He was a taller, stronger version of herself. She would never see him again, but she could picture him for a moment, long enough to remember what she was dying for on this day. As she let her grief pour down her cheeks, the memories of her brother were replaced by more recent ones—the days and nights she had spent with Dean. He might live, if she managed to disarm all the bombs. And if she could dispose of the vials. She had twenty-six to go.
She didn’t know how they had specifically modified the disease.
They might have sped up its delivery system so it would kill quickly and indiscriminately. Or, they might have slowed down the incubation period so it would have a chance to contaminate a larger section of population.
Opening her eyes, she focused on the stack. If she had Dean to help her, she could have shown him how, in case she became too sick to continue. But she had sent Dean away. It had been the right thing to do, and she would not curse him for going. He couldn’t have found a way into the room anyway, though knowing Dean, he would have tried to shoot his way in.
Lucy ducked her head, wiped her tears on her shoulder, then stood and walked back to the lab bench. She set to work separating the detonator from the small crystal vial which capsulated the agent. It was agonizing work. If she made a mistake with the bomb, she would explode the lab, an explosion big enough to release the agents into the air. Depending on prevailing winds and the agent’s concentration, the explosion might kill everyone in Roswell, at White Sands Military Base, or possibly in Albuquerque or El Paso.
If she didn’t activate the bomb, but accidentally broke the crystal, the lab would become hotter than it already was, and she might become too sick to deactivate the rest of the bombs. She had no doubt the men behind this had a remote detonator set on the facility. It was imperative she disarm the bombs and destroy the vials before the detonators went off.
She forced her mind away from Dean, away from the fact she would never see her mother and daddy again. She focused on the job in front of her, until her world consisted of nothing except for the vial, the wires, and the tools in her hands.
Ω
Dean heard the doors shut behind him with a thud, separating him from Lucy, and prayed he’d made the right choice. Yes, Dean Dreiser, lapsed Presbyterian, prayed. He prayed with every ounce of his soul the bet he’d just made had saved Lucy’s life, or would at least keep her from dying alone.
The area he had been in connected to the central air system, but it didn’t connect to Lucy’s lab. He was willing to bet no air vents went between the two rooms, which is why the terrorists had been so confident about releasing their plague into the lab. There was no way to reach Lucy from the control room, except via the door which required an ocular scan—and a dead man’s eye wouldn’t do the trick.
How had they managed to flood Lucy’s room with the virus?
It had to have come through its separate air ventilation system. Dean now stood trapped in the building’s outer ring. He couldn’t get out because the concrete perimeter had sealed shut. He couldn’t get into the control room because of the steel doors. He didn’t want into the control room though. He wanted into the lab, and he was betting there was a way in through the cooling vents. You had to walk up to get into the lab.
He forced his mind to think logically as he ran through the building—the building now imprisoning him like a fortress. He had to find those vents, and then he had to fit into them.
He might not be able to save her, but he refused to allow her to die alone.
As far as Goodwin, he wouldn’t permit his mind to focus on the psychopath right now. For one thing, he knew Aiden was out there—Aiden or Martin. For another thing, he had a bad feeling he hadn’t seen the last of Major General Tony Goodwin. The weaponized virus was in the building, and he wanted it. He was waiting for them to die, which based on the way Goodwin had fled the building shouldn’t take very long.
Ω
Lucy sat with her back against the wall, looking at the twenty-eight thin glass vials stacked one on top of another. All were separated from their detonators. They looked like slices of cucumbers her mother had once cut paper thin. As a child, she would hold them up to the light, marvel she could see through them, then sprinkle them with salt and pop them into her mouth.
Lucy let her tongue run over her lips, surprised at how swollen and cracked they felt. Her fever must have spiked over 103. The wall’s coolness against her back felt divine, but she pushed herself away from its comfort. She hadn’t finished her job yet.
She had to be sure this plague couldn’t be released into the desert air. What if they had a remote detonator? For all she knew one of the terrorists might still be alive. What if they came back after she died?
The best way to be sure would be to break the vials herself now. A pre-emptive strike. She would be dead within another few hours, anyway.
She picked up half of the vials and carried them over to a sink with an exhaust fan. She would have liked to use a slotted incubation area with minimal space for her hands, but it wouldn’t allow her enough room to use the hammer. She would have to be satisfied with the sink and the exhaust fan. It hardly mattered, since she had already been infected. The sink sat a few feet to the right of the counter she had been working on and faced the control room. She supposed the doctors had liked being able to look out at what happened below, or maybe the guards had wanted to be able to watch them.
Although it was a short distance, it felt much farther.
She had to rest in between trips.
The last thing she needed to do was drop one of the vials and have to crawl around on the floor looking for it. Something told her once she sank to the cool tiles, she’d never get back up again. Just the thought of lying on the shiny surface made her want to curl up in a ball and sleep forever.
Finally, she had transferred all of the vials to the sink. She stood at the far right edge of the window and had a silly image of Martha Stewart cooking for her television viewers.
“No one here but me,” she whispered. “No one alive anyway.”
Steadying herself with one hand on the cool wall, she picked up the small lab hammer, tried again to find the courage to smash them. She closed her eyes, although she realized it was a very childish thing to do and, oh, how her fellow doctors at MIT would laugh if they could see the great Dr. Lucinda Brown with her eyes shut like a frightened girl.
She was a frightened girl, though.
A scared child about to release more biological germs than any terrorist had ever released.
Biting her lip, fighting the fever and chills that had plagued her for three hours now, she raised the lab instrument again—this time with both hands, squeezed her eyes tightly shut, ignored the roaring in her ears, and willed herself to bring it down.
Ω
Dean came to another Y in the air-conditioning ducts and fought the urge to bang his head against the wall. He’d probably sustained enough brain damage in the last three hours—no need to hurry things along. Each time he stopped to check his watch, he felt the panic in him rise like a noose tightening on his throat.
He could not have said what kept him going.
Desperation possibly.
Hope.
Maybe a very small kernel of hope lay buried somewhere in his soul. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why.
Trying to remember the maze he’d crawled through, he chose left and continued through the duct system. He barely fit into the narrow conduit, which only slowed the painstaking crawl he’d been on since shooting his way into the HVAC closet. He’d heard no sign of Goodwin, but he expected to very soon. He’d also heard nothing of Lucy. Looking ahead, he saw the route he’d chosen had come to an end.
Now he would either have to crawl backwards or figure out a way to turn around.
Turning around wasn’t even a remote possibility. He rolled onto his back for a five second break—absolutely no more than five seconds—and saw the smidgeon of light above him.
Pu
lling out the power screwdriver he’d liberated from the utility closet, he set to work removing the panel.
He slipped through the floor vent in time to see Lucy raise a small hammer, hesitate, then steady herself by placing her hand against the wall. Her back faced him, but he could see how the last three hours had taken their toll. She resembled a rag doll, nearly all of the life torn out of her.
He almost called her name, but she again raised the hammer. Fear seized him. If he called out she would bring the hammer down on the small stack of glass pieces—which he now realized were the vials of virus.
Something in the way she closed her eyes and bit her lip told him she didn’t want to do this, shouldn’t do this.
Dean stepped forward, seconds before metal met glass.
LUCY COULD PRACTICALLY hear the glass break. She knew her death would come more quickly—ten to eleven minutes to be exact. She almost welcomed it. Almost.
Dreams die hard, though.
Dreams of life.
Dreams of surviving.
Dreams of Dean.
A part of her heart still cried, “What if—”
She jerked as cool hands pulled her hot ones back, away from the vials, away from death.
“No, Lucy.”
She spun around, seeing, but not believing, and collapsed into Dean’s arms.
Dean had never claimed to be a doctor, but even he knew when someone was dying—and Lucy was dying. Her fever had spiked so high her skin radiated heat. He wanted to crawl back through the shaft and look for ice. He wanted to do anything to ease her suffering, but fear paralyzed him. She’d be dead when he got back. So he held her and waited, and he prayed some more.
He must have slept, because it took him a full five seconds to realize the bundle of coals next to him was Lucy. She struggled in his arms, tried to speak.
“How long?”
Dean checked his watch. The digital display blinked one in the afternoon. He fought through the haze in his mind to recall the day.
“You’ve been out three hours, Sleeping Beauty.” He combed the matted hair back from her forehead, pulled her more snugly into the crook of his arm. The bed he’d made for them in the room’s back corner was hardly comfortable, but Lucy didn’t seem to notice.
“How long?” she repeated.
“Since we stormed the gates?”
She nodded, eyes still closed.
“Over seven hours ago. Took me almost four hours to find the cooling unit and crawl through it.”
Lucy made a feeble attempt to smile. “Thought you left me.”
“Not a chance, Doc.”
For her answer, she squeezed his hand, her hot fingers branding his.
She slept again, and Dean checked his weapon. The dose must have been lethal for Goodwin to wait this long. Why hadn’t Martin or Aiden shown up yet?
She woke twenty minutes later. She couldn’t raise her head any longer, or squeeze his hand.
“You might be infected now,” she whispered.
“My mother told me to be careful about the kind of woman I date.”
Lucy tried to smile, but it brought on a fit of coughing which left her too weak to talk. When he thought she’d fallen asleep, she plucked at his arm. He moved his ear closer to her lips. Her voice was the barest whisper, something he might be imagining.
“There’s a control panel on the inside of the door. Three chances, then you can’t leave.” She fought the urge to cough. “Emergency interior lock—code is 2727b.”
“Our room numbers at Josephine’s. I knew you loved it.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers. She never knew it, though. She’d slipped back into unconsciousness.
Dean had understood by coming back, he’d be infecting himself, but life without Lucy wasn’t worth living, anyway. And, how would he have been able to live with himself, knowing he’d left her to die alone? It hadn’t even been an option.
Just like his father had told him all those years ago. You do what you need to, son. Figure out the rest later.
Simple enough, Dean thought, as he let his eyes close. Exhaustion claimed him. He knew he’d have to sleep. Before he allowed himself to drift off, he checked the Glock again, chambered a round, and set it across his lap.
They’d have company soon. How he knew, he couldn’t say. He’d left Emily’s cell phone at the surface, left it on Wilson. Someone should have found him by now. Of course, both sides would be tracking it, so it was anyone’s guess who would find them first. He knew Goodwin hadn’t gone far. He remained somewhere close, waiting for the air to clear.
Seven hours should have been more than enough time to find them, so something else had happened to slow them down. Yes, the cavalry was late. Chances were high Dean would need the Glock.
Dean woke to tapping on the bulletproof glass. He couldn’t tell who stood on the other side, since they wore full bio-hazard suits.
Dean gripped the Glock with one hand, checked Lucy’s pulse with the other. It fluttered, thready and slow, but at least he could feel it. He didn’t bother to stand. He didn’t trust his legs to hold him. He could see the guards fine, which is why he had taken a position against the far back wall.
“Agent, I’m Special Agent Strickland. We need to get you out of there, but, first, you must put your weapon down and slide it across the room.”
Dean counted five in the room. None were faces he recognized. Even if they were, he wouldn’t trust them. Not after what they’d been through.
“Not going to happen.” Dean coughed into the back of his hand, ignored the blood he left there.
“You know the glass is bulletproof, son. Now, put the weapon down. We’ll bypass the ocular scan and come in, but not until you slide your weapon across the floor.”
“And you know the crystals in front of me contain ricin and influenza that had been loaded into twenty-eight bombs. In case you’ve forgotten what you read in my file, I’m an exceptionally good shot. One bullet through those crystals will release all of the virus, and I don’t have a lot to lose here. This room would stay hot for how many years?”
“That would be a very stupid thing to do—”
“It would be more stupid to let someone like you get your hands on it.”
Strickland—if that was his real name—marched to one of his goons and said something Dean couldn’t make out. The goon started out of the room.
“He stays,” Dean said. The goon stopped in his tracks. “Should I start to feel even fractionally worse than I do right now—if I even think you’ve flooded this room with gas—I break the vials. Do you understand?”
Strickland’s face had colored from pale to crimson in a span of three seconds.
“What do you want? From the looks of you, we can wait an hour and you’ll both be dead, but honestly there are places I need to be.”
“Well, at least we’re being honest now.”
“You USCIS field boys all want to play the hero.”
“Glad to uphold the reputation.”
“Tell me your terms.”
“One, I only release the crystals to Commander Martin or Aiden Lewis. Two, the doc and I leave together and stay together.”
“You’ll be dead before I can get either of those men here.”
“I guess you better hurry then, because I plan on using this weapon before I breathe my last.”
Strickland appeared ready to come through the glass with a tank, but of course, that would destroy the vials as well. There wasn’t much he could do but wait for Dean to die, which could take hours. Instead, he spoke again to his goons, never breaking eye contact with Dean.
“Jones and Gallespie. Watch this agent and inform me if his condition worsens, or should he tragically draw his last breath while I’m out of the room.”
The two men assumed sentry position at both ends of the glass window, their eyes not quite meeting Dean’s. With a smile, Special Agent Strickland left the room. Dean let the Glock rest in his lap. It felt like it weighed at least forty
pounds.
Touching Lucy, he could no longer tell where her heat ended and his began.
“Lucy,” he whispered. “Sweet, sweet Lucy. Hang on, darling.”
She never answered, but he thought he saw movement under her closed eyelids. He bent his head, kissed her there, willed her to hear him in her unconscious state.
“Just a little longer, sweetie.” Then he put his hand back on the Glock and waited.
Ω
Dean’s watch told him he must have slept twenty minutes. Jones, or was it Gallespie, cleared his throat before Strickland stormed back into the room. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d swear the private did it purposely to wake him.
Dean put his finger on the Glock’s trigger. He didn’t doubt for a second Strickland would rather lose the vials than lose the turf war, but orders were orders. Strickland had received his.
Dean didn’t care which agency had the vials, but he wasn’t sure who he could trust at this point.
“Still alive, I see.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Strickland stepped close to the glass, his voice a bare hiss. “We could have had medical help in there an hour ago. If she dies, it’s on your conscience.”
“She’ll die anyway.”
“We’re on the same side.”
“Prove it.”
“Open your eyes. We’re wearing the same uniform.”
Dean tried to laugh, but it came out as a croak. “From what I can see, you have on a bio-hazard suit, and I don’t. Those dead guys in the corner behind you—they have on U.S. military suits too, but they’re the ones who did this to Lucy. Truth is I can’t tell who the good guys are anymore. If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry. But I’d rather offend someone than put this bomb into the wrong hands.”
Strickland’s face flamed beet-red, and Dean thought maybe the oxygen processor in his suit had stopped working.
“You know what I think? I think you’re one of those guys who talks, but there’s no way you’ll risk her one chance to make it out of here alive. And, make no mistake, we are her one chance—even if it’s one in a thousand. So let’s see who blinks first.”
Roswell's Secret Page 28