19. Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Jen
The trees south of the lab are old. Crull and I move through them without a sound, him a step off my left. The lab is a quarter mile through the trees — concrete, two stories, no windows on the ground floor of the south wall, the roofline dark against a sky with no moon.
I can't see Fen on the ridge above us.
Crull touches my elbow. We stop at the tree line. Forty yards of open gravel and one fence between us and the north wall, where the service door sits — the weak point on the plan, our way in, around the corner from the south face we came through the woods to reach.
We wait.
Then the mark spikes — not hot, sharp, a single instant of him all the way up on the ridge. It eases, done. He's placed it. The compound's in the ventilation now.
Crull's eyes come to me, reading it off my face. I give him the nod.
We cross the gravel at a hard run, him a half step ahead. He goes over the fence first, low; I follow; he's got his hand out for me on the other side. We're at the wall. The service door is twenty feet down — single deadbolt, no card reader. Crull sets his shoulder to it once and the frame gives.
We're inside. Concrete corridor, empty, the air faintly chemical.
Forty feet down, a gargoyle guard is on the floor. On his back, eyes closed, out cold — the gas has him. He'll come up before long, and we need to be gone when he does. We pass him.
First corner. Crull looks, nods. We turn.
Second corridor. Another guard, on his knees against the wall, eyes half-closed, hand on his sidearm but slow — the gas hasn't finished him. He sees us. He starts to lift the sidearm.
I use the voice.
"Put it down."
His head jerks. His eyes find mine. The sidearm slips from his hand and he folds to the floor.
Crull's amber is steady. "Move."
We move. The stairwell's at the end of the corridor, and as we climb I reach for my bonds. Six lines, all where they should be.
Two flights up. The second-floor corridor is wider, more doors, more light. Two more guards down, out cold, no voice needed. The third person on this floor is at a desk.
A woman, mid-forties, lab coat. Technical, not security. Not a gargoyle.
"Wait."
She's not reaching for anything. She isn't afraid. She's been standing at that desk waiting for someone to come up these stairs. She’s almost too calm.
"Are you one of the analysts?" I ask.
"Yes, genetics." Fast, like she's clearing it out of the way.
"My name’s Jill Park, I've been here three years.
When the other sites started burning I hoped you'd come here next.
I'll tell you where Linden is, where the data is, where the samples are.
" She stops. Her eyes hold mine. "Are you really getting them out? The women."
"Every one we can reach."
Something in her lets go. "Then I’ll give you all of it."
"Why?"
"Because this is evil. I heard the last one. Through the wall. She was twenty-two and I heard what they did to her, and I have a daughter."
I don't move for a moment. "I want Linden."
"Residence. South building. Hasn't been in this wing since yesterday morning."
"Data."
"Hard drives, cabinet behind the desk in the analysis room. Biometric — Linden's print only. Or you destroy it."
"Samples."
"Cold storage, basement, below the wing. Keycard access." She holds out her hand with a keycard. "I have it."
I take it. "Stay in the building until we're clear. Hide in your office. Don't come out until you hear the guards waking up."
We move.
The analysis room is at the end of the corridor, door closed. I stop at it, the keycard in my pocket, Park's information in my head: Linden's in the residence. Linden is not in this room. The drives are.
I put my hand on the door. The voice sits in my throat. Crull nods.
I open it.
The room is bigger than I expected. White walls, a long steel table down the middle, monitors above it dark, a cabinet wall at the far end — steel, biometric reader on the panel. Empty.
We step in. Crull scans the corners, the closet, the supply nook. Then he goes still, his head turning to the doorway we came through, nostrils flaring, amber narrowing.
"Someone's close."
"Where?"
"Don't know yet. Not in this room."
I push it down and cross to the cabinet. The reader's a black square at chest height. I put my hand on it. Nothing — Linden's print only. I step back.
There's a chair pulled out from the table at an angle that says someone got up and didn't push it in. The papers are face-down. Someone was here within the hour.
Then a door — not in the room, in the corridor — opens, and the air Crull's been holding in his chest changes.
"Two," he says, low.
I lift my hand. He stops.
"Let them come."
She steps into the doorway. Sixties, gray hair pulled back, glasses on a chain, a lab coat over a dark sweater, hands empty.
A step back and to the side is the man Crull smelled — big, still, not afraid, a sidearm out low, muzzle at the floor in a way that says he can raise it faster than I can do anything about it.
Flat eyes. There's something in his ears.
Two small matte units, one in each. Not comms — the wrong shape, sealed against the canal. Built for me.
She doesn't look at Crull or at the man. She looks at me.
"Jen." She says it the way you say the name of a problem child. She's not afraid. "Four sites. And now here."
I hold the voice in my throat and let her say whatever she came down here to say.
She reads me and doesn’t seem surprised.
"You're not going to stop me." A small tip of her head toward the man with the units in his ears. "Wouldn't work on him. I had those made after Theresa. For you."
She watches my face.
"Looks like I guessed right."
Crull angles half a step across me, between my body and the threat.
"You didn't come up here for me."
Her eyes flick to the cabinet.
"You came for what's inside.”
She smiles, "It won't open without me."
"It has every active file. Every woman who hasn't been taken yet. Addresses. Collection windows. Names."
She doesn't blink.
"Everything you came for."
I step around Crull. "And the basement."
"Samples. Archives."
"What do you want?"
"Safe passage."
"That's all?"
"That's all that's left."
"You think I'd let you walk?"
"I think you'll decide what’s worth more to you."
I let the silence stretch.
Crull doesn't move.
Linden's built her whole play on two things—the man behind her with the sealed units in his ears and the cabinet only her print will open.
She's planned for the Voice. The reports from four burned sites. The woman who speaks and people obey.
She built an answer for that.
What isn't in any report is what happened three nights ago on a riverbank. What changed there. She built those earpieces for the thing I say.
Not for the thing I am.
Slate races up my arms.
The gun comes up.