Burns was only too happy to enlighten him about his loss. “Pretty much. She usually doesn’t accept anyone’s authority, but that’s Miller’s fault—he pretty much beat his standards into her, and more often than not he can’t hold to that himself. She doesn’t accept authority, and don’t even think about pulling rank on her. I’m not sure she even has a clue how ranks and hierarchy work.”
There, I had to interject. “I’d think twice before antagonizing Zilinsky.”
Burns guffawed. “Yeah, because you’re not suicidal, and she’s as much of a role model for ruthless behavior as you’re ever going to accept.” No objection there, so Burns turned back to Davis. “Usually, it’s pretty fun. Until some asshole or another gets cute and abducts and locks her up, and then it’s all bloody murder on the warpath.”
Again, I couldn’t let that slide. “That wasn’t entirely my idea, either,” I pointed out. “And I didn’t hear any of you big, strong men object.”
Burns shrugged as if that was all the same to him, continuing with, “Actually, I don’t remember the last time she was as agreeable as she is nowadays. Might even go as far as saying that I don’t quite buy it, but hey, I could be wrong. She can be a highly reasonable, logic-driven woman. And it’s not like someone shot her up with a chemical cocktail that’s been known to give her delusions of grandeur and gets the adrenaline junkie in her to take over the steering wheel. Then again, Lewis without a filter is always worth it, so I say, who cares if we’re all going to die down here. At least we’ll do so laughing.”
Davis looked more concerned than I’d expected. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m sure that Hamilton was well aware of any side effects. Well, not all of them, but those that I’ve openly exhibited in the past. But he must have reasoned that it’s all the same and he needs every ounce of strength any of us can muster so anyone will survive what’s coming for us, so it’s all good.”
His eyes only got wider. “Do you know something the rest of us don’t?” Munez and Richards had mostly listened in silently until now, but that question made them look up sharply. Nate himself seemed a little disturbed, which made me want to laugh him in the face. Did no one ever listen to me?
“Know? No. But didn’t you just hear me tell you about the experiments they do down here? I don’t know for a fact—because how could I?—but I’m telling you, they had some other experiments going on when they shut down the facility, or they started a last round just for the hell of it, and the test subjects of those experiments are still very much alive. They must be really, really hungry by now, even if they went after each other. Every single shambler we’ve encountered out there has been a pack hunter, and those super freaks they’ve created will be, too. They are hungry, and they’ve culled down their pack to the strongest ones, and the moment we let our guard down, they will be coming for us. The only question is, will any of us survive so I can tell you that I told you so?” And just for a second, I was sure that he believed me.
Richards cleared his throat, making all of us look at him. “Paranoia’s also among her strongest character traits,” he observed.
I smiled, letting all of them make of that what they wished.
Red seemed poised to say more but then tensed, not reaching up to his ear like people did in bad movies, but it was obvious that he’d gotten a message over his com. I hadn’t, and from what I could tell, neither had the others. “Why do they have a command frequency and we’re not on it?” I harped in Nate’s general direction.
“Because we’re not in command,” he repeated the statement that Bucky so loved to rub in my face, his voice flat.
My possible answer got cut off when Richards reported, his eyes straying to me for a second, “No, we didn’t find anything, just a laptop.” Pause. “We’re about done here. Proceeding to the other offices now.” Another pause. “Copy.”
I waited until Richards looked to me once more before I observed, “My, my. Lying to our most esteemed leader. I wonder what he’d think of that if he knew?” Then I turned around and gave Burns a nod. “Lead the way, big guy. If you want to keep laughing your ass off at my shenanigans, you better keep me alive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Burns offered with a huge grin but his attention was already on the corridor outside—and I didn’t miss that he not only checked twice, but also looked at the ceiling far longer than he had on the way over here.
Well, here was hoping that I was really only rocking a tad too much paranoia—but I really didn’t think so. And damnit, I’d hate to be right this time.
Chapter 13
As expected, the offices of Drs. Nakamuri and Dale were a bust, but at least they were close to the common area in the level below so we didn’t have far to go once the order came to haul ass there. I didn’t bother asking what Hamilton and his group had been up to in the meantime although I was burning to know. My body was singing with the need to burn off some energy any way possible, but physically attacking that asshole to try to beat the answer out of him didn’t seem wise—not even now when I felt like my chances were five percent higher than before at managing the feat. Not for winning, but doing some real damage.
That still didn’t mean that I was looking forward to what was next on our agenda.
But first, a detour to the bioreactors.
“Do we have any confirmation yet why the lab shut down?” I asked Hamilton as I followed him down the corridor leading toward the labs, but taking a straight at the intersection where the left turn would have brought us to the security checkpoint behind where the more interesting labs were. Someone had already gotten busy spraying arrows and Xs all over the hallway, and it felt just a little foreboding that we stepped over one of the “no go” signs.
Hamilton didn’t deign to look my way as he shook his head. “Cole is still trying to recover some backup files. He said the primary logs have become corrupted.”
“Or someone deleted them, manually,” I opined.
Now I did get a sidelong glance. “You mean your super-juiced experimental lab monkeys who are about to eat us alive?”
I wondered who else had been listening in to our conversations in that doctor’s office—or whether Munez or Davis had tattled on me. Munez, probably; Davis had looked sincere in the slight regret he’d shown when he’d asked about my usual MO. That alone wouldn’t have been enough to chalk him up as still sympathetic to Nate—and us, by extension—but it had only been the latest moment in a string of more moments, going on Burns’s assessment. I still didn’t quite understand why he had started trying to judge the soldiers’ reactions to us—knowing their allegiance was nice, sure, but wouldn’t make a difference in the end.
“Very funny,” I grumbled, then went on, artificially upbeat. “Or it could have been those eco warrior terrorists who, you know, kicked off the zombie apocalypse two weeks later, yay! Would make sense that they cleaned up after themselves, including deleting all data on the central servers. Might also explain what happened to any dead bodies in here. I don’t think they would have left anyone alive.”
Hamilton was still smirking—of course he didn’t believe me. “And not leave the bodies for the super-juiced experimental lab monkeys to dispose of them?”
“Well,” I started, considering. “They could have managed to delete the files, and then gotten killed. Sounds like a good compromise to me.”
“Will you finally shut up if a super-juiced freak comes charging at you?”
I considered that for a second. “I’ll likely scream like a girl when that happens.”
“When,” Hamilton echoed, derision dripping from his voice.
“Yes, when,” I repeated. “Do I get a cookie when that happens? One of those contaminated, sugary ones?”
Hamilton left it at a grunt, but I could tell that he wasn’t taking me seriously. Nothing I could do about that, but since we were at the security checkpoint for the bioreactors, I had other things to do, like let my eyes be tickled once again.
“I think I was wrong
,” I mused as I waited for Munez, Davis, and Russell to clear the corridor up ahead. “I don’t think we’ll find anything useful left over in the tanks.” That Bucky didn’t jeer right in my face kind of underlined my guess. “I mean, there’s no evidence that anyone breached or took over this lab. And I don’t quite see how they could have gotten anything out after it was sealed. So the contents of the tanks are likely whatever’s in the log. But then you knew this already, didn’t you?”
Hamilton regarded me evenly before he extended a hand toward the door. “After you.”
While the others filed out and checked for any hostiles, I went over to the terminal by the door to check the—bona fide paper—logbook. As I’d expected, all three tanks had been full of yeast, doing… yeasty things. I couldn’t make sense of the designations of the strains and what they had been producing but one thing was obvious at a glance—this had nothing whatsoever to do with our objective. When I told Hamilton as much, I got a raised eyebrow from him. “And you’re sure about that?”
I nodded. “They were likely producing large-scale stuff for other experiments in here. What we’re looking for is all viral. I can, of course, waste half an hour to get into a suit and directly check on what’s in those tanks, but that’s thirty minutes of time we’ll be missing for whatever is actually your primary objective. You only went in here to humor me, didn’t you?”
The look on his face was surprisingly unreadable, but for once not hostile. “Negative confirmation is still confirmation,” he said rather cryptically. “We need to make sure.”
I was burning to object, but instead went on the com. “Cole? Does the bioreactor lab have electricity?”
A few seconds later I got confirmation. “All systems are on standby or down, and there’s an entire log full of warnings, but everything is still operational.”
I nodded, mostly to myself, and went over to the other workstation by the window that, were the lights inside switched on, would let us see the massive steel tanks in their level-spanning space. It took several minutes for the station to boot up, and a few more for the system to be operational. Then it was just a few clicks and some mechanical whines that made everyone currently lazing around really alarmed, and my work was done. Grabbing a plastic bag from besides the station, I went over to where the automated system had deposited the three 50ml samples full of what looked like puke, containing the long-overgrown and dead yeast cultures that had last been cultivated in the tanks. Hamilton looked at me weirdly as I handed the bag to him. “What, disappointed that I didn’t have to strip naked? Here are your samples. I wouldn’t open them outside of a containment box. That shit will stink to high heaven, but it’s likely safe.”
“Likely?” Munez, next to Hamilton, asked, highly concerned.
“Well, there’s flesh-eating yeasts as well, but from the log those should all be your garden variety lab yeast. You could also use it to brew beer or bake a cake, but I wouldn’t use that batch.” I glanced at the bag that was right now disappearing into Hamilton’s pack.
Done—and still not giving me an answer—Hamilton called everyone back who wasn’t already securing the endless maze of corridors between the single labs. They were all biosafety levels one and two out there so minimal barriers—for anything moving in there on two legs. I lingered at the log for another moment, quickly checking on the previous entries but—of course—finding nothing suspicious. This was getting weirder and weirder by the moment, and that was ignoring the blood splatters outside and the general state the facility was in. Something was wrong here, and I absolutely didn’t want to find out what.
We retraced our steps to the last intersection before we turned toward the BSL-4 labs. The sample collection had taken just over twenty minutes—plenty of time for ten people to make sure nothing was lurking in the roughly fifty rooms around three hallways, the central one being that of the most interest to us now. It looked just like the others; the security station at the end of it did not. It was a three-component checkpoint that needed not just my iris scan but also a manual override from the local console, and some five-minute server-side magic Gita finally managed to pull off. I tried to remain outwardly calm but couldn’t keep my pulse from picking up as we stepped into the airlock. This was it—the reason why we were here. One of the last remaining treasure troves of scientific advancement. Potentially, the keys to the kingdom. Then why did a part of me pray that what we’d come here to fetch simply didn’t exist?
The locks finally disengaged and let us pass into the blast-proof shell that the high security labs were situated in. It was an eerie sensation walking into a setup that was so familiar that it gave my heart a pang—and that was even before the lights suddenly came on and revealed that they’d even used the same tiles here as in the Green Fields biotech hot labs that Nate and I had ended up destroying. It didn’t have the same layout as the labs here were a good four times larger, but still. This was what I’d trained years for to do—and now it made me want to vomit and run, but not for the reasons similar sentiments had been haunting me the last time I’d donned a positive pressure suit. Back then I’d been afraid because I’d almost accidentally killed myself in the lab. Now it was a deep-seated knowledge that I didn’t belong here anymore—and never would again. Those endless hours on that operating room table had sealed that deal forever. I’d been aware of this, and until now I, quite frankly, hadn’t given a fuck about it. But seeing that door with the changing rooms behind it, and beyond that the room where the suits were kept by the decontamination shower made it impossible to ignore.
And I really didn’t care for how much it hurt.
It was easy to hide my feelings behind the comfort of my usual display of misgivings toward Hamilton as the others swarmed out to secure the wing. There were maintenance rooms, a small break room, and offices to secure, and guards to post outside the security station as well once they realized that our coms didn’t work well inside the cocoon of concrete and steel that was built to ensure that no earthquake or nuclear hit topside would let anything escape down here. Hamilton was busy shooing his people around but Richards was watching me intently—analyzing me, I realized. Just what I needed. Turning my back on him, I caught Nate’s gaze when he returned from securing the offices, and gave him a quick, “this sucks!” hand signal. I’d expected scorn but got a heartfelt, “I know,” from him, judging from how he glared at Hamilton’s back. We all had our burdens to carry—and it was about time I shirked mine.
“Any chance you’ll let me do that on my own?” I asked Hamilton when he returned his attention to me.
Rather than answer me, he nodded at the door to the labs. “Get on with it.”
To the absolute surprise of no one, he and Richards followed me inside while the rest waited in the hallway by the connective corridor where viewing windows let them see into three of the rooms inside the lab. I didn’t bother with being modest or circumspect as I dropped my weapons and pack in one corner of the changing room and set to peeling myself out of my many layers. I didn’t check if either of the two idiots was ogling me, and neither did I care. A tiny part of me was revolting that I didn’t go looking for scrubs to change into; I didn’t intend to strip down to my skin, also not on the way back out. The spacesuit would do its thing, and that was enough—or so I prayed. Stripping down left me in a tank top, thermal leggings, and socks. I couldn’t bring my com unit with me, either, not that it would have done me any good in here. I hated how disconnected from the others that made me feel. That I hadn’t expected, but nothing I could do about that now. I barely checked to see that the men were also down to their long johns before I stalked into the next room, hunting for the positive pressure suits. The bright lights were making my eyes tear up but that wasn’t why I was gnashing my teeth. This was wrong. Just plain wrong.
“I presume you expect me to do all the prep work?” I called out as I grabbed some gloves, absolutely hating how there was no way to make them fit on my hands.
“We’d be much
obliged,” Bucky drawled behind me, following me into the prep room. He was carrying a huge steel canister that I hadn’t seen before but must have been hidden in his pack. Richards dragged in a second. I guessed they were for sample storage. Judging from their size, they’d easily hold hundreds of the small tubes currently stored in liquid nitrogen. The very idea how much destruction those could yield made my mouth dry up. I’d never have agreed to help Nate if he’d attempted something like this. Yet here I was, and I wasn’t even going to get a good fuck out of this—but I was sure that, somehow, I’d end up getting screwed.
I didn’t explain—or talk at all—as I meticulously went through the motions of selecting and prepping three of the positive pressure suits. My brain still remembered all the steps but my body had forgotten half of them, and had issues with a few more. It took me a good twenty minutes but Hamilton for once held his tongue, letting me concentrate. I considered sabotaging his suit but wouldn’t put it past him to force me to take that one instead, so I didn’t. Really, if I killed him I wanted it to be with a knife or a gun, not gear failure. Then it was time to don the suits after taping our gloves on—which Red helped me with—and get into the boots. While I waited for the others to be done, I looked at the viewing window, finding Nate waiting right outside, watching me mutely, a look of quiet confidence in his eyes that I knew he wanted me to see. “You got this,” it said. Also, “don’t do anything stupid.” Oh well. Time would tell which of that was good advice.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 3 | Books 7-9 Page 91
