by Tarah Benner
Bernie walked back toward the kitchen, listening for the sound of voices. “Guys?” she called as she scooped her oatmeal into a bowl.
Nothing.
“Denali?”
Bernie listened again. This time, she heard a soft whine and the sound of a paw scratching at a door. She left her coffee on the counter and followed the noise down the hallway to Conrad’s bedroom. The door was shut.
Taking a deep breath, Bernie twisted the knob and pushed it open. Instantly she was assaulted by the smell of dirty socks, corn chips, and dryer sheets. She swallowed down a gag, but then Denali bounded through the door to greet her, tail wagging excitedly.
Relief rushed through her as her eyes landed on Simjay and Portia. They were sitting at the end of a lumpy queen bed while Conrad worked at his desk. Simjay was over the moon in nerd ecstasy, and Portia wasn’t bothering to hide her boredom.
Conrad’s bedroom looked just as Bernie would have expected a fiftysomething bachelor’s room to look. A queen bed was shoved up against the wall and covered with a plain navy-blue quilt — not a headboard or a throw pillow in sight.
The nightstand was littered with dusty books, pill bottles, a kerosene lamp, and a box of tissues. The carpeting was dingy and worn, and the only wall hanging was a topographic map that showed the United States with large chunks of its coastline missing.
Along one wall was the computer desk to end all computer desks. Three large monitors formed a digital wall around Conrad, who was sitting in a high-backed leather chair, wearing a pair of enormous headphones. Cordelia, Ophelia, and Desdemona were sprawled out on the floor around his bed, and Bernie suspected that Denali had been lounging with them moments before.
“Morning,” said Bernie, coming around to sit beside Simjay and resting the bowl of oatmeal in her lap.
When her leg brushed against his, Simjay sat bolt upright, and his eyes bulged in surprise. “Morning.”
Bernie looked away and slopped the oatmeal around in her bowl, feeling suddenly awkward. “What’s going on?”
Simjay cleared his throat again, looking relieved to have something to talk about. “Conrad’s hacking the surveillance feeds,” he explained. “He says he can reconfigure the program so that we can watch the feeds remotely.”
“I should be able to,” Conrad muttered, “considering I wrote the damn thing.”
Bernie looked at his screen. It was completely black except for long rows of multicolored text crawling across the page. Conrad’s fingers seemed to be moving of their own accord. They were dancing over the keys with such ridiculous speed that Bernie wouldn’t have been surprised to find that a puppeteer was controlling his hands.
“How long is that going to take?” she asked.
“Hopefully not long,” said Simjay. “Conrad thinks we should commence Operation Jailbreak tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Bernie spluttered.
“Saturday is the best day to do this sort of thing,” said Conrad, pushing his headphones down onto his shoulders. “The weekend security crew will recognize me, but they won’t know that I no longer do contract work with the facility.”
“You want them to recognize you?” Bernie asked.
“Yes,” said Conrad. “Simjay and I will infiltrate the facility posing as tech support. You and Portia will watch from a distance, feeding us information on the guards’ whereabouts within the facility.”
“Why are you going?” Bernie asked Simjay in an accusatory tone, thinking about the wound she’d just stitched up.
Simjay coughed and ducked his head.
“Simjay is the least recognizable of the three of you,” said Conrad at once. “And a beautiful girl in tech support would attract the wrong sort of attention.”
“That is so sexist,” said Bernie, too outraged to feel flattered.
Conrad shrugged. “Maybe so, but we need to fly under the radar in order for this to work.”
“Plus I’m an Indian guy,” said Simjay, as if this explained everything.
Bernie choked back a laugh.
“We’ll be stopped at the gate,” Conrad continued. “That will be the most rigorous test. Back before everything happened, the facility had to prevent hundreds of unauthorized people from entering each week — mostly sci-fi fanatics and conspiracy enthusiasts, but occasionally someone truly dangerous would attempt a break-in. The guards manning the gate are trained to be suspicious.”
He rifled around on the desk and produced what looked like some sort of laminated ID badge. He handed it over his shoulder, and Bernie leaned forward to grab it.
She was staring down at Simjay’s face, but the name listed under his picture was “Birapaar Patel.”
“Patel?”
“We’re trying to hit on all the stereotypes here,” said Simjay with a grin.
“You have your own laminating machine?” asked Bernie in disbelief.
Conrad shrugged. “You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy. You never know when you’re going to need an alternate form of identification . . .”
“Can you make me one?” she asked. “I want my spy name to be Coco Catamaran.”
Simjay snorted and tossed the fake ID back onto the desk. “Is that your spy name or your stripper name?”
“I don’t know why they need to be mutually exclusive.”
“Cheyenne Mountain Complex is buried under 2,500 feet of granite,” said Conrad, cutting their banter short. “We’ll have to drive a mile through a tunnel of solid rock to reach the entrance. If our identification passes muster, they’ll open the gates and let us inside. That’s when the real fun begins.”
Bernie bit down on her lip to keep from laughing. Despite all the Mission Impossible-esque things coming out of his mouth, Conrad’s tone suggested that he was walking them through a root canal.
“Our bags will be searched upon entry, and we’ll need to go through a metal detector. I already have security clearance. Otherwise we’d have to undergo more thorough screening.”
“What about Simjay?” asked Bernie.
“Yes,” said Conrad. “That could be a problem. There’s a good chance that the badge alone will get him through security, but if the guard is new and decides to look him up in the system . . .”
He trailed off, and Bernie looked from Conrad to Simjay, waiting for some sort of explanation on how they were going to get out of that one.
“What?” she asked finally.
“He might need some persuading,” said Conrad lightly.
Bernie glanced between them once again. “Are you talking about killing a guard?”
“No,” said Conrad. “I mean he might need some persuading . . .”
Bernie let out a sigh of relief.
“But if that doesn’t work, then yes, we’ll have to kill him.”
Bernie turned to Simjay. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“It probably won’t come to that,” said Simjay. “But look what Conrad made for me.”
Simjay reached over Conrad’s shoulder and grabbed a shallow cardboard box. Bernie peered inside and saw what looked like a white plastic handgun.
Simjay lifted it out reverently and handed it to Bernie. It was definitely a gun. All the details were reminiscent of Lark’s Glock, but the gun felt too light to be real. It seemed more like a toy.
“It’s a 3D-printed handgun,” said Simjay excitedly. “Can you believe it?”
“Why . . .”
“It’s plastic, so metal detectors won’t pick it up. Even the bullets are made out of this weird bio-plastic. Look.” He released the magazine and showed Bernie one of the hard plastic rounds.
“Will this work?” she asked Conrad.
“The bullets aren’t likely to kill anyone,” said Conrad. “But they will cause a debilitating amount of pain. As for the weapon, I have tested the technology extensively myself. The pistol is imperfect, but it’s safe for up to twenty-five rounds.”
“What do you mean it’s ‘safe’?”
Conrad shrugg
ed, still tapping away at his keyboard. “After a while, the force from the explosion will degrade the components. They may break and cause the gun to misfire, or it could explode.”
“Explode?” Bernie shrieked.
“I told you,” said Conrad. “The technology is imperfect, but it’ll do in a pinch.”
“What if they pat you down?”
“He’ll be doing a deep conceal,” said Conrad.
Bernie looked blankly from Simjay to Portia.
“He means he’ll stash it next to his crotch,” she said, sounding bored and slightly annoyed by the whole conversation. Bernie had a feeling that the guys had been geeking out over the weapon for at least an hour.
“And look at this,” said Simjay, pulling out a short black dagger. “It’s called a CIA executive letter opener.”
“Is that made of plastic, too?” asked Bernie wearily.
“Nylon,” said Simjay. “Isn’t it cool?”
Bernie took the dagger and hefted it in her hands. It wasn’t super light, but it didn’t feel like an ordinary knife, either.
“I’m in,” said Conrad suddenly, barely changing his tone as a dozen or so different feeds appeared on his screen.
Bernie’s stomach did an excited flop. She couldn’t believe it. This was really happening.
On one screen, she could see a man in dark clothing walking down what looked like a basement tunnel. On another, three people were seated at computers in some kind of office.
Conrad hit his arrow key a couple of times, and three more screens’ worth of security feeds flashed across his monitors.
“Stop!” cried Bernie, her heart leaping into her throat.
Conrad stopped.
On his middle monitor, near the upper right-hand corner, was a feed of a tiny windowless chamber. The room was empty except for a thin cot and a metal toilet, but a familiar figure was pacing from wall to wall.
“That’s Soren,” said Simjay, standing up and bending over to get a closer look at the screen.
“I presume this is one of our targets,” said Conrad.
Bernie nodded wordlessly. Her throat was too tight to speak. Although they’d been operating under the assumption that Lark, Soren, and Axel were being held inside Cheyenne Mountain, seeing it made everything much more real.
The feed was too grainy for her to make out Soren’s face clearly, but something about his posture seemed off somehow — different. His shoulders were hunched and his head was bowed, but as they watched, he walked over to the wall and banged his fist against it. The movement was slow and lethargic — a desperate, obsessive banging that numbed Bernie from the inside out.
“Shit,” said Simjay. “What have they been doing to him?”
Portia’s face hardened. Bernie knew that look. Portia often came off as detached and uncaring, but Bernie was getting better at reading her moods. Portia was just as sickened as they were.
“It’s a classic technique meant to unravel informants who’ve proven resistant to the department’s other methods.”
“What is?” asked Bernie.
Conrad shrugged. “Homeland Security will typically exhaust cooperation, bargaining, coercion . . . When none of that works, they’ll give informants just enough information to hang themselves and then leave them alone until they crack.”
Simjay shook his head, staring at his friend as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Where’s Axel?”
Conrad tapped the arrow key again, flashing through feed after feed of empty cells until they were back to yet another dark, windowless passageway.
“There!” said Portia, pointing at the screen.
Bernie squinted at each of the feeds before settling on one window that showed Axel sitting in a sparse interrogation room with two men in suits. He was talking and gesturing animatedly with his hands, but the two agents weren’t taking notes. They looked angry and a little exhausted.
“What’s he saying to them?” snapped Simjay.
“From the looks of it, nothing of substance,” said Conrad. “Occasionally the department will get their hands on an informant who just won’t shut up. They usually let those people run their mouths as long as they want in the hope that they’ll eventually slip up and say something useful.”
Bernie let out a snort of laughter. Leave it to Axel to spend his imprisonment wasting everyone else’s time.
“Where’s Lark?” asked Bernie, studying each window as if Lark might be hiding behind a potted plant or under a desk.
“I don’t see her,” said Simjay, reaching over Conrad’s shoulder to advance the feeds. “She’s not here.”
A tingle of panic slipped down Bernie’s spine. “What do you mean she’s not there?”
“I mean, she’s not here,” Simjay repeated, sounding just as desperate as Bernie felt.
“That bitch,” Portia whispered.
“What?” growled Bernie. She and Portia had come to an understanding over the last few days, but that didn’t mean she would tolerate Portia badmouthing her best friend.
“That bitch talked,” said Portia. “She sold us out.”
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Bernie said, “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” asked Portia.
“What’s she gonna say?” Bernie spluttered. “‘My friends were laying low in Kingsville a couple of days ago. Now they could be anywhere, but they’re driving a motherfucking Camry’?”
“Give me one other reason why she wouldn’t be there.”
“She could be in the bathroom or . . .”
But Bernie was struggling to come up with a better reason for Lark’s absence. There was only one other possible explanation that made sense, and contemplating Lark’s death wasn’t even an option.
“It isn’t unreasonable to think that she might have talked,” said Conrad.
“You don’t even know her,” Bernie hissed.
“No, I don’t,” said Conrad evenly. “But I know these people, and they can be very . . . persuasive.”
“There’s no way Lark would talk,” said Bernie defensively.
It didn’t matter that she wasn’t on any one of the feeds. Lark would never sell them out — not in a million years.
“Look,” said Simjay. “Either way, we still have to get Soren and Axel. The plan doesn’t change. Maybe one of them will know what happened to her.”
Bernie crossed her arms over her chest. She refused to believe that Lark had said or done anything to help the Department of Homeland Security. She had been a victim of the system for so long that there was no one less likely to trust a bunch of suits than her.
“What if they recognize you as one of the people who escaped?” Bernie asked finally. “What happens then?”
Conrad was the first to speak, and when he did, he didn’t so much as glance up from his monitor. “Failure is not an option,” he said. “If we are discovered, they will make us disappear.”
nineteen
Lark
They’d tased her. Those bastards had tased her. Lark knew she should be grateful that they hadn’t shot her as they had Bernie, but she still felt a little insulted that she’d been taken down with a Taser.
Lark had been in and out of consciousness since they’d brought her down to where she was being held. She’d slept fitfully in the brightly lit room, but she had no idea how long she’d been there. Every muscle in her body ached, and she felt strangely weak and drained.
She had a few visible bruises: a large one over her hip bone where she’d been slammed into the ground and a small constellation along her ribs where the guard had kicked her. Her cheek was hot and tender, which she’d chalked up to rug burn.
The room where she was being detained was much larger than any cell. It was at least thirteen feet across at its widest point, but there wasn’t a toilet or any furniture. The concrete floor was covered with chipped industrial tile that had yellowed with age, and the room gave off the dank smell of a church basement.
She was lying on the floor a
top a flimsy plastic mattress, which was covered with a thin cotton sheet. The security guard’s belt was gone. They’d given her a blanket but no pillow, and someone had left her a bottle of water.
The room was quiet — too quiet. It was definitely in the basement, but Lark had the feeling that she was the only person around for miles. There were no sounds of running water, no tick of the lights, and no footsteps out in the hallway. Lark was beginning to think they’d locked her up and left her there to die.
She shivered. She was still dressed in the horrible blue hospital gown, and they hadn’t given her any socks. The room was extremely cold, and she only had the one blanket.
Suddenly, the door to her room burst open, and three stocky guards appeared in the hallway. They were all outfitted in riot gear, and one of them was toting a firearm. At least now they considered her a force to be reckoned with.
“On your feet,” said the one closest to Lark. “Let’s go.”
Lark stood but didn’t drop the blanket. She felt vulnerable and exposed in the thin blue smock. She wasn’t even wearing a bra. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
The guard didn’t answer. He just nodded at the men beside him, and they squeezed in through the doorway and came around to Lark’s sides. The first man snatched the blanket away and grabbed her arms while the other slapped a pair of handcuffs on her. Then they bound her ankles and shackled them to her wrists.
Tears burned in Lark’s throat. She felt utterly helpless. Her butt was still hanging out of her gown, and they were there to take her somewhere else — probably somewhere even more horrible. As far as San Judas was concerned, she was their property — a piece of human chattel that they could poke with a needle, stick in a cage, and forget about.
The guard who’d spoken first prodded Lark in the back, and she gritted her teeth as they pushed her forward.
What was going to happen to her? Were they going to try to slap her with more charges for attempted escape and aggravated assault? Were the courts still up and running, or had the president declared martial law?
