“I’d rather keep the trail leading from the airport to here as cold as possible,” I said. “Give me a way to reach you, and if I need a pickup, I’ll call. But not until tomorrow at the earliest.”
“You’re sure?”
“Han, we’re the only apex predators for miles in any direction. I can survive overnight in the woods.”
He shrugged, and handed over a new burner cell phone. Then he added a business card in case I lost the cell phone. The card wasn’t to reach him; it was to reach the Path way-station, which was useful given I hadn’t made direct contact with anyone other than him, locally. All it had on it was a phone number.
Then I was on my own. I waited until his taillights disappeared, before hopping the gate and heading into the trees.
One of the things not in my inventory was a flashlight. This was not an oversight; I’m more accustomed to moving through woods in the dark than not, and I’ve found that holding a light source when trying not to be seen is almost always a bad idea. It was also a full moon, so I was doing fine.
Plus, I wasn’t really traveling through heavy underbrush here. There was a perfectly good road leading right to what was left of the building, and it was unlit. It looked like there used to be illumination along the route, but the lights must have been connected to the building’s power grid, rather than to the local municipality.
I stuck to the edge of the road in the event someone came along. It was all private land, and I was assuming it wasn’t heavily guarded on account of there being no reason to guard an old laboratory that had been leveled by fire a year ago, but that didn’t mean just walking down the middle of the road was anything other than a dumb idea.
I arrived at the scene suddenly. It seemed for a long time as if the road was just going to wind through the woods indefinitely, until I turned a corner and there it was. From a landscaping standpoint, it was pretty well hidden.
The building—if you could call it that—looked exactly as advertised. Parts of two of the walls were still standing, and the center column for the elevator shaft looked mostly intact, but that was about all. The rest was rubble and loose ash.
I walked around the edge of the wreckage a couple of times, to get a decent idea of what I was dealing with. It was easy enough to figure out exactly where the structure used to be, because at least two or three sub-levels had been destroyed in the fire along with everything that had stood above-ground. There was, in other words, a pretty steep drop that would have been easy to miss were it not for the yellow Do Not Enter ribbon along all the parts that didn’t have a wall in the way.
On the first pass, I could only conclude that this trip was indeed a mistake, because the place certainly looked abandoned. The second time around was when I spotted the ladder.
It was easy enough to miss. The safety ribbon skirted the entire edge of the hole, all except for an opening for a door that was in one of the free-standing walls. The ladder was on the other side of the doorway.
I took the ladder down. At the bottom was a well-trod path through the ashes: more than one person had made their way along there, and not just once.
I followed it to its end, which at first looked to be the elevator shaft in the center, but that wasn’t right. The door to the elevator was there, but the makeshift pathway went past it and around the side, to where there was a more standard door.
It led to a stairwell. That was obvious from the markings around the door, which indicated exactly that, graphically, with a symbol for a staircase on the wall next to something that looked like it used to hold an EXIT sign. The stairs appeared to exist within the brick column that also held the elevator.
There was no lock on the door to pick, but I also couldn’t get it open. Next to the doorknob was a black panel with a blinking red light. It required a keycard.
The first thing I thought of was, this was why finding a lock-pick set was so difficult: nobody used pickable locks anymore. The second was: this facility still had power.
The part about there still being power was great news, because it meant I was actually onto something. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me get inside.
I looked around to see if anything in the rubble could be of use—like an extra keycard or a crowbar or something. If necessary, I thought one of the guns could do the trick, but that would be a real risk. For starters, it was a metal door, and dying from a self-inflicted wound on a ricochet was not near the top of my list for acceptable ways to go. Also, it would make a godawful lot of noise, which I was trying to avoid.
I found another solution, of sorts, a few yards from the doorway: a big stone block that looked about perfect if one wanted to have a seat, which was evidently how it was being used, insofar as on the other side of the block there was a pile of cigarette butts.
Not only did the remaining underground levels of this supposedly abandoned facility have power, someone down there had a nicotine habit.
So, I took up a position on the other side of the elevator shaft, and I waited, and hoped the smoker was on duty, and hadn’t quit the habit yet.
It was a solid four hours of standing, roughly, according to the moon’s passage. (I didn’t have a watch, and I wasn’t going to open up the cell phone in the dark to check the time, for the same reason I wasn’t using a flashlight.) I spent the time wishing I had a drink, and a chair, which was what I wished for most of the time anyway.
Finally, the door opened.
I could have just as easily positioned myself on the blind side of the door, and then, when it opened, snuck in behind whoever emerged, but I decided this was a bad plan because I didn’t know if only one person would come out, or if I was going to need a keycard to get anywhere else once inside. Ambush was a much better plan.
The guy who exited looked like such a prototypical security guard, I had to wonder if someone was having me on. He was portly, short, and had on a loose-fitting security guard outfit, with a cap. His belt—holding up his pants beneath an ample gut—had a handgun, a walkie-talkie, and a keycard on a cord.
He grumbled as he walked, which made it incredibly easy to come up behind him despite making a little noise along the way. By the time he noticed I was there, I had the tip of a sword pointed at his chin.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, dropping his lighter.
“Sorry,” I said. “Do you want to find that? I don’t want to interrupt your smoke.”
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“A guy who wants to get into the lab beneath us. I assume that card on your belt will do the job?”
“Buddy, is that a sword?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. For real?”
“Yes, it’s a real sword,” I said. “You act like you’ve never seen one.”
“The fuck, of course I haven’t, we don’t get ninjas in Chicago no more.”
“Do you want the smoke or not?”
“Yeah, yeah. Jesus.”
He had the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. The lighter on the ground was a lost cause, though; he didn’t even bother. He pulled out a book of matches instead.
“Is this some kinda joke, man?” he asked, taking his puffs.
“No joke. You think I’d come all the way out here for a prank?”
“I dunno, maybe. One of the other guys could…you wanna tour the labs? What for, man, there’s nothing down there.”
“I’m obviously not prepared to take your word on that,” I said.
“Yeah, guess not.” He held out his hand. “Look, I’m Ted. Maybe we can work this out, you and me.”
I looked at his hand, but didn’t take it.
“Nice to meet you, Ted,” I said.
“And your name?” he asked.
“Come on.”
“Yeah okay. It’s just that I’m gonna lose my job.”
“I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”
He laughed.
“There’s cameras down there, man. Soon as you pop up on one, I’m out, and I lik
e this job.”
“Sorry about that. I can kill you instead, if you want.”
“With the sword.”
I realized the problem was that he didn’t think of the sword as an actual threat.
“Not working for you, huh?” I said.
“I mean, it could be a prop. Maybe you should cut something with it or, I dunno. I mean is it sharp?”
I reached into the bag and pulled out the Beretta M-9. This is an extremely boring handgun that also happens to be very reliable. When you remember that guns used to explode all the time, reliability ends up being something you value pretty highly.
“Is this better?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s better,” he said, taking a deep breath.
I slid the sword into the sheath on my back.
“I mean, it’s not better,” Ted said, “but I can respect that. No offense, but if I’m gonna go, I don’t wanna be the guy who went down from a sword wound. That guy who took the arrow downtown, remember him? I bet if he dies—”
“What do you say we just go downstairs?”
“Yeah, all right.”
He walked over to the door and unlocked it with the card, then led the way through. The stairwell had running lights to guide us on our way, and smelled like a fireplace, even a year later.
Ted stopped at the first landing, at the door which presumably led to the highest of the intact sub-levels.
“How far down does it go?” I asked.
“Two more after this one.”
“And you guard it alone?”
“It’s abandoned, so yeah. The whole place is empty and burned out. Dunno what you’re looking for, but prepare to be disappointed.”
“Do you sleep here?”
“What? No, man. What part of abandoned don’t you get?”
“I didn’t see a car, topside,” I said. “You don’t look like someone who walks all the way from the nearest town. No offense.”
“I work for a security company. Next shift drives up, leaves the car for me, and I drive it back.”
“Odd arrangement.”
“Sure, but it’s what they want.”
“So you’re really alone here. There’s no bunker of second shift guards or anything.”
“Like I said.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
He swiped his card and pulled open the door.
As with the stairs, there was some lighting. It was just enough to make the place seem kind of creepy.
I saw ten doors.
“Tell me about your routine, Ted. Do you have to clear all the rooms?”
“I go down there, and I turn around, and I come back here. Place is spooky as shit, so you if you’re asking whether I check every room every time, I don’t. Am I s’posed to? Sure. Don’t tell anybody. Besides, sound carries really well, so it’s not like an intruder would be a secret. A chair in one of those offices decided to collapse one time when I was on the other side of the floor, and I tell you, I saw God that night. Scared my ass like you don’t know. But if you’re thinking somebody might hide in here or whatever, I mean I guess, but these are all cleaned-out, so I don’t know why. You wanna see one?”
“Yes, humor me.”
We walked over to the nearest door. He pushed it open.
“It’s not locked?” I asked.
“No, genius, because it’s empty, like I been saying.”
We stepped in.
I’ve spent a little time in biology labs. For a good month, I visited one daily, as people with medical backgrounds (I’m assuming; I wasn’t in a position to ask for credentials) studied me. I knew what I was looking at, then, when we stepped inside the room.
It was a big space—half the doors on the hallway evidently led into this room. Most of it was taken up by lab counters, and each counter had a hood, i.e., antiseptic spaces where samples could be examined. One wall going all the way down to the other end of the room had a collection of unused devices, and freezer units.
I stuck the barrel of the gun in Ted’s back and walked us along the wall with the freezers.
Lab freezers are a little different from regular ones, because they have to maintain a lower temperature, so it was easy enough to see if any were currently in use: they hummed loudly, and they had an LED display indicating the temperature inside. None of these appeared to be running.
I pulled open a couple of the doors just to verify that they were empty. They were. There was a spot on the handle where a lock would fit, if somebody were inclined to seal up something in a powered-down industrial freezer. None of them had locks.
“Are you satisfied?” Ted asked.
“All the floors are like this?”
“Nah, the next two have better lighting.”
“Other than that?”
“Look,” he said, “maybe this would go faster if you told me what you were looking for.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Super.”
“Does anyone else work in this place?” I asked.
“You mean, other guards? We’ve been through that. There are shifts.”
“No, I mean staff.”
“You came down the ladder, right? Did that look OSHA certified to you?”
I didn’t know what OSHA was, but I got his point.
“Let’s try this another way,” I said. “Is there any room here that you can’t get into? Any door you’re not supposed to open?”
“Supposed to?”
“A place they told you not to go, maybe.”
He looked like someone having an argument with himself. It didn’t last too long.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, there is. It’s on the bottom floor.”
We stopped off on the middle floor first, just to confirm a few things, such as: the improved lighting he spoke of; that the rooms he said were empty really were empty; that they were all unlocked. It looked a little less abandoned than the higher floor, and the lights came from the ceiling halogens rather than the emergency spotlight boxes in the corner. The lab also looked cleaner, and like it was used more recently. But, it was still empty of people and things.
The bottom floor had a layout that was essentially the same as the first two, but when we got to the laboratory door that had been unlocked the other two times, we stopped.
“This is it,” he said.
“If the room on the other side of this is the same size as the others, this is a pretty big omission, Ted. You’re not allowed to inspect the room?”
“No, it’s off-limits. So’s the one at the end.”
He pointed to a set of double-doors at the far end of the hallway. They were painted white, as were most of the doors we’d come across, so they were probably steel underneath too.
“Any idea why?” I asked.
“They just told us our job was to make sure nobody got into anything on the top two floors, and this hallway. That’s the whole gig. I wasn’t gonna ask why. I figure they got someone else worrying about what’s in there.”
“Like, a secret security guard?”
“More like a high-security system. Something pricier than I am.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” I said. “Does your badge work on the door?”
“You know? I never tried.”
He tried. The light turned green.
“Hey, what do you know?” he said.
“You seriously never tried that before?”
“Swear to God.”
I was having trouble believing a security guard was that incurious, but this was not the time to review his job performance.
“Well, let’s go,” I said. “And if there is a high security system in there…well, you first.”
“Thanks, buddy.”
He re-ran the card and pulled open the door.
There were no lights on, but a bank of switches next to the door took care of that.
“Wow,” he said, seeing the room he’d been guarding for who-knows-how-long, for the first time.
/> The lab setup was the same as the ones on the other floors, but with one key difference: a water tank, right in the middle. It was maybe fifteen-by-fifteen, looked about ten feet deep, and was made of what had to be some pretty thick glass.
The way the overhead lights hit the side of the glass made it impossible to see inside. It was obviously full of a liquid, but the nature and opacity of that liquid was uncertain.
“Look, we found the executive swimming pool,” he said. “Is this what you were looking for?”
“I already told you I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said. “But this might be it.”
I stepped up to a panel next to the side of the tank, and flipped a few of the switches, until internal lights came up on the other side of the glass.
The water—if it was water—was milky; the lights only enhanced that milkiness, like a headlight in fog. That said, something was clearly moving around in there.
“All right,” Ted said, “put down the gun.”
In my curiosity—and probably because I didn’t think of him as a serious threat—I’d temporarily forgotten I had a hostage. That hostage had pulled his own gun, which I’d never bothered to take from him because again: I didn’t see a threat there. So now he was standing near the only exit, pointing a gun at the back of my head, and I still didn’t entirely know what I was looking at.
I didn’t want to hurt him, but he was making this difficult.
“Don’t you want to see what’s in the tank?” I asked, turning slowly, so that my back was to the tank.
Whatever was swimming about in there was undeniably coming closer. Also, one of the switches I’d thrown on the panel appeared to be connected to a heart monitor, because I was picking up a beeping noise that was increasing in frequency.
“I’m not even supposed to be here, and neither are you,” he said. “Are you gonna drop the gun, or do I gotta shoot you?”
“You might hit the tank,” I said.
“You’re right, they won’t like that. Move over there.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine. Fine, stay there, then, but put the gun down, slowly.”
I crouched down to the floor and placed the gun near my feet, then stood again. While I was doing that, Ted unhooked his radio.
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