25 - Sam
S AM AND N ICO RACED ACROSS the empty lobby for the bank of elevators.
Sam pressed the button to call a car, and kept pressing. He knew it wouldn’t speed things up, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Nico’s hand was spinning his wedding ring. They were both nervous, then. Something about that made Sam feel better.
Maybe Bond got nervous too. Got scared. But did it anyway. Which was kind of what it meant to be brave.
Sam was going to do it anyway.
The elevator car finally arrived, and they stepped inside.
Sam hit the close door button and as soon as they shut, he did the button dance. Prime numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, then 15 and 2 at the same time.
Nothing happened.
None of the button lights turned off. And then the elevator rose toward the second floor.
“It didn’t work!” Sam said, but he didn’t have to. Nico could see.
Ding. The doors opened on two and then closed again.
Sam was so frustrated.
Ding. The doors opened on three, and then closed.
Ding. Five, and closed.
Ding. Seven, and closed.
Sam’s mind raced. If they couldn’t get the elevator to take them there, they could use the stairs.
Ding. Eleven, and closed.
Fire safety meant there had to be an exit from the real thirteenth floor, they couldn’t have built the building without it. So he and Nico could just go to fourteen and walk down one flight. Like it was an emergency. Because it was.
“New plan,” Sam told Nico, and hit the button for 14.
1123
Time toImpact: 36min51sec
When they walked out the elevator on fourteen, there were huge interior conference rooms on both sides of corridor.
“This isn’t the same layout as thirteen,” Sam said as he turned them right at the perimeter corridor toward the southeast stairwell.
Bigger interior offices here too. “There’s all this space in the core of the building. ”
“Well it’s not hollow,” Nico observed.
“Hold on.” Sam ran west down the corridor to where Donuts’ office was just one floor down. Here the offices seemed the same on both sides.
He made the right turn and ran north. It all seemed like a regular office building.
Sam passed the two service elevators and kept going, turning right to run east, passing where his own office was on the floor below.
On the interior side, the space opened up into a vast bull pen, rows upon rows of empty cubicles. The building was enormous!
He got to the corner above Keahilani’s office and turned south, running down past the kitchen—that was the same on both floors—and then past the hallway to the elevator.
When he got back to Nico, Sam was breathing hard. “There’s hidden space on thirteen. We just have to figure out how to get into it.”
1129
Time toImpact: 30min02sec
In the stairwell, the door to the thirteenth floor was unmarked. It was also locked.
“How are we going to get through?” Nico asked.
Sam remembered some stuff from those lock-picking videos online, but he didn’t have Hergenreder’s tools this time.
“What’s the obstacle?” Byron asked on their earpieces.
“Locked door,” Sam explained.
“Try the unlock program on the hummingbird,” Byron said.
Sam scrolled on the controller until he found the U NLOCK command.
Following the diagram on the screen, Sam inserted the hummingbird drone’s beak into the keyhole and pressed U NLOCK .
The wings blurred in motion, and Sam stepped back as the beak vibrated in the lock.
Byron explained over their earbuds. “Its beak is expanding and changing shape to find the shear line for each pin. When it has all the pins lined up, it will turn the plug and unlock the door.”
As if on cue, the hummingbird flipped a half somersault to the left, and they heard the deadbolt slide open.
“Pull her out carefully,” Byron instructed, and Sam did. The beak looked crazy, like a key.
Nico tried the handle. The door swung in toward them an inch.
It had worked!
“We’re in,” Nico said.
Sam peeked: white emergency lights flashed in the corridor that he had walked down just three days earlier. It had all seemed so normal then. Exciting even, to be on a team of spies.
He had no idea he’d been working for the bad guys!
Now he was all anxious about someone shooting at him and Nico.
Sam knew Bond would never sneak into a villain’s lair without some serious firepower. Usually a Walther PPK. Daniel Craig’s would only work if he held it. All Sam and Nico had were tranquilizer bees and a hummingbird with a key-shaped beak that could maybe poke someone in the eye.
Sam signaled with his own eyes for Nico to get the bees ready. Nico swung the hive off his back—
BANG! The door slammed in toward the stairwell and Brigadoon lunged at Sam. Nico launched himself in between them and Nico and Brigadoon were suddenly grappling like a wrestling match. Brigadoon had Nico pushed back against the stairs going up.
Thoughts raced through Sam’s mind…
He should have warned Nico about Brigadoon being this huge guy who might be guarding things! Why didn’t he think of that?
He should have made more of an effort to be friends with the guy, maybe then he wouldn’t be attacking them.
There was no way Nico was going to be able to open the backpack to launch the bees and sting the guy.
Sam could stab Brigadoon with the hummingbird, but what would that do? The guy was linebacker huge.
Suddenly, Sam remembered the syringe of tranquilizer in his pocket—he grabbed it, hand shaking with adrenaline. He pulled off the cap.
Brigadoon was choking Nico! There was no time to lose!
Sam raised his fist and stabbed Brigadoon between his shoulder blades.
“Ahh! You fucker!” Brigadoon twisted and threw his hands back tofree the syringe—it gave Nico the chance to pin Brigadoon’s arms tight.
Sam pushed down with his thumb to make sure all the tranquilizer goo got in.
Brigadoon’s body started to sag. His voice slowed as he mumbled spitefully, “You don’t know what you’re doing… We’re… not… the enemy.”
And then he was out, collapsed against the stairs next to Nico, who was panting.
Sam struggled to find his own breath. “He’s not dead, is he?”
Nico checked. “Still breathing.” Nico pulled his controller out from under Brigadoon’s limp body. “Quick thinking there. Thanks.”
“You jumped in front of me!” Sam said. “I should be thanking you.”
“Let’s just say we’re a good team.” Nico gave Sam that half smile, and Sam melted inside.
“The best,” Sam agreed. But Brigadoon’s words haunted him. What did he mean they weren’t the enemy? They sure were acting like the enemy!
Nico opened the drone bee hive and activated the controller to mass the bees in the air above them.
1138
Time toImpact: 21min14sec
Nico by his side, Sam cautiously walked down the hallway, the swarm of bee drones flying above them in two groups, just under the ceiling. Sam had the hummingbird drone flying ten feet ahead so he could check that early-warning view on the controller in his hand.
The floor seemed empty, but this was the one group of people who knew for sure there were no aliens, so they wouldn’t have evacuated. Sam bet everyone was in the secret interior. He just had to figure out how to get into it.
As they made their way past the kitchen to Keahilani’s office, Sam’s heart pounded.
He ducked the hummingbird right, into Keahilani’s outer office.
A drone head-swivel showed it was empty.
He flew the drone past the inner doorway, cautious.
Keahilani’s inner office was empty too. The desk was strewn with papers, and her ridiculously large thermos with all its stickers sat by an unconnected computer monitor.
Meaning she’d taken her laptop, and maybe been in a hurry.
Sam shook his head to tell Nico they weren’t there. “They’re here somewhere.”
They turned left into the north corridor, passing Sam’s office.
Left again into the western perimeter corridor, heading south.
They passed the glass-fronted fire hose cabinet inset in the wall on their right and two more offices.
Then the three service elevators on their left, and they kept going toward the office where he’d met Donuts.
She was probably in on it too. He’d seen the pyramid in her office.
That was disappointing. He had to assume they were all in on it, everyone on the thirteenth floor.
Wait.
Sam stopped walking.
On fourteen there were only two service elevators…
Which meant the third one here wasn’t a regular elevator!
1143
Time toImpact: 16min04sec
There was a separate call button just by the elevator doors on the far left—so that must be the fake-out one.
But when Sam hunched low to check it out, he could see it was another version of the scanner people used to access the thirteenth-floor offices from the secure elevator lobby—it didn’t want fingerprints. It wanted DNA.
He knew his own wouldn’t work, but the boss’s DNA would open it for sure. “Be right back,” he told Nico, and ran a quick L pattern to get to Keahilani’s office.
The metal-walled thermos covered with stickers was on her desk where he’d just seen it.
Back at the service elevator bay, Sam held up the thermos. “Keahilani’s” he explained.
Sam looked around. “I need something to swab it.” Something slick, that would pick up but not absorb whatever DNA was there.
“Nico, Sam,” That was Peter’s voice in their ears. “We’re running out of time! Fourteen minutes to impact.”
“Where are you?” Sam asked.
“At the broadcast tower. Bec and Frida got in, and Byron’s helping patch the channels into a single feed.”
”That’s it—time!” Nico said. “Ari, they’re not changing the data the telescope receives, just what it’s reporting back to Earth.
Look at the day the dead spot in space started, and compare it with the day before.
Overlay them, factoring out how things should have moved because of time.
Something will be different, and that could lead you to the false code. ”
“I’ll try it,” Ari said, but not like they thought it would work. “I’ve tried everything else.”