Any moment now the alarm would sound.
Any moment now…
Logan touched my elbow gently, and I had to swallow a terrified squeak. As it was, down went the fruity gum.
He motioned a hand ahead of us, and I realized I was wasting our time, paralyzed in my terror.
There was no guard waiting to shoot us, and the cameras weren't broadcasting our presence.
For the moment anyway.
With that in mind, I led the way to the right, to another corridor, this one longer, broader. We passed two guest office doors, Then, I cautiously turned left, a few feet into another empty corridor that ended by the kitchens and some employee bathrooms. Midway to the kitchens, I turned right again, passing locked maintenance and closet rooms, to where we'd find the lobby and, therefore, a bank of elevators and the guard on duty at this time of night.
I don't know what Rafael did to the cameras and monitors, but so far, they held.
We passed the back door to the cafeteria, thankfully closed for the night, and I paused at the next intersection and pointed ahead to a closed double door, and mouthed “lobby”. Rafael detached himself from the group and moved forward silently. From where we stood, I could hear the muffled sounds of an ongoing game. At the opposite end of the lobby double doors was another set of double doors, those ones oak. The auditorium where scientists discussed their discoveries, gave lectures, and had big meetings. Many times, I found myself the main topic of the conversations in that room.
A few minutes later, Rafael returned with the all clear, and I knew someone else had died.
“There's a WZ 34-567 on room 305. That's the only room occupied on the third floor. We'll start there. If they know Archer at all, they'll know to keep him isolated.”
Logan nodded in agreement, but I took hold of his arm before he could pull out whatever it was from his pocket.
“What about the fourth floor?” I asked Rafael.
“No time to check.”
“What about the fourth floor? Any rooms occupied there?” I insisted urgently.
Rafael glanced briefly at Logan, who waited beside me for Rafael's reply. “There's a whole bunch of occupied rooms there. In fact, I think they all are.”
“Archer will be among them,” I said with certainty.
Rafael huffed, shaking his head. “No, Roxanne, they'd keep him isolated.”
“No, trust me. Archer will be on the fourth floor, no matter how dangerous or different he is,” I insisted.
Now even Logan paused. “Maybe things changed after you left. If the PSS is half as smart as they advertise, they'll know to isolate Archer.”
Not unless they changed the entire security system of both floors and rewired everything. I took a deep breath and tried again. “Look, the fourth floor is one of the most heavily-secured places in the entire facility. Especially the east wing. Trust me, if Archer is in this building, he'll be there.”
“Why then isolate the one on the third floor?” Rafael asked with annoyance.
“Probably because he's a volunteer who's only staying for a short time.”
Rafael's incredulity was laughable. “Why would anyone volunteer to be tortured?”
“They aren't. Tortured, I mean. They volunteer in exchange for money. Some for protection.”
Logan nodded once, still chewing gum. “The fourth floor it is,” he said, and that was that. He produced a small round device similar to a wrist watch from a pocket around his right thigh and looked at me.
“Party time. Let's rock this place.”
He pressed something, and a small display appeared in yellow. Before I could make any sense of it, he pocketed it again.
When I looked at his eyes, they were empty. There was no longer anyone—any conscience—home.
The killer was back again.
As if to confirm my assessment, he unhooked a small-barreled gun from one of the side loops, inserted a small cylinder over it—a silencer—and ushered us forward before disappearing into the lobby. Rafael and I followed, moving forward stealthily.
The tiles in the lobby, unlike in the rest of the building, were done in a mosaic style and coloring.
It was a big, rectangular room with no windows but two square bulletproof glasses on the reinforced steel front door.
Here the cameras and sensors were placed on strategic corners and niches, capturing and recording every small inch into their system. No one entered—or left—this room without high clearance.
There were bolted metal chairs with cushiony pillows arranged in a sitting area to one side for guest scientists. On the opposite side of the reinforced door was the guard post. Directly behind it, covering the entire wall from top to bottom, was the PSS's emblem—a hawk's head with its wings bracketing a long sword. No one coming into this room could miss it. Perpendicular to the guard post, on one side was the double door we had come through and, on the other side, the bank of secured elevators. A potted tree on the corner by the entrance was the only new addition I could see.
We crossed to the bank of elevators, passing the low murmur of a baseball game coming from an iPhone left on the desk, and I couldn't help being drawn to the guard that had been on duty.
His name tag read O'Neil. I remembered him. He had a ready smile that turned nasty every time I passed by.
Rafael hadn't broken his neck. No, that would've been a mercy kill. There was a small, neat hole between the guard's eyes that marked the entrance of Rafael's bullet. That was the only neat thing though. Both eyes were open, though one was nothing but a gory, messy bloody hole, the eyeball missing. Gore also covered the back of the chair the guard had been occupying, splattered at the wall behind him. Both of the guard's thumbs were also missing, which Rafael had displayed by leaving the guard's hands propped atop the desk.
I looked away from the dead guard, my stomach churning nervously, and motioned Rafael to the right elevator, since the left one only went to the west wing. He accessed it with the key he pocketed from the downed guard—along with the guard's thumb—but before we stepped inside an explosion shook the place. The floor beneath us, the elevator car, the potted tree all vibrated with it.
Neither Logan nor Rafael acted surprised. Because that's what they had been talking about.
Rock 'n' roll.
“We have five minutes,” Logan said as we entered the car.
“What was that?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Our distraction.”
“But—uhmm—why? Now the guards on the fourth floor will be on full alert.”
Everything had been going so well. The thought had just crossed my mind when alarms began blasting away.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Logan gave me a cold, empty smile and as we rode to the fourth floor, he and Rafael each unhooked a grenade and waited for the doors to part.
While Logan threw a grenade to the left, Rafael threw another to the right, their motions coordinated. Soon, Logan was efficiently taking down the nearest guards, Rafael the farthest. The grenades were nothing but a loud boom with smoke, disorienting the guards long enough for Rafael and Logan to take care of them.
All the guards—I counted seven of them—were down in less than one minute. I tried not to ponder the fact that Logan moved as if he was strolling down a park on a sunny day, so casually was the way he disposed with human lives. I caught a hit on the Kevlar's vest, but besides feeling like I had been poked, nothing happened. Regardless, just seeing a tranquilizer dart poking from my chest was paralyzing.
When the chaos and shouts subsided and everything lay quiet, or as quiet as it could be with the blaring klaxons, Rafael and Logan moved to the right, to the reinforced double-glass doors. Rafael hooked the small, calculator-sized device he had used to gain access to the building on the pad beside the door, and when the padlock clicked once, Rafael pressed the amputated thumb on the small screen beside it. Silently, the doors parted. Logan dragged one of the bodies from the floor and propped it against the door to keep it from regr
essing, then moved to the first locked room. Rafael moved away in the opposite direction, to where the emergency staircase was located.
My heart skipped a beat, my stomach churned. I wish I had another stick of gum to occupy me. Instead, I fidgeted from one foot to the other, my arms like two worthless limbs at my sides. As Logan started working on the door of the first room, I began biting my already bitten nails. How many rooms on this side of the building? Eighteen? Twenty? I was almost sure there were eighteen here, but I could've been mistaken. But eighteen or twenty, that wasn't the issue. What if Archer wasn't here? What if he was that lonely person in the third floor? What if, after Logan checked all the rooms and didn't find him, we backtracked to the lobby to take the second elevator and were ambushed by The Elite? Even if a second trip was possible, Rafael had said the fourth floor was packed. We still had to check the other wing before going down a level. Going to the third floor first would've been faster and easier—and more sensible by process of elimination—but, like I said, the fourth floor was our best bet.
Too much was unknown.
Too much hinged on luck… and luck had never been a friend of mine.
I bit down harder on my nail.
Already the gas was clearing away, being sucked into the ventilation system, and I realized that, of the seven dead guards, I recognized five of them. My head pounded rhythmically and my heart was doing triple speed, both from fear and anticipation of finally meeting one of my kind.
What did Archer's aura look like? Had I ever seen one like it before?
Was this the real reason I had come? Was I afraid that, by staying behind, Archer would have avoided the face-to-face meeting so I wouldn't be able to point him out later on? That—if Logan wasn't outright wrong—Archer would just have designated someone else to help me and keep his identity a secret?
“Three minutes,” Rafael called from where he stood guard by the emergency stairs, though I had no idea if he could hear any approach with the screaming alarm.
By the door of Room 411, Logan crouched, inserting something yellow and thin between doorframe and lock—where the tumblers would be—then followed it with something metallic and wiry. As soon as half of it had disappeared into the paper-thin crack, he let go and quickly took a step back, just as a muffled boom slightly bent the doorjamb inward.
A few well-aimed kicks later, the door stood open, revealing the room within. From where I stood by the elevator, I could see inside the room, and what I saw chilled me to the bone. Not the usual utilitarian, bolted-down furnished suite.
No, there wasn't even a bed in there. Instead, a black recliner took up half of the room. A bunch of machines, intertwined with tubes and glowing cylinders took up the other half. Dark liquid filled up some of the tubes and a deep violet stream of laser light moved from one box-sized square to another similar box, connecting both sides.
But the most chilling site, the one that had icy fear paralyzing me was the half-naked man lying on the recliner, his naked chest filled with wires that disappeared into the machines above him, behind him. His head, shaved and covered in round rubber disks, was visible through a small gap between a box-sized machine and a sloping florescent tube.
He looked so pale, so thin and so… helpless.
Logan took one look at the prone figure and promptly moved to the next room, repeating the same process with the lock.
Not Archer, therefore no one of his concern, I thought, repulsed at his coldhearted dismissal.
I took a step forward, ready to go help the stranger, but when the door of the elevator began closing, I jolted back to my senses, returning to my previous post. We couldn't help everyone. I knew that coming in.
Besides, the man was barely alive, as the shallow rise and fall of his chest proved.
Logan moved to the third room, working quickly, though calmly, still chewing gum.
My eyes returned to the man on the recliner and, as if sensing my eyes on him, his head moved, his eyes fluttering open.
Deep, dark blue eyes met mine through the gap between the tube and the machine, framing his face in florescent light, and the pain, the despair and sorrow I saw there felt like a blow to my midsection, so aware, so familiar was I to the helplessness he was feeling.
I had been there once, not long ago, though never with these many machines, never with that precise—or even similar—system.
How long? I wondered. How long had he been there?
The pain and despair in his eyes told me too long.
All the experiments done on me had been done inside a lab, never in my rooms.
“Two minutes,” Rafael called above the alarms.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I dragged the body of the nearest dead guard to the elevator and propped him by the door, using his body like Logan had done to prevent the door from closing.
Then I hurried inside the room, noticing as I passed that Logan had checked several rooms already. A bald guy stood by the door of one of the rooms, looking confused, the blocking bracelet gleaming on his left wrist mockingly.
I rushed into the small room, the scent of Pine-Sol gut churning, and stopped beside the recliner, studying the complex machinery. Several dials dotted the machines, followed by strange symbols—some glowing with an eerie light. Other dials were marked simply by numbers, from one to six. No dial had an on/off button.
Deep blue eyes watched me warily, though not alarmed.
“Hang in there,” I murmured.
Unsure of what to do, I decided it was better if I unplugged him from the machine first. I didn't want to turn a dial that would only cause him more pain, or his death. He was so pale, his skin so sallow. His hair had been shaved not so long ago, now just a faint dark stubble mostly covered by the round disks. A Lichtenberg tattoo covered most of his chest, his torso, his right upper arm and the right side of his neck, as if he'd been hit by multiple lightning bolts and survived. His veins were visible beneath his pallor, purplish lines that contrasted with his skin and blended with the tattoo.
The guy looked so fragile, so vulnerable; I couldn't help feeling angry at what was being done to him.
With a snarl, I began detaching all the round rubber disks—stethoscope plugs—off his head and chest. His colorless lips twitched in a grimace, and I apologized softly, unplugging the last couple round disks more gently. Several machines beeped in warning, and the electric laser connecting the machines from one side to the other gave a loud hum and intensified in color and width, now as thick as my index finger. That's when I saw the thin band around his wrist, like a blocking bracelet, yet smooth of any carved runes. It was also glowing with that eerie light. A thin copper wire attached the band to the machines, spiraling into the glowing cylinder, which in turn was connected to the tube that was emitting the laser.
Somehow, I knew taking off the plugs hadn't been a good idea. The guy's eyes were clouded with pain.
“One minute,” called Rafael from somewhere outside.
Frantic, I reached for the band, but the guy moved his wrist aside, just an inch or two, his head shaking, or that's what I interpreted the slight motion of his chin to the left meant. I hesitated, then let my hand drop.
“Where then?” I asked him, but he either didn't know or was too weak to tell me.
His eyes closed, then fluttered open again with visible effort.
I moved my hand to the glowing cylinder, looking down at the guy for confirmation—or denial—but he didn't say anything, just closed his eyes again.
Either I was doing something right or he had passed out. I watched him, long enough to detect the slight rise and fall of his chest, then returned my attention back to the machines. I grabbed the glowing cylinder, an electric shock zinging all over my body, intensifying by the second. It was freezing to the touch, and vaguely I wondered what it was doing to the man as I yanked hard on it. Once, twice, thrice. The third time putting all my strength behind it. The cylinder broke with a loud boom, louder than the klaxons, and I was flung a
t the opposite wall with such force I felt the impact on every single, small vertebrae. A thin column of vapor escaped from the jagged end of the cylinder still clutched in my fist, the smell of ozone now thick in the air. The man arched once, his eyes fluttering, a small whimper escaping through his colorless lips. Then he curled to his side, falling off the recliner before I could catch him and break his fall.
* * *
Rafael appeared at the door just as I threw the broken cylinder towards it. It bounced harmlessly off his boot. His scowl was as dark as sin.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he snarled, clenched fists at his sides. He was no doubt regretting he hadn't slogged me and left me unconscious back in the woods.
I moved slowly, feeling every inch of my body protesting with the motion. “I'm taking him with me,” I announced.
“The hell you are,” he snapped. “We're already running late without the extra baggage.”
“Look what they've done to him.” I looked at Rafael, my eyes pleading. “It could have been me. It could have been Archer. Or Logan,” I added softly.
Rafael's jaw clenched, a muscle spasming in his cheek. “Then have mercy and finish him off.” He saw the look of horror on my face and took a step forward—to do it himself.
“No, don't.” I stepped in front of the curled-up figure on the floor, ready to protect him, and Rafael stopped.
“Look at him. Death will be a mercy,” he said, his tone softer now. Someone laughed outside, and I caught the figure of a hunched woman passing by.
I glanced down at the guy, still curled in on himself, the bones of his spine and ribs so pronounced, it looked painful. He looked unconscious, or dead, I couldn't tell. His chest wasn't moving. His aura was so faint, it was almost a smudge, with no apparent color.
“I'll carry him,” I said bleakly, though I knew Rafael was right. Death would be a mercy. Hadn't I told that to myself over and over when it was me in his place?
Rafael saw the defeat in my eyes, and quickly, to cover the tears that threatened to come, how futile my effort had been, I bent to check the guy's pulse.
Heir of Ashes Page 33
