by Greg Cox
A security camera, mounted above the door, swiveled toward her. A glaring white light illuminated the front steps, exposing her to view. A scratchy voice emerged from an intercom by the gate.
“Yes?” a gruff voice asked irritably. Meghan guessed they didn’t get many callers, especially at this hour. “What is it?”
Tess looked straight into the camera lens. “I’m here for the tour.”
“There are no tours anymore.” Static failed to mask the voice’s impatience, nor its pronounced Philadelphia accent. “Can’t you read, sister? This place is closed.”
Tess disagreed. “I want a tour. Let me in.”
The silence that followed made Meghan briefly wonder if Tess’s notorious ability had been overhyped somewhat. Then the ponderous steel door creaked open. No dreadful grating sounds pierced Meghan’s soul; apparently Haspelcorp kept the hinges oiled. Peering across the street, she caught a glimpse of a uniformed guard standing beyond the doorway. He stepped out of Tess’s way.
“That’s better,” she said. Turning around, she beckoned furtively to Meghan and the others, who dashed across the street to join her. They pulled on ski masks before coming within range of the cameras; Meghan had convinced Marco to leave the Klingon mask back in Seattle.
Although under Tess’s spell, the guard still looked alarmed as the masked intruders hustled up the steps toward the open gate. Built like a linebacker, the guard was a beefy young man with a ruddy complexion and greasy black hair. A flattened nose and cauliflower ear hinted that he had spent time in the ring. A name badge identified him as KOZINSKI. He reached for the pistol holstered at his hip.
“No guns,” Tess commanded. “My friends are joining us.”
His hand came away from the pistol. The consternation on his face made it clear that he was fully aware of what was happening. “You witch! What are you doing to me?”
“Don’t be rude,” she instructed him. “And keep your voice down. I told you, my friends and I want a tour.”
His mouth flapped silently, like a fish out of water, as his tongue fought a losing battle against Tess’s influence. “That’s not allowed,” he finally managed to get out. Meghan could tell he wanted to say something a lot louder and more pungent. “This is a secure facility.”
“Sssh!” Tess held a finger before her lips. “Just do as I say.”
The guard nodded.
Like he had any choice, Meghan thought.
Kozinski stood by helplessly, his livid face betraying his true feelings, as the team hurried into the gatehouse. Garrity quietly closed the door behind them.
Meghan took stock of their surroundings. The photos she had perused on the flight had depicted a dilapidated ruin deliberately preserved in a state of arrested decay, full of crumbling plaster, fallen rubble, and rusted metal. There were even supposed to be trees growing through some of the roofs.
That was not what she saw around them. Haspelcorp had obviously given the interior a serious facelift. Beige industrial paint covered the granite walls. Fluorescent lights dispelled the murky shadows of the past. The guard’s security station was equipped with a battery of monitors allowing him to keep an eye on the street outside. Fire extinguishers and smoke alarms brought the facility up to code. A NO SMOKING sign was pinned to a wall.
Meghan didn’t see any signs prohibiting torture.
“Take us to Richard Tyler,” Tess instructed Kozinski. “Quickly.”
The guard’s eyes widened at the mention of Tyler. A strangled protest remained trapped behind closed lips. Seething with frustration, he turned and guided them beyond the gatehouse into the prison proper, which was laid out in a hub-and-spoke design, with multiple cell blocks radiating from a central rotunda. A covered walkway, erected to conceal the prison’s new guests from aerial surveillance, led them across an open courtyard to another arched entryway, which connected directly to the hub. As nearly as Meghan could tell, based on her research, Kozinski was leading them in the right direction. They jogged after the guard at a brisk clip.
But their invasion had not evaded detection. A high-pitched alarm assaulted their ears. Security cameras tracked their progress. By the time they reached the arched entrance to the rotunda, a trio of armed guards had already fanned out to defend the prison’s nerve center. “That’s far enough!” one of the guards bellowed. Handguns and rifles targeted the intruders. “Down on the floor with your hands above your head!”
“Quiet!” Tess silenced them. “No fuss, please. You’re going to help us now.”
The guards lowered their guns. They exchanged baffled looks between themselves. Their lips formed obscenities, but nothing audible emerged. Angry veins bulged beneath their skin. They shuffled restlessly, quivering with useless fury. Clenched fists hung at their sides.
The girl’s absolute control over the men both impressed and terrified Meghan. Thank heaven she’s on our side … for the time being, at least.
Tess covered her ears with her palms. “Could somebody please turn off that siren?”
A circular command station, complete with lighted control panels and video monitors, occupied the center of the rotunda. The guards literally raced each other back to the station to carry out Tess’s command. Within moments, the nerve-jangling alarms ceased.
Meghan’s ears appreciated the relief, but she knew that they had already forfeited the element of surprise. There was no time to lose. Reinforcements were surely on their way. She issued orders rapid-fire. “Garrity, you stay here. Man the controls and keep an eye on the security monitors.” She nodded at Tess and Marco. “We’ll get Tyler.”
“Show us the way,” Tess told Kozinski, before providing Garrrity with some unlikely backup. “The rest of you, make sure we’re not disturbed.”
Against their will, the remaining guards resumed their defensive postures. It was going to be guard against guard. This could get ugly fast, Meghan thought. And bloody.
She hoped to God they were doing the right thing.
Kozinski escorted them into cell block seven. A thirty-foot-high, barrel-vaulted ceiling gave the lengthy corridor the feel of an unsanctified cathedral. Frosted skylights let in slivers of starlight. Metal catwalks ran along the upper gallery. Closed steel doors, equipped with sliding observation slits, concealed the individual cells from view. A fresh coat of olive paint did little to dispel the oppressive atmosphere. Their brisk footsteps echoed hollowly. Riots, murders, and suicides had been common throughout Eastern State’s long history. Small wonder the forbidding structure was said to be haunted …
“Boy, am I not glad to be back here,” Marco commented. His glasses protruded beneath his ski mask. “Give me my Theory Room any day.”
Meghan knew exactly where he was coming from. “Hopefully, we won’t be sticking around long.”
Kozinski halted in front of a reinforced metal door identified only by the number thirty-three. “Here,” he admitted through clenched jaws. A muscle twitched beneath his cheek.
Muffled voices escaped Cell 33. It was impossible to make out what was being said, but an agonized yowl was impossible to mistake. Meghan remembered Maia’s description of Tyler being tortured. As usual, the girl’s prediction had been dead-on.
“Oh hell,” Marco said. “It’s happening right now.”
Galvanized by the obvious suffering going on right behind the door, he rushed forward to the rescue. Meghan grabbed on to his arm. “Wait. We can’t just barge right in like the cavalry. We don’t know what’s waiting for us in there.”
She confiscated Kozinki’s sidearm and handed it to Marco.
“Surprise them.”
The gun felt weird and heavy in Marco’s hand. He was an analyst after all, not a field agent. I should be brainstorming in the Theory Room with Abby, he lamented, not storming Philadelphia’s homegrown version of the Bastille!
But Richard Tyler, and quite possibly the world, depended on him getting in touch with his inner James Bond … or at least Austin Powers. “Okay, if you don’t hear
from me in a couple of minutes, send in the troops.”
His heart was racing so fast he half expected it to achieve escape velocity. His mouth felt as dry as Arrakis. Swallowing hard, he visualized the cell from his brief visit several hours ago. He had Maia’s sketch loaded into a disposable cell phone, along with countless photos of Eastern State cribbed from the Internet, but hopefully the picture was still burned into his brain. Raising the gun, he dived headfirst into his mind’s eye.
Geronimo!
A heartbeat later, he teleported into a scene straight out of Maia’s nightmare.
Ryland and Astrid were “interrogating” Richard Tyler, who was handcuffed to the chair in the center of the room. Frost coated the prisoner’s face and body. He shivered like a leaf while his tormentors looked on implacably. His teeth chattered. His lips were blue. Marco got the chills just looking at him.
“Knock it off!” he ordered, waving the pistol at the startled interrogators. He had appeared in a corner at the rear of the cell, facing his adversaries. He distorted his voice to avoid being recognized by Ryland. Pulling a gun on his former boss wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounded. “Leave him alone!”
Ryland recovered from his shock at the masked man’s abrupt entrance. He kept his cool on. “Back again already? You’re pushing your luck, but that’s fine with me. We’ve got an empty cell waiting for you.”
The skinny teenager glared at Marco. He had already identified her from Maia’s description as Astrid Bonner, an “extra-crispy” who had been picked up by NSA several weeks before fifty/fifty. Her file had described her as a teenage runaway with a long list of juvenile offenses, including assault, vandalism, shoplifting, and kidnapping; a court-appointed psychiatrist had diagnosed her as having borderline sociopathic tendencies. A perfect recruit for Haspelcorp, in other words.
“I don’t like being interrupted,” she said coldly. Frigid puffs of mist punctuated every syllable.
The frost melted off Tyler as she turned her attention to Marco. Before he could stop her, she leaned forward and breathed onto his gun. An icy glaze instantly covered the soldered steel, which turned cold enough to burn Marco’s hand. Panicking, he tried to pull the trigger, but it was already frozen solid. Nothing happened.
Frak, Marco thought. I’m so screwed.
Refrigerating things wasn’t Astrid’s only talent. A roundhouse kick revealed mad fighting skills as well. The kick knocked the frozen gun from Marco’s grip. It clattered loudly to the floor. Glacial blue eyes stabbed at him like icicles. Thin blue lips turned upward in a mirthless smile.
“You think you’ve got goose bumps now?” she puffed. “Just wait till we get to absolute zero.”
For all his genius, he could think of only one thing left to do.
“HELP!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.
SEVENTEEN
MARCO’S CRY SPURRED Meghan to action. She lunged for the door handle, but now it was Tess’s turn to put the brakes on. “Don’t,” she advised Meghan, who instantly stepped away from the door. The older woman honestly didn’t know if she had done so of her own volition or not. Tess looked at Kozinski. “You go first.”
The guard gulped. He tugged open the door and marched into the cell. Almost immediately, he was clubbed in the head by someone lurking beside the door. He dropped to the ground, clutching his skull. “What the hell?” a man’s voice, which Meghan instantly identified as Dennis Ryland’s, blurted in surprise. “I thought—”
Tess and Meghan darted into the cell before he could complete that sentence. “Hands up!” Tess shouted. “No guns!”
Ryland tossed his automatic away. Meghan guessed that was what he had waylaid Kozinski with. The former head of NTAC instantly recognized Tess; he had been in charge when Tom and Diana had first encountered her. “Doerner!”
Astrid Bonner pounced at Tess, but the girl was ready for her.
“Freeze!” she commanded.
Her hasty injunction had an unexpected effect on the hostile teenager. A choking sound caught in Astrid’s throat as, with frightening speed, she froze herself solid. Her pale, translucent skin crystallized. Her eyes glazed over. Cracking noises escaped her lungs. Spiky white hair turned hard and brittle. In an instant, she looked less like flesh and blood and more like a fragile ice sculpture. Rime-covered boots slipped on the cement floor. She toppled over onto the floor … and shattered into pieces.
A horrified hush fell over the cell. Tess freaked out. “No!” she screamed, dropping to her knees in front of the fractured teen. “That’s not what I meant!”
“You monster!” Ryland hissed. His hands were still high above his head. “I should have had you lobotomized when I had the chance!”
“Shut up!” Meghan barked. Although as shocked as anyone by what she had just witnessed, she pulled herself together for the sake of the mission. Retrieving Ryland’s gun from the floor, she handed it to Marco. “Don’t let him go anywhere.”
“Er, okay,” he said, his voice lower and gruffer than usual. He aimed the gun at Ryland, his discomfort evident even through his ski mask. He sounded like he was doing a bad Jimmy Cagney impression. “You heard the lady. Stay where you are.”
Hoping that Marco could keep Ryland in line, at least for a few moments, Meghan checked on Tyler. The brutalized prisoner was cold and shivering. He looked like he was on the verge of hypothermia. His teeth couldn’t stop chattering.
“W-w-who?” he stammered. “W-what’s happening?”
“We’ve come to get you out of here,” she explained tersely. Inspecting his bonds, she found his wrists handcuffed to the back of the chair. She glanced over at Ryland. “Where’s the key?”
He nodded at the freeze-dried remains of Astrid. “You’re free to look through the pieces.”
Terrific, Meghan thought. She looked briefly at the grisly fragments. Now that Astrid was dead, the frozen body parts were starting to melt into a gory mess. Meghan shook her head. No way was she going to rummage through the grisly debris, not when there was another option available.
She took off her gloves and laid her hands on the cuffs.
Here we go, she thought.
Meghan had first discovered her ability when she had unintentionally transformed a fountain pen into an orchid. Experimenting with paper clips, rulers, and other objects, she had eventually figured out that she could now transmute inorganic materials into organic. Plant life, to be exact, perhaps because of her lifelong love of gardening. She hadn’t had the nerve to try to generate animal tissue yet, and wasn’t about to start now.
The cuffs were uncomfortably cold to the touch, but her fingers didn’t pull away.
Closing her eyes, she visualized slender green vines growing in the sun. The cold steel handcuffs softened beneath her touch, growing warm and vibrant. When she opened her eyes again, the metal bonds had been replaced by leafy green tendrils, which she easily tore apart with her bare hands. “It’s okay now,” she told Tyler. “You’re free.”
She slipped her gloves back on and helped the prisoner to his feet. His orange prison jumpsuit was damp and clammy. He seemed weak and exhausted from his frigid ordeal. “Can you walk?”
“I’m not sure,” he confessed. “Maybe.”
Throwing her arm beneath his shoulder, she helped support his weight, while simultaneously wishing that he had been a somewhat smaller man. “All right, everybody, we’re moving out.”
Unfortunately, Tess was still in meltdown mode. Stricken with guilt, she rocked back and forth upon her knees. A bloody puddle, which smelled like a defrosting meat locker, oozed toward her. “I didn’t mean to,” she keened over and over. “I just said ‘freeze’ to stop her, like on TV, you know? It’s not my fault …”
“I know,” Meghan said. She feared for the girl’s hard-won sanity. “Tess, we have to get going. It’s not safe here.”
But Tess seemed lost in her own despair. Tears flooded her cheeks. Her gaze was locked on the thawing remains of Astrid Bonner. “I don’t want to do this
anymore. I’m done …”
“You can quit later,” Meghan promised. She was tempted to leave the unstable girl behind, but, no, Tess had come through for them when it counted; Meghan wasn’t going to abandon her now. She racked her brain for some way to get through to the girl. “What about Kevin, Tess? He’s waiting for you, remember? You want to see Kevin again, don’t you?”
That got her attention. Moist, red-rimmed eyes looked up at her. “Kevin?”
“That’s right.” Meghan nodded at the door. “We’re going to go see Kevin.”
“Yes, please.” She climbed tremulously to her feet, suddenly eager to leave the dismal cell behind. She forced herself to look away from the shattered corpse. “I need my Kevin.”
Ryland shook his head in disgust. “Big mistake,” he told Meghan. “She belongs here. With all the other dangerous freaks.”
“Nobody belongs here,” she shot back. “Not with you in charge.”
Gunshots sounded outside the cell. The alarms kicked in again, twice as loud as before. Meghan heard what sounded like a full-fledged firefight back the way they’d come. A second wave of guards had obviously arrived on the scene, only to run into Garrity and the brainwashed security force. She wondered how long they could hold off the reinforcements.
“What’s taking you guys?” Garrity hollered over the gunfire. “It’s feeling like the Alamo out here!”
Ryland chuckled smugly. “You might as well give up. I don’t know exactly who you think you are, but you’re locked up tight.”
“Funny you should say that,” Meghan replied. “’Cause you’re our ticket out of here.”
She traded Tyler to Marco and took custody of Ryland herself. The nerdy analyst grunted beneath Tyler’s weight. She prodded Ryland toward the doorway with the muzzle of her gun. Tess followed numbly behind them, wringing her hands and sobbing quietly to herself. They left Kozinski sprawled upon the floor.
The gunshots sounded even louder out in the corridor. Crouching low, they trotted back toward the rotunda. Meghan led the way, using Ryland as a human shield. “Wait!” Tyler protested weakly, dragging his feet. “My people. Evee. Yul …”