Holding Sanjay’s pistol in her other hand, she slipped the key into the lock and said, “Don’t try anything.”
As the lid of the trunk began to rise, she took a big step backward, her gun aimed inside. The director was right where she’d left him, still tied up. His clothes were soaking wet and his eyelids were only half open.
“Water,” he whispered.
He’d been cooking in there. It was a wonder he wasn’t already dead, she realized.
She stepped over, intending to help guide him out, but then heard voices from farther down the street.
She lowered the lid and crouched down.
Peeking between the cars, she saw two Project Eden security men walk across the street about a block away, looking left and right.
A thud from the trunk—Mahajan kicking the inside.
The two security men paused. When the director kicked again, the men began walking cautiously in Darshana’s direction.
There was no way she could haul the director out of the trunk without being spotted, but there was also no way she was going to let the men find Mahajan.
She checked the guards’ position. Another couple of car lengths and Darshana’s sedan would be in view. She had only one option.
Lifting the lid just high enough, she crawled inside and stretched out directly on top of Mahajan. She then lowered the lid and held it in place, just shy of letting the lock engage. With her other hand, she placed the barrel of the gun against the director’s head.
“Quiet,” she whispered.
Mahajan tried to glare at her, but even in the dim light seeping around the edges of the lid, she could see he was scared.
Outside, the footsteps drew closer and closer, until finally they passed right by the rear of the car.
The guards continued down the street, and it wasn’t long before their steps faded to nothing. She let another ten minutes pass before she opened the hood. She would have stayed longer to be on the safe side but she’d reached her limit on close contact with Mahajan.
She crawled out and ordered the director to follow. In his weakened state, he caught a foot on the lip of the car and down he went, slamming into the road face-first.
Groaning, he rolled onto his back.
“Shut up,” she hissed. “Get on your feet.”
By the time he stood, he was panting like he’d just run a marathon.
She motioned toward the hospital. “Head there. I’ll be right behind you.”
Five minutes later, he was secured to a pipe in the public toilet and Darshana had rejoined Kusum and Sanjay.
“How is he?” Darshana asked.
“A little better, I think,” Kusum said. “Where have you been?”
“Getting our friend.”
“Was there a problem?”
“Nothing a good scrub won’t solve.”
11
DREAM SKY
2:33 AM EST
IF ASH WAS remembering the map correctly, the way to the tunnel was beyond the wide double doors just ahead.
He was still several yards away when the right half opened. Skidding to a halt, he and Sealy brought up their guns.
“Ash?”
“Chloe?”
They lowered their guns and jogged the rest of the way.
“You made it,” he said.
“Of course we did.”
“Any problems?”
She shook her head.
There was something about her eyes that troubled him. Something distant and un-Chloe-like. “You okay?”
She ignored the question and instead asked, “So, what do you need us to do?”
He studied her for a second and then said, “We’ve taken care of security. Well, there’s one unaccounted for but all the others are out of commission. We need to start rounding up the rest of the base personnel. We’re on level ten, the bottom of the base. If we work systematically, we should be able to clear this floor in no more than fifteen minutes and then move on to the next.”
“All right.” She turned to the two people who’d come out the door after her. “Robert, can you tell everyone to—”
The ceiling lights began to flash white and red as an alarm wailed.
“I think they already know we’re here,” Chloe said.
__________
RENI STOOD IN the very center of level ten where all the radial corridors met, pausing just long enough to scan each one before moving on to the next. She was just starting to switch again when the dark, distant form of someone running past the hallway on the outer loop caught her eye. Though too far away to identify, whoever it was had been wearing black instead of the blue scrubs worn by all non-security personnel, so she was sure the person had been one of the faux security guards.
Instead of moving down the hall where she’d seen the movement, she took the one the runner should be passing next. She expected to see the shadow pass by before she reached the halfway point, but the outer loop remained vacant. Had the infiltrators doubled back? Or had they heard her coming and were waiting to ambush when she appeared?
Upon reaching the end, she pressed against the wall and listened. No steps. She tensed, drew in two quick breaths, and then peeked around the corner.
Empty.
Dammit. They must have gone back the other way.
She moved into the loop and headed the way the person should have come from. It was the low mumble of a voice that finally caused her to look toward the other side of the corridor.
She blinked, not immediately comprehending what she was seeing. There was an opening for a hallway just ahead along the right wall. But she was in the outer loop, which meant everything on this level should have been to her left.
Then she remembered she wasn’t on just any level; she was on the tenth. Unlike the other ones, where everything was contained within the outer loop, the tenth had an exception, a hallway that led outside the circular level to the room that connected to the auxiliary access tunnel.
They must think they can use the tunnel to escape.
Boy, were they in for a surprise when they reached the top and found the exit welded shut.
As she sneaked over to the hallway, a few more muffled words tumbled her way. She lowered herself to her knees and very slowly eased her head around the corner.
What she saw was not what she expected.
While her two faux security men were there, they weren’t alone. Several others were stepping through the door to the tunnel staging room.
Reni’s body went numb.
Dream Sky was being invaded.
She could pick a few of them off with her rifle, but her hope of completely eliminating the threat was gone. There were too many of them.
She looked down the outer loop. There, back the way she’d come, just before the tunnel curved away, was one of the orange alarm boxes.
She sprang to her feet and ran toward it.
__________
“WHAT’S…GOING ON?”
Medical technician Gale Dodson stared up at the flashing lights, barely hearing the question over the alarm. When the patient touched her gloved hand, she jerked in surprise.
“Is…something…wrong?” the protectee asked, his voice slurred by the drugs that had been pumping through his system since he was brought to Dream Sky.
She put on her best smile. “It’s nothing. I think it’s time to get some more sleep.”
“Slept enough,” he said. “Think I’m…feeling…better.”
“You’re still a very sick man. The more rest you get, the sooner you’ll get better.” As she spoke, she turned his IV on again, and it wasn’t long before his eyelids drooped.
Though the patient was unaware of it, he was getting shortchanged on his awake time. Each of the Dream Sky protectees—all of whom thought they were being treated for Sage Flu—were routinely brought to a state of semiconsciousness for a few hours every other day. This particular patient, number 0763, had been woken only thirty minutes ago.
Once Dodson was su
re 0763 was asleep, she hurried out of the ward and joined several of her colleagues gathered at the duty station.
“Is this a drill?” she asked.
“None was scheduled,” a tech named Hodgins said.
Dr. Loria, one of the two physicians on graveyard shift, strode up to the station. “What in God’s name is going on?”
“We’re not sure,” Hodgins said.
“Security hasn’t made an announcement?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, someone call them and find out what’s going on! We don’t need this noise disturbing the patients.”
Dodson was closest to the phone, so she made the call.
“No one’s answering,” she said after several seconds.
“They’re probably a little busy,” Hodgins suggested.
“I don’t care how busy they are,” the doctor said. “Stay on that line until someone answers.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dodson replied.
The ringing went on for over a minute before the tech heard a click and—
“Yes?” The voice was rushed, annoyed.
“This is, um, medical, um, level six,” she said, surprised that someone had answered. “There’s an alarm going off down here but we’ve received no instructions.”
“It’s a malfunction. We’re working on correcting it right now. Just go on as usual.”
“Is there any way to at least turn it down? We’re concerned it will disturb the protectees.”
There was a pause, then, “I said we’re working on it.”
The man hung up.
Everyone was looking at Dodson as she hung up. “Malfunction,” she said. “We’re supposed to ignore it.”
Seething, Dr. Loria said, “Do we at least have earplugs?”
__________
ASH QUICKLY GATHERED Chloe’s people around and motioned down the middle, dividing the group into two.
“This half will clear this floor,” he shouted above the alarm. “Leave no room unchecked. Anyone you find, take to the elevators on the east side. That’s where Sealy will have set up a holding area. The rest of you will go with Chloe and clear level nine. When a level is done, we’ll leapfrog each other, my group to eight, Chloe’s to seven, and on like that all the way to the top. Any questions?”
No hands went up.
“All right. Chloe’s group, take a right at the end of this hall, and then follow the circular corridor until you reach the elevators.”
As Chloe was about to leave, Ash stopped her. “You’re okay to do this, right?” he asked.
“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just seem a little off, is all.”
“I wish people would stop saying that. I’m fine. Really,” she said, and then hurried after her team.
Ash knew she was hiding something. He just hoped it wouldn’t interfere with the mission. To his team, he said, “Pick a partner and spread out. Let’s move.”
__________
HARDEN JAMMED THE receiver down. That was the third call he’d fielded since the red and white alarm lights had begun flashing throughout the control center. Mercifully, the siren was only a background drone here, but every time he took a call, he could hear that wasn’t the case elsewhere.
As soon as the alarm had been triggered, one of the monitors on the wall had started blinking the message:
ALARM ACTIVATED
LEVEL 10
SECTION 7C
The first thing Harden did was to consult the schematic for level ten. He discovered that section 7C was near the hallway to the auxiliary tunnel Chloe’s team was using. So, either the team had been spotted or it had tripped the alarm.
He tried to reach Ash via radio, but since the captain wasn’t close to one of the elevator shafts, the layers of ground between them prevented the signal from getting through. The only reason Harden kept answering the phone was in case it was Ash or someone else from the Resistance.
When the call from level six had come in, he’d been searching the computer for the alarm controls in hopes of turning it off. He retuned to the task now, quickly shuffling through screen after screen. Finally, he found a link to ALARM ACTIVITY. Clicking on this brought him to a new screen that listed recent alarms. The current one was right at the top. When he double-clicked on that, a new screen appeared. The LOCATION box was filled in with 7C, but the others—for CAUSE, FOLLOW-UP, and RESOLUTION—were blank.
At the very bottom was a button labeled DISARM. He clicked it, but instead of the alarm turning off, a large rectangular box appeared, and above it the word:
AUTHORIZATION
Playing a hunch, he touched the box with his thumb and then quickly removed it. A message appeared at the bottom.
INSUFFICIENT DATA POINTS
Just like he thought. A thumb scanner.
Harden dragged the unconscious guard over to the station and plopped him in a chair. He pressed the man’s thumb against the screen.
The rectangle disappeared, and then mercifully the flashing lights and screeching alarm ceased.
__________
AS SOON AS the alarm began to blare, Reni raced to the elevators and jammed her thumb against the recall button.
Her new theory was that the men masquerading as security personnel had arrived via the auxiliary tunnel, too. After they had subdued Reni’s colleagues, they had gone back for the rest of their people.
What she hoped this meant was that they hadn’t risked going all the way up to the security control center on the transition level and she could meet up with the two men on duty there. It was even likely that the team on night patrol was still in town, unaware of what was going on. If she could hook up with them, too, that would make seven of them. More than enough to deal with these scumbags.
The moment the elevator doors opened, she jumped through and pressed the button for level one.
When the car began moving, she leaned against the back wall, exhausted.
It’s going to be okay. Once I’m with the others, we’ll be able to handle this. Everything will be back to normal before the sun comes up.
She was just starting to relax when the alarm cut out.
__________
ASH’S TEAM WAS still in the process of clearing the first set of rooms when the flashing lights blinked out and the blaring siren fell silent.
Most of level ten turned out to be storage rooms or active equipment areas where things such as generators, air recyclers, water pumps, and the like were bolted to the floor. His team found a total of seven people, five of whom had been asleep in a single room, while the remaining two had been servicing one of the machines. A quick interrogation revealed all seven were members of the maintenance staff.
Sealy found a room near the west elevators that would work as a holding cell. After Ash had escorted in the last prisoner and zip tied the man’s wrists and ankles, the door was secured from the outside and the team moved on to level eight.
__________
CHLOE’S TEAM WAS too big to fit in one elevator car. She went up to level nine with the first group, while a second waited for the next ride.
With every step she’d taken since entering Dream Sky, her sense of dread had built until it wrapped around her like a thick blanket.
When they stepped onto nine, she sent two-man scout teams off in both directions along the curving hallway.
Outer loop, she corrected herself. That’s what it’s called.
While the level-nine corridor felt familiar, she knew this was not the level she feared most. That, she now recalled, was level five, though she wasn’t sure why.
The elevator doors opened again and the rest of her team piled out.
After the scout teams returned and reported all was quiet, she split everyone into five groups. “My group and this one,” she said, indicating the trio standing next to her, “will go left.” She pointed again. “You two will go right and split at the first corridor.” She looked at the last group. “We need you to set up a dete
ntion room. You should be able to find a suitable location down the first hall on the right, second door in.”
Just as she finished speaking, the alarm went off.
At first, she thought that was why she was getting so many surprised looks, but then she thought about what she’d just said and realized how specific her instructions had been.
“No time to waste,” she said, and then headed left.
12
NB016, NEW YORK CITY
2:41 AM EST
“DIRECTOR JOHNSON?” DALTON, the newly appointed operations manager, said.
Celeste rubbed her tired eyes. “What is it?”
“We just received an alarm signal from Dream Sky.”
Celeste shot forward in her chair. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s a general alarm, initiated on level ten.”
“Are they under attack?”
“I have no other information. I was just about to contact them but thought you would want to be on the line, too.”
“Yes, yes! Do it.”
Celeste donned her headset as Dalton conferenced her in and made the call. The line rang six times before someone finally answered.
“Yes?” a male voice said.
“This is Operations Director Dalton from NB016. I have Director Johnson on the line with me. We received notification that an alarm went off there. Can you confirm this?”
“Uh, yes…a malfunction. It’s already turned off.”
“Hold on, please.” Dalton muted the call, brought up a new window on her computer, and consulted it. She looked back at the director. “He’s right. The alarm has been deactivated.”
Celeste unmuted her own mic and said, “Who am I speaking to?”
“This is, um, Lochmere.”
“Where’s Supervisor McHenry?” she asked. She didn’t know the names of the security heads at all the bases, but she definitely knew the man who had the job at Dream Sky.
Another pause. “I don’t know, ma’am. I’m the one on duty at the moment.”
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