or not, it wouldn’t matter. They’d still have the research and the data, but it would take time to rebuild their project. She only hoped they hadn’t sent it to one of the other research centers MRIS had around the globe.
The building was empty and when the elevator ground to a halt on her floor, the sound echoed ominously. She knew that somewhere in the building there was a security patrol, but she was equally sure that now, at night, with only the two of them in the complex, Rand would have his handpicked men on duty. She’d seen a few of them mixed in with the regular security guards, more as the days passed. Their uniforms were more military in style than the others, and they moved a lot like Alex did, now that she thought about it.
Whatever was going on, they weren’t taking chances on anyone catching on. It wouldn’t be long before the staff of the building had been replaced with faces Brin had never seen.
She was glad her own people were gone for the day. She’d wanted to warn them, to find a way to keep them away from the complex, but there was no way to communicate directly from the private lab, and any conversation had to be considered to have been recorded. She didn’t know what or whom to trust anymore. She didn’t feel safe speaking to anyone or doing anything as long as she was inside the MRIS complex.
The elevator halted on the top floor and she stepped into the empty hall. The lights were dim.
The only illumination came from the open door of Rand’s outer office. Brin squared her shoulders and checked her watch. She knew the climate control in the labs was set to stabilize in less than an hour, and she’d already been out for fifteen minutes. With the lid to the sample case left open, the damage had already begun.
Her footsteps echoed in the empty hall. She knew Rand would hear her coming. He should hear her, anyway, but he’d been distracted recently, and he was used to having Elaine in the outer office to catch what he didn’t have time to pay attention to.
Brin stopped in the doorway and peered around the corner. The outer office was empty. A single desk light illuminated Elaine’s desktop, which was bare and clean. Too clean. Had he gotten rid of her, too? Were there too many secrets floating around the office to for an efficient secretary? Brin hoped, suddenly, that Elaine had just been let go, or that she was taking vacation time. She hoped Rand hadn’t accidentally left data lying on his desk or an e-mail on screen from someone that could raise curiosity.
The hairs on the back of Brin’s neck rose. Everything was moving too fast. It didn’t make any sense. They had her under control, or at least they believed that they did. They had shown her Alex, so if there had been an attempt on the Chinese facility, that had failed, as well. The research they’d brought her to complete hadn’t come with a short timeline, but Rand had shortened it anyway.
Had something gone wrong with their plan?
Brin stepped through Elaine’s office and stood in the doorway leading to Rand’s inner chamber.
He sat in his big leather chair, staring out the window into the darkness. It was a moonless night.
All that was visible was a solid wall of darkness, and pinpoints of fuzzy light from below. She stood and watched the back of his head for a moment.
She had the eerie impression that he was dead, that it had become a scene from a very bad movie and that she’d walk around in front of him to find his chin on his chest and blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. Then he spoke.
“I hope you have good news for me, Brin,” he said softly. “I hope for your sake, for my sake, for everyone’s sake, that you have good news.”
She considered lying. None of it mattered anymore, but it might placate him for a few moments. Then she shook off the last of her fear and stepped into the room. She remembered an old quote and almost smiled. She whispered it to herself for strength. “When you’re on thin ice, you might as well dance.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Hershel,” she said. She dropped the file folder onto his desk, not waiting for him to turn around. “Not good at all, really, though I suppose it’s all relative in the world of biochemical warfare and terrorism, don’t you think?”
He spun to face her and she had to fight the urge to take a quick step back. His eyes were sunken pits. His mouth was a flat, emotionless slit across a pale, too-thin face. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept in days. Where he clutched the arms of his chair, his knuckles were white.
He glanced down at the folder on the desktop, but he didn’t move to open it or look at the contents.
“What the hell is it?” he asked.
“The results of the research you asked for,” Brin answered calmly. “You wanted your nanoagents tested and I tested them. I even ran some extras, if you find the time to check the results. They don’t work.”
“What are you talking about?” he growled. He spun the folder to face him, but didn’t open it immediately. He glared at it, then swung his gaze back to hers. “I have seen the results. I know that they work—I’ve seen the results. What kind of crap are you trying to pull?”
“No crap at all,” she said. “They don’t work like you think they do. Your boys in China aren’t as thorough as we are over here—they don’t have the same restrictions keeping them from juicing up human guinea pigs. Did you know that they ran their results on only twelve-day cultures? All of them! They sent us the mature samples, but they did no research beyond the moment they deemed the cells healthy. What would you do if I turned in work like that, Hershel? I don’t think I’d have been working here long.”
“Stop screwing around and tell me what you found,” he said, his voice suddenly dull with fatigue. She was surprised to hear the spark gone from his voice so quickly, and again she wondered what it was she didn’t know. She glanced quickly at his computer monitor, but the screen saver was flipping and rolling in on itself, a psychedelic pattern covering whatever he’d been reading
or doing before Brin arrived.
“They don’t stop when the cells are healthy,”
she said. “Not every time. I’d need months, maybe years to know if they ever really stop. They mutate.
When the cells are all healthy, the nanoagents in-corporate minute differences from their host cells.
They start wars. I don’t know what happens next, not all of it, but I know the cells start attacking one another, trying to become the dominant program.”
Rand started laughing and Brin fell silent, watching him as if he’d lost his mind—wondering if maybe he had.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.
Rand tried to speak, choked on the laughter, then got himself under control. “What you’re telling me the problem is, then,” he managed to say at last, “is that my weapon will kill people?”
His laughter fueled her anger. “What I’m telling you, you idiot, is that if you let this crap out into the atmosphere to kill a few thousand or a few hundred thousand people, it isn’t going to stop there. The people will die—the nanoagents may not. They might move on to healthier hosts. They might enter the cell walls of plants, animals, get into the water supply. The end result of it, if you just let it go, is that you, your bosses back in China, or wherever the hell this crazy mess started, are going to die. Everyone will die, and the possibility exists that the world, as we know it, will cease to exist. How am I doing? Am I talking slowly enough?”
Rand’s face darkened.
“Maybe you’d like to rethink your attitude,” he said. “Or did you forget where your precious husband is? You may have noticed I’m not in a great mood. My sense of humor has suffered.”
“If you’re still considering using the nanoagents after what I just told you, your sense of humor isn’t the only thing that has suffered,” she retorted.
“Hershel, what happened to you? I remember when I first came here—the work you were doing was brilliant. It’s part of why I wanted to work for MRIS. Why this?”
“Things change,” Rand replied. “Not always, or usually, for the better. Everything I needed to know, you’ve just given me.”
“Why?” she asked. She leaned closer, putting her hands on his desk and catching his gaze. “Why would you do this? I have a right to know what I’ve been part of, whose cause my work has been warped to serve.”
“You don’t have a right in the world,” Rand snapped. “I need the samples ready to be shipped out in the morning, before sunrise. Include all your research, particularly this last part. What’s in the folder?”
“Cell models,” she replied. “Cell models that I thought you’d look at. They may be the model of the end of the world.”
“It isn’t such a great world to start with,” Rand replied. “Maybe a little genetic shake-up is in order, don’t you think? Maybe it’s time we did a quick reshuffle of the cards. We sure managed to screw the world up the first time around, why not give some three-eyed, green-skinned lizard man a shot?”
He turned back to stare out his window. “Close the door on your way out. Get those samples ready to travel, Brin. Seal them as they were when they arrived, and back up the data on that laptop. And don’t think there won’t be someone watching you.
There have been complications. We’re going to need those cultures intact.”
“And then I can go?” she asked. “I can go home?”
Rand was silent for a long moment, so long Brin almost thought she heard his heartbeat.
“Just do what you’re told,” he said at last. “We’ll sort out the rest soon enough. If what you told me is the truth, getting out of here is only a temporary parole anyway.”
Brin stared at the back of his head a moment longer, and then turned toward the outer office.
She felt calm, but she still needed a plan. She knew she couldn’t return to the lab below—there was no way she was ever opening that door again. She wished she’d paid more attention to the exits and entrances to the building. There was a map on the wall behind Elaine’s desk, and she hesitated, then stepped over and began scanning it quickly, hoping Rand was still staring out the window and that the lack of footsteps in the hall wouldn’t catch his attention. Somehow, she didn’t think he would notice.
The man acted as if he were already dead.
Maybe inside his mind, he already was.
Alex chose the maintenance entrance. He knew he could get past the main locks on the front of the building, and the loading dock offered a tempting target, as well, but the maintenance entrance gave him the advantage of quick access to all the floors, to the electrical system and the air ducts. He was somewhat familiar with the security system from his previous visits, and he knew they’d concentrated on the main entrances and obvious weak spots, but maintenance crews would often bypass or disable security that made their job more difficult. That meant there was at least a chance the maintenance door would have fewer locks and alarms on it.
Alex was ready to do the work himself, but if he could find a way past the first line of defense without putting out any real effort, it was better. He wanted to get upstairs. His normal confidence in his own abilities was severely shaken, and he needed to see Brin and to know she was all right.
He knew this was a weakness, and it grated on his nerves, but he couldn’t change it. His failure in China had made clear that his ability to be a chameleon was gone, and that even defending himself might be a difficult proposition soon. His priorities had shifted, and all he wanted was for his wife and daughter to be safe.
He watched for ten minutes without moving, standing in the shadow of a locked Dumpster. He’d stashed his duffel bag behind it. No one approached the maintenance door, and he saw no sign of movement or light on the inside. Apparently, if there was a maintenance staff working after hours, it was a small and inactive one. More likely, they only came in on call after regular business hours.
When he was convinced it was clear, he slipped up to the rear door and pulled a small meter from his pocket. He flipped a switch and ran it up and down the length of the door. The light on top remained green. He smiled. There wasn’t any kind of an infrared sensor on the door.
The lock was a traditional one, but the tumblers required an electronic signal to open. There was a card reader next to the door. He put the meter back in his pocket and removed his small cell phone.
It was a device carried by a number of the Room 59 agents and could do a lot more than place calls. From behind the keypad, he slid out a rectangle of plastic with a magnetic strip on it. He put it into the slot for the key cards, then pressed a combination of numbers on his phone. It would send out a series of short magnetic pulses that would override the lock.
His phone beeped quietly a few times, then he heard the satisfying clunk of tumblers, and the door began to swing open. He grabbed it, stopping it when it was open about six inches. He waited.
He heard no alarms and saw no flashing lights. He slipped inside and very carefully closed the door.
Then he stepped through a doorway, found a dark corner and stood still again. If anyone came to check because the door set off an alert, it would be in the next few moments. He didn’t want to be caught in the open and set off an alarm before he’d even begun to infiltrate the building.
There was no sound from the interior of the building, and he saw no lights. If anyone was watching, they weren’t coming forward to stop him.
Alex thought about it and shook his head. Rand wasn’t stupid. By now, he’d heard what had happened to the MRIS facility in China. Even if he didn’t have time to get the same kind of security forces in place, there was no way he’d leave the building manned with amateurs. His instincts tingled—whatever security was in place was most likely watching him and waiting.
He glanced into the main hall, but chose the maintenance stairs instead. He could cover the floors almost as quickly on foot, and he was less likely to be caught on a security camera or to run into a roving security patrol. He wished he’d asked more q
uestions. Brin wouldn’t have thought a thing about it—security was what he did, after all.
Professional curiosity and all that.
Alex took the first two floors quickly. On the third his legs started to ache, and by the fourth he knew he’d made a mistake. The building was eight stories. He needed to find a maintenance elevator before his legs gave out on him completely. There was no point in getting to the top floors only to be in too much pain to move. Still, the elevator would be a risk. What he truly wanted to do was to start up the next flights of stairs and force his way through whoever was waiting for him, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Too much was riding on the next few minutes for him to jeopardize it with his stupid pride.
He took the doorway from the maintenance stairs into the fourth-floor hall and pressed himself to the wall. A quick sweep of the walls on either side showed the cameras. Predictably, they took direct lines on the main doors and elevators. The service entrance fell in a blind spot. He saw that there was another door just to the left of his position. He had to cross the line of a camera to reach it, but only for a second, and he thought the risk was a good one. He took one quick, deep breath and he moved. He crouched low and stayed tight to the wall. Seconds later he grabbed the door and slipped inside.
The door led to a walk-through closet. It was well stocked with cleaning gear. Mops lined one wall, and gleaming buckets stood in a row beneath them. There were brooms, vacuums and a variety of antibacterial cleaners. The scent of chemicals was strong enough to make his eyes water. Alex slipped through the center of the closet and pushed through the door at the far end. It opened into a slightly larger room with deep sinks, several stainless-steel vats and the one thing he hoped he’d find. Gleaming metal doors opened on a maintenance elevator shaft.
