by Nick Thacker
They arrived just in time to give pursuit. One guard fired a warning shot, though it only seemed to hasten Mr. Bolland’s retreat.
Bolland was making his way to one of the exterior doors—ill-advised exits, required by the local municipal code. David abhorred such safety regulations, which jeopardized “security” in the name of “safety.” Case in point—a man was about to escape with a potentially dangerous substance, and all that stood between him and freedom was a single door.
David activated the door’s digital security system, and the lock engaged. Locking this door, especially during a mandatory evacuation, would be against protocol—even illegal—according to local fire laws. David could live with the reprimand, if anyone could possibly trace the event back to him. Or if they had wits enough to put up a fuss, which was becoming increasingly unlikely.
Bolland, in his rush to exit the building, slammed into the door. He bounced backward in a way that David found amusing. David didn’t watch much television, and had never seen the appeal of prat-fall comedy, until now. He almost wished he had a tub of popcorn.
He checked the other cameras from the corridor, verifying that the guards were closing in. Bolland’s attempt at theft would be foiled, and he’d be in a cell by the end of the day, where people working under David’s orders would study him intently, looking for whatever marker made him different.
At this point, Bolland was a more valuable prize than the vials.
“Open communications to Home Office,” David said.
He then heard a series of tones, indicating the activation of the company’s communication software and the subsequent opening of an A/V window. A woman’s face appeared in a small box, which grew to fill the screen.
“David. You are calling ahead of schedule.”
“Yes, Mrs. Halpern,” David said. “There has been an incident at the Colorado Springs facility. One of our middle managers, Adam Bolland, attempted to procure some of the vials. He will be apprehended momentarily.”
“Why would he want the vials?” Halpern asked.
“Bolland has a few contacts who may be able to analyze their contents.”
“That is an undesirable outcome,” Halpern said, her tone as cold as the Arctic.
David was unfazed. He was accustomed to Halpern’s severity. He even admired it. “At this stage, it could perhaps be a moot point. Bolland’s contacts may or may not be suppressed, but the progression has advanced beyond the friction point, as described by the researchers.”
“In some regions, Prisemen. Not all. The suppression is not uniform. The information could still be dangerous.” Halpern made a few gestures offscreen and asked, “Isn’t Bolland one of your special interests?”
“He has shown a remarkable resistance to the suppression. He was a lucky find. He was already employed by the facility, so we did not have to rely on the public screenings to find him.”
“What are his levels?”
“Less than .5 percent.
Halpern considered this. “Apprehend and detain him,” she finally said. “Have him sent to central. Gag him. No one talks to him. Does he have family? Close friends?”
“He has a wife, three children. Numerous close friends, though most do not live in the area. “
“Have his family detained.”
“It will be done,” David said.
The call ended automatically, and David looked again at the screen. He watched as the recorded conversation was encrypted and sent to the email address built into the comm profile.
David was not, by nature, someone who gloated. But this man, Adam Bolland, had clearly taken the time to plan out his actions. Bolland had been arrogant enough to assume he could outsmart the system by using its own protocols against it.
He had, in essence, attempted to use order to create chaos and disorder. This was wholly offensive to David, and so he would enjoy seeing the man wrestled to the ground, hands and feet tied with strong plastic zip ties, and a ball gag fastened tightly into his mouth.
This last would be particularly amusing to watch.
As he turned his attention back to the displays, eagerly anticipating Bolland’s apprehension, David’s demeanor suddenly changed and soured.
He did not gloat, as a rule—but he did, on occasion, become angry enough to swear.
THREE
Adam could feel his heart fighting to break out of his chest. The footsteps behind him had picked up pace—it wouldn’t be long now. He still refused to turn, still refused to acknowledge that his time was up. This had all gone south somehow. This wasn’t part of the plan.
This door should not be locked.
It wasn’t part of the protocol. In fact, it was the opposite of the protocol. All exits were supposed to be clear, to allow anyone in this section to escape. Locking this door was a violation of all kinds of internal and city codes.
He was already making mental notes for a report when he realized just how ridiculously stupid he was being.
Focus, he thought. Find the way out.
He leaned into the door again, pushing, hoping he’d been wrong, that it would just pop open. It held firm, but as he pushed he could see a crack of daylight from the other side, leaking in through the small space between the locked door and the wall.
He pushed again, harder. Still, the door wouldn’t budge more than half an inch before the electronic locking mechanism caught it and held it in place. Frustrated, Adam backed away.
This is it.
He didn’t turn around. His gloved hands rose into the air, high over his head, the sign for surrender.
He could still hear the guards behind him running to catch up …
He judged the distance, and then with a crashing blow, launched forward and kicked the door as hard as he possibly could, focusing all the force on the spot where the door’s latch met the door frame.
The focused impact was more than the simple electronic lock could handle—it was meant to keep people out, not in, and so it was not reinforced for impact from the corridor side. The door flew open, slamming against the outside wall and a buzzer sounded from above the door frame. Compared to the building’s main alarm it was nearly inaudible.
Adam hadn’t expected it to be that easy, and had surprised himself with the force of the kick. He stood for a second, stunned.
Run.
His brain caught up to reality and kicked him into gear. Adam lurched forward—breaking into a run once again—and sailed through the open door into the bright daylight outside. He squinted until his eyes adjusted, never breaking his pace as he ran toward the parking lot.
Please, he thought. Let the front gates be open. Let me get out of here.
The parking lot was a few hundred feet away, separated from this building by a vast expanse of landscaping and deep green grass. All part of the public petition to “beautify” the facility, after the expansion ten years ago.
And it was beautiful. Every day, employees trekked over the maze of sidewalks from their cars to work. During lunch, staff often spent the hour eating with visiting family members at one of the many picnic tables nearby. Adam had spent a lot of lunch breaks out here himself, wandering the grounds, catching his breath, getting his head straight before or after a tough meeting.
Recently, within the past two or three months, Adam had noticed the ever growing number of what he called “aimless wanderers.” People he knew primarily from staff meetings or company events were wandering aimlessly on the grounds during their breaks, as if they weren’t sure what else to do. When their lunch hour was up, he noted, they often seemed to snap awake, coming to attention and hurriedly making their way back to their stations. He wondered if some of them were even forgetting to eat.
At first he had chalked this up to the beauty of the surrounding parks. Long hours and hard days could put anyone in a daze, he figured, and being outdoors for a time, taking in the sunshine and breezes sweeping in from the mountains—that had to be better than sitting for an hour in a dreary office o
r lab, shuffling papers for hours. Maybe they were just letting their minds wander.
It was an awful lot of wandering, however. More people seemed to join the amblers every day. It was one of the things that had called his attention to what was happening across town … even with his family.
Adam shook his head as he ran, keeping his mind away from the questions and focused on what he was doing. The well-trimmed grounds were wide and beautiful, but at the moment he would have traded his left kidney for the whole thing to be paved over, so he could have parked closer to the damn building.
Adam raced over neatly landscaped rows of short hedges and monkey grass, sprinting toward the parking lot at a wholly unsafe speed. Many of the employees had left, ushered off the premises by security in the minutes after the explosion, so the parking lot was mostly empty. There were still cars, however, and they presented a bit of an obstacle course for Adam as he wove through them.
Clearly someone knew that the explosion wasn’t an accident. The fact that Adam had two security guards dogging his heels at least meant they knew something wasn’t right. The protocol dictated that once that security alarm sounded, anyone still onsite would be detained as an investigation was under way.
Adam knew the drill, because he had just given a training on it. Emergency Evacuation and Procedures. He’d been handed a government-approved PowerPoint presentation and 25 copies of the report printed on cheap stock. He had delivered the canned speech to the members of his senior staff, and relayed the expectation that they in turn deliver the same presentation and report to members of their respective breakout groups.
Government procedure. Adam's least favorite style of management. Might as well have his people write the rules 100 times on a black board, for all the effectiveness the process actually had.
But who was he to argue? This job, and that process, had paid his bills for the past fifteen years. And there was a lot of stability and predictability to the job. Keep your head down, do the work, stick to the rules, and you will find yourself well-entrenched in a mostly automated system of promotions and annual raises, with “performance bonuses” that had less to do with performance and more to do with longevity. Adam had risen through the ranks right on schedule, until he was basically running the place.
Today he’d thrown all of that away.
The alarm was blaring outside—if possible it was even louder than inside. The parking lot and manicured grounds had apparently been included in the security installation plan, as the siren emanated from trees, parking lot lighting, and even some of the large, faux rocks that lined the walkways. The oppressive noise blocked out the sound of approaching footsteps, so he had no idea if he was still being followed. He still refused to look back, as if doing so might cement the reality of the situation, and confirm just how royally screwed he was.
It didn’t matter. His truck was just ahead. He reached with his left hand into his pocket, grasping at the key fob hanging from a bundle of keys. He clicked the button and heard the small blip of his truck unlocking.
He was close enough to see himself in the reflection of the side windows of his Toyota Tundra, still a bit distant but closing fast. That truck had been a real point of contention with Kate, who just couldn’t fathom why he needed a truck at all, much less one so big. “It’s not like you live on a farm, Adam. You work for the government. You never haul anything heavier than camping gear.”
Adam closed in now, reaching for the door handle. He saw his reflection in the glass—his hair wild and untamed, as were his eyes. He looked like a madman.
Maybe I am.
He yanked the handle and threw the door open, slowing only enough to set the cooler full of samples gently on the passenger seat. He pulled the driver-side door closed and started the truck all in one motion. Seconds later he peeled out the parking spot and was racing toward the front gates.
He knew there would be one or two guards stationed at the main entrance and exit, but he was unsure of how many other security guards might be there during a lockdown and high-alert situation. It didn’t matter.
He’d do what was needed to make it out of this place.
He was speeding through the lot, zipping between the remaining parked cars and praying that no one pulled their vehicle out in front of him. There would be no stopping, no exchange of insurance information, no regretful head shaking.
He prayed no one stepped out from between the vehicles.
As he passed through the two-lane entrance connecting this lot to the winding drive that led out of the facility grounds, he got his first glimpse of the two guards who had been pursuing him. They were in one of the rows just twenty or thirty feet away. If he had hesitated at his truck, they very well might have caught up to him.
Adam recognized one of the guards—a slightly overweight, middle-aged Asian man.
Kim Lu.
His friend.
Kim Lu had shot at him—or at least fired a warning shot. It was most likely meant to scare him, Adam thought. But he had fired a weapon in Adam’s direction, and the threat was clear. It helped confirm Adam’s suspicions about the vials—they were obviously important. But he hadn’t imagined they’d be worth killing over.
This was out of control. It was insane. This morning, Adam had eaten Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast, for God’s sake! Now he was being shot at?
He steeled himself. I made this decision, he told himself, leaving the rows of parked cars behind and racing down the main campus road. I knew there were going to be repercussions.
The two guards stopped running, huffing and panting, becoming smaller in his rearview mirror as Adam sped away.
He had escaped!
He knew it was only a small victory. The gate at the front of the compound would have at least two more men stationed there, along with a security access gate that would no doubt be lowered across the road. He thought through his next steps.
Get to the road, and speed up. No matter what, don’t slow down. The men will probably try to stand in the road and stop me. At that point…
If he had been a spy, or an action hero, like in the movies, it wouldn’t have mattered. He’d have thought nothing of busting through a number of men trying to shoot out his windshield or his tires. He’d plow through, sending their bodies flying. He would think nothing of crashing through the access gate and splintering the wooden arm into a million pieces.
But he wasn’t a spy, or an action hero. He was a technical lead—basically middle management. He had grey strands growing at his temples, didn’t work out nearly enough, and was overdue for a prostate exam. He certainly had never spent time living a high-stakes life of dodging gunfire and smashing through security barriers.
Until today, anyway.
Adam pushed away the growing fear and anxiety. He breathed through it. He had to get through this. He had to.
As anticipated, two men emerged from the security kiosk and stood, guns raised, facing him down. They were in the street, and he could tell they weren’t happy.
“Come on, guys,” Adam whispered. “Move out of the way.” He was feeling an eery sort of calm come over him that he couldn’t explain—a determination that helped tamp down the fear and keep him moving. “I can’t stop. I’m not going to stop.”
As if to prove it, he gunned the truck, now hitting 40 miles an hour on the short road.
50.
55.
The men fired several rounds.
Adam heard thuds and saw a web of jagged cracks form in the windshield as one of the bullets grazed the top-right corner. Another thunked into the hood of the truck, thankfully missing anything vital. Adam knew their aim would only improve as he got closer. He started swerving back and forth on the road, sacrificing speed in the name of being a tougher target. At least, that was his hope.
The men were doing their best, but the pistols weren’t long-range weapons, and they had obviously only been fired a few times on a shooting range. There wouldn’t have been much opportunity to prac
tice shooting at a moving target from long range. Adam closed in, swerving his way forward and once again picking up speed.
One of the men stopped to reload his weapon as Adam reached the spot on the road where they stood. The second man braced himself, aimed, and …
Changed his mind last minute. He jumped out of the way, into the bushes lining the road. The first man, only now looking up, was too late.
Adam grimaced as he pulled the truck to the right, hard. He didn’t want to hit the guy. But the swerve wasn’t enough. The Tundra’s bumper clipped the man on his left leg, spinning him sideways just as the side mirror slammed into his shoulder. Adam watched as the man was spun and bounced hard, screaming, into the security kiosk.
Adam’s first instinct was to stop and make sure the man was ok. He swallowed this, ignored it.
Keep driving, a grim voice said from within him. He barely recognized it as his own.
Adam pulled onto the highway’s access road, finally allowing himself to push the truck up to its maximum speed. He passed the beautifully manicured monument grounds at the front entrance, with the stone-framed sign that had a bed of flowers and shrubbery sounding it, along with a small water feature that caught light from the afternoon sun, and made sparkles and flashes that emblazoned everything about this moment in Adam’s memory forever.
Colorado Springs Water Treatment Facility.
It was all too real. This was too real. And that’s what made it all feel so very insane.
Made it.
He didn’t exactly relax, but he did let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His neck and shoulders felt like crushed marble, and he rotated his neck to a symphony of pops and crackles. All this popping of joints had started a few years ago, as he’d whipped passed his low-30s like they didn’t exist, and hit the downward slide toward forty. At 38, he was more than a little aware that the days ahead were getting thinner. If he could help it, he was going to make sure he fattened them up as much as possible. If, that is, he survived beyond today.
