By six-thirty the two kids were back in the same tree branch they had been in the day before.
“Okay,” began Ryan as he looked out over the Proact grounds from his perch in the tree. “Mom and Dad could be spies and they could be criminals. Worse, they could be here against their will, being threatened in some way if they don’t cooperate. We need to figure this out and we need to do it quickly.” He saw agreement in his sister’s eyes. “Do you have any theories?” he asked her.
She paused in thought for a few seconds and then shook her head no.
Ryan frowned. “Yeah, me neither. And I have a bad feeling that we’re not going to get anywhere by sitting here in this tree, talking about it, and guessing what might be happening. We need more information.”
Regan raised her eyebrows. She could tell her brother had come up with a plan. “What do you have in mind?” she asked.
Ryan took a deep breath and then said, “I think we need to get inside the Proact building and snoop around. See what we can learn. I think it’s our only chance to get to the bottom of this.” He paused to let his words sink in. “But if we’re going to do it, we need to do it now. I mean like today.”
“I don’t get it. Why such a big hurry?”
“Because they’re about to finish putting in all the video cameras.”
“Ryan, it’s not like they need the cameras to keep us out,” she said, rolling her eyes. She nodded toward the fence. “Even if we could get through the million-razor-blades-of-death over there—which is totally impossible—the laser alarm system is still working.”
The corners of Ryan’s mouth curled up into just a hint of a smile. “Who said anything about getting through the fence?” he said. Without another word he handed his sister the binoculars and pointed to the east. “Take a look.”
She put the binoculars to her eyes and followed his finger. “What am I looking for?”
“The woods are pretty thick around here so there are hundreds of trees near the fence. But one of the trees has a branch that’s grown over the razor-wire. Do you see what I’m talking about?”
About thirty seconds later Regan nodded. Very interesting. The branch ended only a few feet inside the fence line, but it was enough. They could easily crawl along it to get beyond the fat coil of razor-wire. Very, very interesting. “What about the laser alarm system?” she asked.
“Not such a problem if you know it exists and you know exactly where it is. Luckily, I do.” He pulled two plastic bags filled with a white powder out of his pants pocket. “I filled a couple of sandwich bags before we left with talcum powder. All I have to do is make the beams visible with this.”
Regan nodded. He had thought things through quite carefully. Once the beams were visible they would be fairly easy to avoid. “Great plan,” she said admiringly. “Well, we won’t be bored today, that’s for sure.”
Ryan nodded. “I’m glad you’re okay with the idea. I was a bit worried you might not be. So you stay in the tree near the fence with the binoculars as a look-out while I check out Proact. Hopefully, I won’t be gone more than an hour or so.”
“What! What are you talking about?” She shook her head adamantly. “I’m not waiting for you in a tree. Even if I saw something I couldn’t warn you anyway. I’m coming with you.”
“I can’t let you do that Regs,” said Ryan protectively. “It’s too dangerous. Remember all the ‘intruders will be shot on sight’ signs?”
“How could I forget. But they won’t shoot a couple of kids.”
“Are you positive about that?”
“Positive. They just put the signs up to scare people so they won’t trespass,” insisted Regan.
“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing for them they didn’t use the ‘Welcome to Proact’ signs with bright yellow smiley faces after all. Probably not as scary.”
“Probably not,” agreed Regan, grinning. She quickly turned serious once again. “If we were large men carrying guns they probably would shoot on sight. But we’re just a couple of kids. They’ll even be less nervous if I’m with you. I’m younger than you and pretty short for my age. Since we won’t look threatening, they’ll want to catch us first and ask us questions—you know, before they shoot us.”
“Thanks, that’s very comforting,” said Ryan, rolling his eyes. He shook his head. “But you still aren’t coming.”
Despite his last words, Regan knew she was beginning to convince him. “Come on Ryan. You need me. They won’t hurt a small, harmless girl. And we’re in this thing together. Besides,” she added with finality, “you don’t have a choice. I’m coming whether you want me to or not.”
He sighed heavily. He really couldn’t stop her if she insisted on going with him, and he had seen the determined look she now wore on her face many times before. He had learned from experience that once she set her mind to something, no power on Earth could get her to change it. “All right,” he said finally. “You’re in.”
He was impressed. He and Regan fought a lot but he had to admit she was sharp and gutsy. Now she was showing him that she had even more guts than he had thought. He had worried it would be tough to convince her to let him go on this insane mission, and instead she had convinced him to let her come along. And he realized to his surprise that he was very glad she had.
“Let’s do it,” said Ryan as he rose from his perch in the tree. “I do have to admit that we won’t be bored today. Dead maybe,” he added wryly as he began his climb down to the ground. “But definitely not bored.”
Chapter 4
Guards and Radiation
Thirty minutes later Ryan was clinging to the tree limb that extended over the fence. They had agreed if they got caught he would do the talking while Regan would look small and innocent. He would explain they had been on their bikes, had seen the tree limb running over the fence, and decided to use it as a short-cut to visit their parents. They would play dumb if asked about anything else.
Ryan searched long and hard for any guards. All was clear. He slid along the branch until he made it over the fence. He was now ten or eleven feet off the ground and more than a little stressed. The branch hadn’t seemed all that high when he was looking up, but now that he was looking down and preparing to jump, the ground seemed awfully far away.
Ryan took a deep breath and lowered himself the full length of his body. He searched for the flattest, softest landing site possible and prepared to let go.
And froze!
A man inside the fence had appeared from nowhere and was coming straight toward him! Worse still, the man had a gun, and it was drawn! Ryan’s heart beat like a jackhammer in his chest. He quickly pulled his legs up under him so they weren’t dangling down at the man’s eye level.
The man hadn’t looked up yet, but he would in a matter of seconds. And even if he didn’t, Ryan couldn’t hold on for much longer. They would be caught before they had even begun. He was a sitting—or in this case, hanging—duck.
“Jim, come in!” bellowed an anxious voice from the man’s waist. “Emergency! Jim, do you read?”
The man holstered his gun and lifted a small walkie-talkie from his belt, bringing it to his mouth. “Collins here,” he said quickly.
“Jim, we’ve got a problem,” squawked the walkie-talkie. “Make your way to the west perimeter immediately! We spotted two intruders …” There was a long hesitation. “Coming out of Prometheus Alpha.”
The walkie-talkie almost slipped from the man’s grasp and he had to juggle it before he regained his hold. “Did you say out?” he said in astonishment. “That’s impossible. No intruders have ever gotten in,” he insisted.
“Well apparently these two did,” snapped the voice. “And Jim,” he continued. “We think they’re kids.”
The man—Jim—looked at the walkie-talkie in disbelief. “Kids?”
“We think so. Alan almost had them but they made it to the west woods. I want you to join him in the search,” the other man ordered. “Immediately. We have to fin
d them!”
Ryan listened as he fought to hold on, very near the limit of his endurance. His muscles were aching and he was certain his arms would pop out of their sockets at any moment.
Just as his hands finally slipped from around the branch the man turned and began racing off at a full sprint in the other direction. Ryan landed as quietly as possible and held his breath. They were safe. At least for now.
Ryan froze in a crouch for several minutes until the man was out of sight and then motioned to his sister. Moments later she joined him on the ground. He would never tell her so, but he was impressed. The height from which he had dropped had seemed awfully scary, yet Regan—because she was smaller—had plunged an even greater distance, and without hesitation. He didn’t know any other girl her age who would have had the nerve to do the same.
“Did you hear that guy mention Prometheus?” whispered Ryan.
“Yeah,” his sister whispered back. “I wonder who those kids are that they’re after.”
Ryan scratched his head. “I don’t have any idea. I guess just a few kids who wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. Lucky for me they did, or that guard would have caught me for sure.” He breathed a sigh of relief as he reflected on just how helpless he had been hanging from a tree, a mere ten feet from both an “intruders will be shot on sight” sign and a heavily armed guard moving steadily toward him.
Ryan pulled the bag of talcum powder from his pocket once again. He scooped out a handful of the fine, white powder and tossed it out in front of him. As expected, two bright red laser beams magically became visible where they sliced through the billowing white cloud that he had created. Lowering his head and right shoulder, Ryan carefully threw his body forward, hands extended, and rolled between the two beams onto his shoulder, making sure to lift his legs high enough to easily clear the lower beam. Regan repeated this maneuver and quickly joined him on the other side of the hidden laser perimeter.
So far, so good.
Crouching low, they headed toward the main building, alert for security guards. They chose an indirect path to their destination, avoiding being out in the open at all costs, staying in the cover of trees and high weeds. Soon they passed a bunker-like gray building constructed of huge slabs of thick concrete. It was about the size of a very large house, and almost entirely hidden by trees and thick growth. There were no windows or openings of any kind to mar the plain, ugly, rectangular structure, except for a huge steel door, so big it encompassed almost an entire side of the building. A large metal sign hung above the door.
DANGER! RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORAGE. LETHAL RADIATION LEVELS INSIDE. DO NOT ENTER!
Ryan shook his head. What was with this place? Every sign warned of impending death. Why couldn’t the sign have said, Free Chocolate Inside?
Ryan began moving toward the Proact building again when his sister touched his arm. She pointed at the concrete building. “I think we should go in there and check it out.”
“Go in there?” repeated Ryan as if he had heard wrong. “I don’t think so. The lethal radiation in there isn’t going to wait before harming us because you’re little and cute.”
“You really think I’m cute?” said Regan with an impish grin.
“No, of course not,” insisted Ryan, trying to cover for having accidentally done the unthinkable, giving his sister a compliment. “You know that wasn’t my point.”
“Look,” said Regan. “Let’s think about this for a second. The Proact building isn’t finished yet and it’s totally out in the open. This building is finished and also well hidden. You wouldn’t see it unless you almost walked into it like we did. Then, to top it off, they put a giant radiation warning sign on it. They really, really don’t want people to enter this building. Which is why I think they must be hiding something important inside. The sign is just a fake to scare people away.”
“And what if there really is deadly radiation inside? What if you’re wrong?”
She thought for a moment and then smiled. “If I’m wrong, then I guess we’ll be the only kids in Pennsylvania who will glow in the dark.”
Ryan smiled despite himself. She had certainly made some good points. But even if the radiation warning was a bluff, it was too big a risk to take. As much as the little brat could drive him crazy, he was the older brother. It was still his job to protect her. It had been his idea to break onto the grounds and he had endangered her enough just letting her come with him. No, he would not be the one responsible for her getting hurt. “There’s no way we’re going inside,” he said firmly, but then after a brief pause added, “but I guess it can’t hurt to take a closer look at the building.”
Regan nodded. At least it was a step in the right direction, and she could make another attempt to convince him later.
They carefully approached the large steel door. The steel looked to be just as thick as the concrete, but there was no door handle or knob of any kind. Why have a warning sign when there was no way to enter anyway? As far as they could tell, the building was completely sealed. Ryan stepped closer to touch the door. He reached out with his right hand and—
Ryan jumped back as if he had been shocked! When he touched the door a panel near his hand had slid open to reveal a steel keypad, with numbers zero through nine. It had startled him nearly to death.
“Please enter a ten-digit password,” said a computer voice from a small speaker at the bottom of the keypad. “Please note that an alarm will sound immediately if an incorrect digit is entered.”
Regan raised her eyebrows. “Radioactive waste storage facility, huh?” she said. “Very interesting, don’t you think?”
Ryan nodded. “You were right,” he said, now convinced. “Something very important must be going on inside this building.” He took a determined step closer to the door. “Let’s find out what it is.”
Chapter 5
Breaking the Code
“I’m glad we now agree that we need to get inside,” said Regan. “Now all we have to do is find a way to, um … get inside.”
Ryan ignored her attempted humor. His expression was one of total concentration. “I’ll bet the numeric password we heard Mom and Dad talk about will do the trick.”
“You may be right. But we never actually heard what it was.”
“No, but we should be able to figure it out from Dad’s clue.”
Regan considered. Her brother was right. Their dad loved riddles and brainteasers and word puzzles, and since they were old enough to talk he was always challenging them to solve a wide variety of them. “Dad said the number is in alphabetical order,” she offered.
“Right. So what does that mean?”
Regan shrugged. “0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9?” she said.
Ryan shook his head. “Can’t be. Mom wouldn’t have needed Dad’s help to make sense of a number that obvious. Besides, that’s in numerical order. He said alphabetical.”
“True. But the keypad only has numbers on it, not letters. How can you put numbers in alphabetical order?”
Ryan scratched his head. Good question. “What if you spelled out each of the numbers zero through nine,” he said, thinking aloud. Could it really be that easy?
“Regan,” he said excitedly. “Recite the alphabet for me very slowly.”
Regan didn’t hesitate. Maybe Ryan was on to something. “A,” she began.
Ryan mumbled the numbers zero through nine to himself, deep in concentration. He nodded for her to continue. “B,” she said. Regan made it to the letter E before her brother stopped her.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. None of the numbers zero through nine begin with A,B,C or D. But Eight starts with an E. I’m betting this is the first digit. The problem is we can’t make even a single mistake. What do you think?”
Regan was pleased that he had asked for her opinion. “I think we should risk it.”
Ryan nodded. “Here goes nothing.”
Mentally bracing himself for the earsplitting sound of an alarm, wh
ich would be followed quickly by heavily armed guards, he reached out and pushed the 8 button on the key-pad. Regan cringed beside him as she waited to see—or hear—the outcome.
Nothing happened. No sirens, no blaring alarms.
“Fantastic!” said Regan. “You did it. Let’s keep going. F,” she recited excitedly.
Her brother mumbled to himself again as he counted. When he reached Four he nodded and reached out for the keypad. His finger found the number 4 and pushed …
“Stop!” shouted Regan beside him.
He had been an instant away from pressing the button and was just able to jerk his hand away in time. “What?” he snapped. “What is it?”
Regan raised her eyebrows. “Five,” she said simply.
“Five?” he repeated, and then her meaning began to register. His eyes went wide. Whoops. She was right! He had nearly been too hasty and blown it. F-O-U-R and F-I-V-E both began with F, but Five came before Four alphabetically.
Ryan made sure there were no other F numbers in the digits zero through nine and then pressed the 5 button followed by the 4. Again, they heard nothing but the welcome sound of silence. “Nice work, Regs,” he said appreciatively. She had saved them.
Regan beamed and continued reciting the alphabet. After a short time they had entered 8-5-4-9-1-7-6-3 and 2. Nine digits. The number 0 would complete the password, the first digit numerically and the last alphabetically.
Ryan took a deep breath and reached toward the keypad one last time. He pushed the 0 key and quickly stepped back. What would happen?
An electric motor whirred as the giant door separated in the middle and the two sections slid smoothly apart.
They were in!
Ryan inched his way toward the opening in the door and cautiously peered inside the building. Other than a shiny, all steel structure at its center, it was completely empty. No rooms. No people. No equipment. And thankfully, no containers of radioactive waste.
They entered the building and inspected it carefully. It soon became clear that the rectangular steel structure Ryan had seen was an elevator, about the size of a large, three-car garage, but with a ceiling three times as high. It was by far the largest elevator they had ever seen. Was the entire purpose of the building to house and protect this elevator?
Trapped (The Prometheus Project Book 1) Page 2
