by Andrew Mayne
I glance back at the control room where Elijah is dutifully trying to think of animals. I hate to leave him there, but I don’t know what I’ll find at the other end of the complex.
I follow Ailes’s instructions and find a metal door I’d passed by before. Beyond it is a corridor that stretches farther than any of others I’ve been in down here. At the end of it is another door, which is locked.
“You there?” asks Ailes as I study the door.
“Yeah. I didn’t realize the Wi-Fi would work all the way in here. Door is locked. Give me a second.”
It takes me forty.
The beam of my flashlight bounces off metal counters and cabinets. At the other side of the room I see myself reflected in a large interior window.
“What do we have?” asks Ailes.
“Hold on. Maybe a kitchen.” I fumble around for a light switch and find a box on the other side of the door. I flip the switch, and the overhead lights blink on one by one. It’s the first source of illumination I’ve seen down here besides my flashlight and the glow of the monitors. I squint to adjust to the brightness.
“Jessica? What is it?” Ailes is anxious to know what’s going on.
“Fuck.”
“Blackwood?” he says, worried.
“All I know is that whatever it is they need a bunch of hazmat suits and a sealed lab to work with it.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Hazmat
The lab is divided into two sections. On the side closest to me are workbenches and mostly empty shelves. On the other side, through an airlock, is a clean room with racks of test tubes, rows of refrigerators, and an entire shelf filled with binders. The facility is made up of white floors and gleaming metal walls. Unlike the sparse concrete interior of the rest of the compound, this looks futuristic and expensive.
“Jessica, I need you to hold tight until we can get a hazmat team in there,” says Ailes.
“You’re kidding, right? You’ve seen the clock. We don’t have time.”
I’d love nothing more than to get the hell out of here and take Elijah to Disneyland to deprogram him. But that’s not the hand I’ve been dealt.
I set the phone down on the counter and grab one of the blue suits.
“Agent Blackwood, it could be anything in there, explosives, ricin . . .” He’s using his serious tone to tell me I don’t have a choice.
“Exactly,” I reply as I find the zipper and step inside it. “We need to know now.”
“You’re not trained for this! I can’t have you going in there.”
But, like me, he knows we can’t risk any alternative.
“Dr. Ailes, I’m the best trained person for this down here.”
Considering the only other person down here is a child, that’s not saying much.
“Fine,” he relents, knowing we’re out of options. “Let me loop in a couple of our people on our end.”
“Get them on the line fast, because I’m stepping into the airlock.”
“Is there a hose for you to plug the suit into?”
“Hold on.” I look around and spot a coil of plastic tube. “Yeah. On the other side.”
“All right. There should be a panel near the door. Make sure the air is flowing. You need to keep positive pressure in the suit, as that keeps whatever is in there out of you.”
“Got it.”
With no place else to put my phone, I slide it into my bra.
“Can you hear me?” I ask.
“You sound muffled.”
“Don’t ask. How’s Elijah doing?”
“Right now he’s given me six different animals that begin with G.”
“I don’t think I can name three.”
“You also can’t follow instructions.”
“Obviously.”
I swing open the steel door to the airlock and step inside. It’s daunting to close it behind me and hear the hiss of air moving through the small chamber. This is not a happy place.
After a deep breath, I open the inner door and step inside the mysterious lab. It takes me a moment to get the hose hooked up to my suit. Once it clicks into place, I begin to fill up like a balloon.
“How you doing?” asks Ailes.
“Feeling bloated. I’m inside.”
“Okay. I have Dr. Stiller on the line. He’s one of our biowarfare experts.”
Jiminy Cricket. My stomach sinks.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“Hello,” says Stiller. “Thank you for doing this. I’m going to need you to just look with your eyes. Okay? Can you do that? Don’t touch anything.” His voice is calm and patronizing.
“Is he talking to me or to Elijah?” I snap.
“What’s the difference?” Ailes responds.
“Sorry, Jessica,” says Stiller, somewhat apologetic. “It’s a habit. Sometimes I get gung-ho agents who want to open and taste everything.”
“That’s not me, Doc.” Well, not always.
“Alright. Can you describe the equipment? Have you had much training for these situations?”
“Minimal. There is a thing for spinning test tubes. Lots of pipe work.”
“Pipes? Glass ones?”
“Mostly.”
“Are they climate controlled?”
“No. Hold on.” I inspect a device at the base of the contraption. “I think there’s a cooling unit at the very end.”
“Okay. I think that’s a good sign.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s probably not a bacterial or viral agent.”
“Well that’s a relief.”
“Um, sort of . . .” He pauses. “I should have had you use a Geiger counter first. Did you see one in the other room?”
“Nope. Too late now.”
“Okay. I want you to look inside a refrigerator and tell me what you see. Remember, look, don’t touch.”
I go to the nearest one and swing the door open.
It’s empty.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nada. Zilch. Next one?”
“Hold up, can you tell me what the temperature is?”
“Uh . . .” I look around and find a control panel. “Two degrees.”
“Celsius?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. That would appear too cold for bacteria. Just above freezing. I think we’re dealing with a chemical agent. Possibly a high explosive.”
At least I’m not going to die of a flesh-eating disease. “Great.”
“The question is how much of it? Is there a storage unit near where you are? That would be a separate room.”
“There’s another chamber at the far end of the complex. Should I go there?”
“No,” says Stiller. “This would be close by. Possibly with a loading dock.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Alright. It might be something they just need in small batches. We’ll have a bomb squad take some field samples as soon as they get there.”
“Doc, that’s still going to take some time.”
I’m worried that there’s something else we’re not noticing. The Red Chain doesn’t seem like the old-school bombing types anymore. “There’s a row of binders here. Should I open them?”
“I guess that’s a good idea.”
He guesses?
I grab the one at the end, which has several bookmarks sticking out, and flip it open on the counter.
“What do you see?” asks Stiller.
The complex molecules and chemical names I can’t pronounce mean nothing to me. “Um, maybe see if Bill Nye the Science Guy can come down here and explain this.”
“Can you read me some of the names?”
“I have a better idea.”
“Jessica, what’s that sound?” asks Ailes.
“I’m taking off the suit.”
“Don’t do that, Jessica!” Stiller protests.
“We don’t have time.” I pull the helmet back and let the torso drop to my w
aist. “Something nasty is about to happen. Either it happens to me, or to a hell of a lot of people. If I start gagging, I’ll do my best to describe the experience.”
I slide my phone out from my bra. “Can we FaceTime on this thing?”
“I can,” says Ailes. “Dr. Stiller, I can probably relay what I see.”
He leaves out: Better than my idiot agent.
Ailes’s concerned face appears on the screen.
“Hey, boss.” I give him an uneasy grin, then turn the camera toward the binder and start flipping through the pages.
Ailes calls out the chemical names to Stiller. Occasionally Stiller asks him to repeat one. I pick up one word in particular: “Psychotropic.”
“Crazy juice, again?” Various mind-altering chemicals had been involved in my last two cases. The first one was an unknown, probably devised by Heywood himself. The second was a natural one, found in a fish that lived in a cave in Mexico.
“Yes, Agent Blackwood,” answers Stiller. “That appears to be some kind of drug. Oh, one of your coworkers has sent me a video feed.”
I keep turning the pages.
Stiller continues, “I don’t see why they’d build a drug lab . . . Hold on. Turn back a page.”
I flip back to the prior sheet.
“Oh my,” he says. “You see that, Robert?”
“Indeed.”
It’s just a large dodecahedron or whatever to me. “Guys? What’s up?”
“It’s a kind of polymer,” says Ailes. “Designed to protect a chemical from breaking down under certain conditions.”
“And not in others,” Stiller adds.
“Water supply!” Ailes shouts away from the phone, probably into the bullpen. “They’re going to put something into water supplies. Lock down all the reservoirs and plants within the range we found.”
“Dr. Ailes?” I’m not sure what’s going on.
“They’re trying to put some kind of psychedelic into a water supply. Maybe in a couple major cities. We think we know where, based on the source code. We already have the water utilities online.”
“What do I do?”
“You did it. This is what we needed!”
“That’s it?”
“For you,” says Ailes.
“What about the other room at the end of the complex?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Yes. Yes, of course! That could be important.”
I rip off the rest of the suit and exit the airlock, then hurry like hell down the hall.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The Door
I race to the other end of the complex and find an identical steel door. I get a sick feeling at the thought that on the other side is another nasty surprise.
I pick the lock as easily as I did the first one, swing open the door, and step into a dark room. There is a light switch in the same spot as the one I discovered in the lab, but when I flick it on, I’m not greeted by scientific equipment.
This is something completely different.
A massive steel door, like a bank vault, wide enough to drive a car into.
What the hell is on the other side?
“Dr. Ailes?” I call into my phone.
There’s no Wi-Fi signal. Damn it!
I take a photo of the door and then run back toward the middle of the complex, stopping just outside the room where Elijah is playing his animal game.
“Ailes?” I call again.
“Here,” he says. “We have some dive teams heading for the LA and Chicago reservoirs. We think they want to cause a massive panic, maybe even religious hysteria.”
“That’s, um, nice. But there’s something else.”
“What’s that?” He finally gives me his full attention.
“The other end of the chamber, it leads to a vault. Like in a bank. They’ve got something locked inside.”
“Such as?” he asks, realizing the new mystery means this may not be over just yet.
“I don’t know! L. Ron Hubbard’s masterworks? I just know they’ve got a big-ass door designed to keep people out.”
“Do you think it might be tied to one of the other countdown clocks?”
“Maybe. Do we want to wait that long?”
“I can have a team there in a few hours to get it open.”
That’s not going to cut it. “What if it has to do with the shorter clock? There’s only a few hours left.”
“I’d rather just get you out of there.”
Me too. And there’s something about his voice. “What is it?”
“We just found out two of the people who had fake driver’s licenses were stopped six days ago in Colorado and then let go.”
I shake my head. “Damn. They got away.”
“No, Jessica. That’s just it. We found out they weren’t leaving Colorado. They were heading back.”
“Back?”
“Yes. Back toward Moffat.”
My skin starts to crawl. I’d thought they were running away based on Elijah’s story. Something about this doesn’t add up.
“The sheriff should be there shortly. Just hold on,” says Ailes.
“I can’t.” I run back down the hall.
“Jessica . . . Don’t go near the—”
His voice cuts out as the signal fades.
I know what he was about to say.
It doesn’t matter. I have to know.
This isn’t about my safety. No more deaths. No more waiting for things to happen.
I reach the vault door and stare at it. It’s made from thick steel, the kind they use for Class 3 safes that are designed to take hours to cut into.
I look for a combination lock, or a mechanism to pick. There’s nothing. This is some kind of custom job. Maybe all electronic. Parts of it are exposed, which is kind of weird. It somehow looks familiar.
Then it hits me. I’m looking at the vault from the wrong direction.
Grandfather would be laughing his ass off at me right now.
I can open it, no problem.
The smile fades from my face.
This vault is meant to keep something inside.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Sanctum
Harry Houdini was once challenged in court to escape from a safe. He did so easily, and when the judge demanded an explanation, he simply replied, “Safes were meant to keep people out, not in.”
I don’t think. I don’t speculate. Time is ticking. I just use my multi-tool to unscrew the bolts holding the Plexiglas cover over the machinery of the vault.
The large sheets fall to the ground and I kick them away.
Getting the door open means pulling the rods back. To accomplish this, I have to disable the springs. Again, my multi-tool makes short work of that.
Now I’ve got all the pistons disengaged. The lower ones need to be pried back to stop them from dropping back down. I pull them free and set them aside.
Last, I have to pull back the main bolt. This takes some effort, as the metal is well lubricated and it resists my initial efforts.
After some persistence: click. It’s done.
When I try to open the door at last, I confuse myself for a moment. It won’t budge.
I push again. Nothing.
I check that all the rods and pins are out.
What did I get wrong?
Then I realize I’m an idiot.
It’s supposed to swing the other way.
Using my back, I push against the door as hard as I can. It has to weigh over a ton. Eventually it gives way and slowly begins to open inward. I strain until there’s enough of an opening for me to slide my body through.
On the other side, it’s pitch black. My footsteps echo around the chamber as I fumble for my flashlight. The sound behaves differently in here than in the other chambers in the complex. There isn’t an echo from the ceiling.
I take my light from my pocket and sweep the space, which is much larger than the antechamber.
It’s empty. There’s nothing here.
A
ll that anticipation. All that adrenaline. All that fear.
And nothing.
I don’t know what I was expecting on the other side, but I was expecting something.
Then my light catches something in its beam.
Not this.
I collapse to the floor, too numb to move.
A voice in the back of my head reminds me: Be careful what you wish for.
You just might get it.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Assembly
It’s them.
It’s the Red Chain. All of them.
The object that my flashlight caught in the dark was a shoe. To be more precise, a foot.
Over a hundred pairs of feet dangle from the bodies hanging overhead.
This is what it was all leading up to. This was their endgame.
At the far end of the room, underneath the last body, a ladder lays on its side.
They locked themselves inside here and then, one by one as the others watched, they hung themselves.
I muster the strength to raise my light all the way up to the ceiling.
Hundreds of hooks mounted to the concrete ceiling hold red metal chains that are locked around pale necks and tortured faces.
Most of their eyes are open. Some still clutch at their throats with white-knuckled fingers. These weren’t quick, hangman-style executions in which their necks snapped in an instant as the floor dropped out below them.
These were long, agonizing deaths as they twisted and thrashed, gasping for breath while everyone else watched.
How could they do this?
I don’t know.
Locked in the vault, it was their only way out. They sealed themselves in so they couldn’t escape. At least not alive.
I pull myself to my feet and walk underneath the bodies, scanning the faces with my light.
So much pain.
This . . . this is madness.
It’s a dark mirror image of how their praying mats were laid out. A fucked-up symmetry between heaven and hell.
I notice a space between several bodies and move to investigate the gap.
God, no.
Tiny feet. Children’s bodies. A girl dressed like—