Down

by Brett Battles

  There was no button to call the elevator, just a thumbprint scanner. Caleb had been unable to insert Ash’s print into the Project’s system, but he was able to change Wicks’s ID from DECEASED to ACTIVE.

  A white strip of light passed down the screen as soon as Wicks put his thumb on the pad. Barely a second passed before they heard the soft hum of a motor, and then the sound of the elevator nearing.

  __________

  SECURITY CONTROL WAS located on floor eighteen. Like its counterparts at most Project bases, the dominant feature was a wall of monitors.

  Glendon and Evra, both level-three security officers, sat in the chairs, watching the screens. The two main monitors rotated through feeds from cameras located throughout the interior of the base. Other, less important feeds filled smaller monitors off to either side.

  The only thing unusual they’d seen that morning was the heightened activity up on twenty-two. They were curious as to what was up, but knew they’d likely never be told and would have to rely on rumors.

  Evra noted a change in one of the monitors he was responsible for, and frowned. The image had turned into static. “Camera down,” he said.

  Glendon glanced over. “Which one?”

  “Subbasement elevator.”

  Evra turned to his computer and used it to remotely reboot the camera, but the static remained. He checked the elevator’s electrical system, thinking there might be a short. Instead, he found the elevator in use.

  “Did someone get clearance to go down there?” he asked.

  Glendon shook his head. “Nothing came through me.”

  “Well, either it’s moving on its own or someone’s in it.”

  Glendon wheeled his chair over so he could see Evra’s monitor. The display showed the car nearing the top of its run.

  Evra brought up the feed from the sixteenth-floor camera trained on the elevator door. But as the door began to open, the feed suddenly filled with the same static as the camera inside the elevator.

  Evra leaned forward. “What the hell?”

  “Play it back,” Glendon said. “Slow.”

  Evra reversed the footage to just before it cut out, and then played it at quarter speed. As the doors split, a black circle about the size of a half dollar flipped through the opening. The moment it cleared the door, the feed stopped.

  Glendon reached across the counter but before he could slam his palm down on the alarm, more cameras on sixteen began winking out.

  __________

  THE RESISTANCE TEAM was already out of the elevator and moving down the hall when the alarm began to wail.

  It was expected, so no one even flinched when the noise started.

  Caleb had reported that the facility’s plans showed five ways up from sixteen—a set of elevators on the opposite side of the floor, and stairwells in each of the four corners.

  The alarm eliminated the already unlikely option of using the elevators. The team hurried toward the nearest stairwell. The alarm also brought people out of rooms and into the hall. When several of them noticed Ash’s team heading their way, their initial confusion turned to panic. Most ran in the other direction, while others pressed against the walls as if doing so would make them disappear.

  Ash and the others granted their wish and rushed by them with barely a glance. Upon reaching the stairway door, Ash threw it open and stood to the side while Omar and Chloe made a visual check.

  “Clear,” Chloe said.

  “Clear,” Omar agreed.

  __________

  BWAAMP. BWAAMP. BWAAMP.

  Celeste sprang from her chair. “Why is that going off? Who set that off?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dalton said, troubled. “Checking.”

  Celeste tried to call Kleinman, head of security, but the line was busy. As she slammed the phone down in frustration, she had to force herself not to cover her ears to block out the alarm.

  “Will someone shut that goddamn thing off?”

  __________

  EVRA TRIED TO find a shot of those who’d exited the elevator, but the cameras kept going haywire, one after another, then coming back on only after the next one in line went out.

  “We’re not sure,” Glendon was saying into the phone. Supervisor Kleinman had called and demanded answers within seconds of the alarms going off. Glendon looked over at Evra. “Have you found a shot of them yet?”

  “No,” Evra said. “The cameras are—”

  Suddenly the last static feed switched back to normal, revealing an empty portion of the corridor.

  Where’d they go?

  Evra switched from feed to feed to feed, but no one was in any of the shots. He rechecked the path the affected cameras had traced. The last to go out had been the farthest from the elevators.

  Oh, crap.

  “They’re in the west fire stairwell!”

  __________

  THE TEAM WENT up the stairs side by side, weapons drawn, Ash and Chloe in the lead.

  They passed the door to the seventeenth floor in twelve seconds, and made it to eighteen a second faster. As they reached the halfway point to nineteen, they heard a door open below them.

  Omar and Sealy, in flank position, leaned over the railing.

  “Company,” Omar said.

  “Introduce yourselves,” Ash instructed.

  The two men aimed their rifles downward and fired.

  __________

  KLEINMAN HAD BEEN on the twenty-first floor, just starting his breakfast, when the alarm had gone off. He had immediately called security control and been informed someone had entered NB016. When Evra said the unidentified individuals were in the west stairwell, Kleinman had hung up and called the barracks on the twentieth floor.

  Not counting himself and the two in the security monitoring room, only eleven security officers were at NB016. Usually, there were three times that number, but Vintner’s strike team had been sent out by the director on a mission to God knew where. Kleinman would have vehemently opposed the move if he’d known ahead of time. While his men were well trained, their main purpose was to be a visible presence that deterred potential subversive behavior. Large-scale confrontations were always meant to be handled by Vintner and his people.

  “Sorenson,” said the man answering the barracks phone.

  “Get everyone to the west stairwell, stat. We have intruders. Consider them armed. Stop them before they get past you!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kleinman rushed to the nearest elevator and used his override code to bring the nearest car straight to him. As he rode it up the one flight to twenty-two, his phone rang. Not surprisingly, the caller ID read DIRECTOR JOHNSON.

  He accepted the call. “I’m on my way up,” he said, and then disconnected before she could respond.

  The moment the doors parted, he rushed down the hall to the main control center.

  “Mr. Kleinman,” Director Johnson said as he came through the door. “I do not appreciate being—”

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, we are in an emergency situation. We have intruders in the building, heading up the west stairwell at this moment.”

  She stammered for a second before saying, “You need to send your men to stop them.”

  “What do you think I was doing when you tried to call me before? The problem is, we don’t know who these people are or what they are capable of. My men will do what they can, but dealing with this kind of situation is not what they were trained to do.”

  “They need to stop them. That’s their job!”

  As much as he wanted to point out it was not their job but Vintner’s, he didn’t. “I recommend we prepare for the possibility of sealing off the floor.”

  It would be a permanent action rendering NB016 unusable, but it would cut off all access from within the building to the twenty-second floor and protect those who were already there. Their only way out would be from the roof by helicopter, something that would have to wait until Vintner returned, but if they needed to activate the opti
on, at least Director Johnson would be safe.

  “Don’t wait,” she ordered. “Initiate it now.”

  Kleinman frowned. This wasn’t a decision to be taken lightly. “I think we should wait until we know a little—”

  “I said now!”

  __________

  THE RESISTANCE TEAM made it only a few steps past nineteen when the door to twenty opened above. Both Ash and Chloe began firing, driving whoever had been coming through back the other way.

  The two of them rushed up until they had a better angle on the door, and fired at it again as the team ran behind them and continued up. After the last person had passed, Ash and Chloe followed, their eyes still on the door, ready to shoot at the slightest sign of motion. But those on the other side had apparently been dissuaded from making another attempt to enter at the moment.

  Ash tapped Omar on the shoulder, passing the responsibility of watching the rear back to him, and then Ash and Chloe squeezed by the column and retook their position at the top.

  As they approached the landing for the twenty-first floor, a loud metallic groan screamed from farther above.

  “What the hell is that?” someone whispered.

  Unsure, Ash raced ahead toward twenty-two, but jammed to a stop half a flight past the twenty-first floor.

  A few feet below, where the twenty-second-floor landing should have been, was a solid steel ceiling.

  25

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  5:51 AM PST

  MARTINA GABLE LIFTED Ben’s arm off her shoulder and slipped out of bed. She’d been trying to fall back asleep for the last hour, but finally realized it wasn’t going to happen. At most, she’d slept for three hours, but that would have to do.

  Finding Ben had been her main focus since her family had died from the flu. Her search had been aided by her closest friends, friends she had unintentionally become separated from along the way.

  Her lack of intention to ditch them didn’t make her guiltless, though. They were missing because of Martina’s unwavering focus on finding Ben. She had sped away, chasing the woman who had taken Ben’s car, and hadn’t even checked to see where Noreen and Riley and Craig were.

  She had to find them. She had to make amends.

  From her pack, she pulled out a semi-clean shirt and a bar of soap she’d been carrying around, and headed to the bathroom. She did her best to make as little noise as possible, but it was difficult to keep her shoes from squeaking on the concrete walkway that ran behind the Loge section of Dodger Stadium.

  There were no lights on in the bathroom but the water was still running, so she cleaned herself in the dark, changed her shirt, and threw the one she’d been wearing in the trash.

  Though the dorm buildings in the survival station holding areas down on the stadium field would have been perfectly safe now to use, no one had wanted to stay in them. Instead, mattresses had been pulled off bunks and dragged up the stairs to the walkway, where everyone spread out into smaller groups.

  Martina, Ben, and the Ridgecrest girls who had been imprisoned there had stuck together. When Martina returned from the bathroom, she expected them all to be still asleep but they were already up, getting their stuff together.

  “What are you guys doing?” she whispered to prevent disturbing the other groups farther down the walkway.

  “What do you think we’re doing?” Jilly said. “We’re coming with you.”

  “Coming with me?”

  “You’re going out to find Noreen and Riley and Craig, aren’t you?” Valerie said.

  Before falling asleep, the group had talked about finding the three missing friends, but Martina had secretly decided it was her responsibility and no one else’s. She had planned to go alone, her penance for her earlier neglect.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Well, then, what’s the problem?”

  Tears gathered in her eyes as she shook her head. “Nothing.” As she turned for her bag, she realized someone was missing. “Where’s Ben?”

  Jilly chuckled. “Where do you think? He’s finding us a ride.”

  __________

  “DAMMIT,” PAX GRUMBLED when he heard the motorcycles start up.

  He instantly knew what was going on. Martina Gable and her friends were undoubtedly heading out to look for the lost members of their group. He could sympathize, and would have done the same himself under the circumstances, but what would happen after they found their friends?

  The living needed to stick together, but these kids were leaving without having any way to contact Pax or the Resistance.

  He shoved off his mattress and tried to ignore the screams from nearly every muscle and joint, all wanting him to lie back down. In less than a month, he’d gone from living through blizzards in the Arctic to fighting with boat hijackers in the Caribbean to leading the liberation of the survival station here in Los Angeles. His body was sick of all the activity and wanted to get somewhere it could sit around and do nothing for a while. He wasn’t opposed to the plan, but it would have to wait.

  He leaned down next to Gabriel and shook the man’s shoulder.

  Gabriel forced his eyes open. “Huh?” he said, still half asleep. “What?”

  “I need your help.” Pax quickly explained the situation.

  “Sure,” Gabriel said. “Just give me a second.”

  “A second’s all you got. The longer we wait, the more likely it is we won’t be able to find them.”

  From behind Pax, a woman said, “It’s okay. I think I know which direction they’re going.”

  He turned to see Nyla getting to her feet.

  “I don’t need both of you,” he said.

  “Fine, then Gabriel can stay and make sure everything gets taken care of here,” she said. “I’m going with you.”

  Gabriel frowned. “That doesn’t sound like fun. I want to go, too.”

  “Tough,” she said. “You’re in charge now.”

  “Oh, you didn’t mention a promotion. I assume that comes with a raise?”

  “And stock options.” She picked up her pack and nodded at Pax. “Let’s go before this guy starts asking for your job.”

  “He can have it if he wants it,” Pax said.

  Lying back on his bed and closing his eyes, Gabriel said, “I’ll pass.”

  26

  NB016

  9:58 AM EST

  “THEY’RE TRYING AGAIN!” Omar shouted as his rifle barked to life.

  Sealy and two of the others also opened fire on the twentieth-floor landing below them.

  A bullet pinged off the stairs and ricocheted along the wall past the team. Those who hadn’t been firing quickly repositioned themselves and joined in.

  Someone below shouted, “Get back! Get back!”

  The bullets that had been flying up their way ceased.

  “Can you and Sealy keep them pinned down while the rest of us look for a way up on twenty-one?” Ash asked Omar.

  “No problem, sir.”

  After checking that everyone was ready, Ash yanked open the entrance to the twenty-first floor. An empty corridor ran straight out from the doorway along the side of the building, while a perpendicular hallway went off to the right, out of sight from his position.

  Ash eased out and spotted four people at the far end, looking cautiously back his way. As soon as they saw him, they disappeared around a corner.

  To Chloe, he said, “Take Langenberg and Washington and check to the left. I’ll take the others and do the same to the right.”

  “We’re not going to find a way up,” she said.

  “We have to try.”

  Ash took his group down the hall, opening every door they passed. All the rooms so far had been empty, though they saw signs people had left in a hurry. When they reached the corridor where the four people had turned down earlier, Ash and his team found that it, too, was deserted.

  Halfway along it, they came to the elevators that ran only between the seven levels of the base. Yates and Ramirez
worked their fingers between one set of doors and pried them open far enough for Ash to check with his penlight if they could climb up to the twenty-second floor.

  He noticed there were no cables running up the shaft. He turned his light upward. Just like in the stairwell, a metal barrier sealed the space off about twelve feet above him. They weren’t getting up this way, either.

  The next three rooms they checked were like all the others, but as they approached the next one, Ash heard whispers from the other side of the door. He tried the knob and found it locked. After motioning for the others to give him a little room, he turned and mule-kicked the knob.

  The flimsy wood around the handle shattered and the door flew inward. Ramirez and Yates rushed through first, shouting, “Don’t move! Don’t move!”

  Ash, Wicks, and Bobby joined them.

  Huddled behind the table in the middle of the room was a large group of people—twenty-seven, by Ash’s quick count.

  “Hands in the air,” Ash ordered.

  A man near the center of the group said, “We’re not armed.”

  “You’d better hope you’re right,” Ash said.

  While he, Wicks, and Bobby stood guard, Ramirez and Yates worked their way through everyone, securing hands and ankles with zip ties before searching each person.

  “Pistol,” Ramirez said at one point, tossing a gun onto the floor in front of Ash.

  The man who’d declared they weren’t armed looked horrified. “Aiden, what were you thinking?”

  The previously armed man scowled at his colleague but said nothing.

  As Ramirez and Yates continued, Ash heard footsteps in the corridor.

  “Stay here,” he said to the others. He moved quietly back to the door and peeked down the hall. He relaxed as soon as he realized it was Chloe, Langenberg, and Washington. He stepped out to greet them.

  “We checked the other stairwells,” Chloe said. “They’re blocked.”