Green Fields (Book 9): Exodus

by Lecter, Adrienne

  “Is any of that supposed to make any sense, or are you just annoying as fuck on purpose?” Aimes complained.

  Smiling at him now was easy, so very easy. “Maybe a little bit of both? Scratch that—lots of both. And you have no idea what you’re missing.” Speaking of missing, I was sorely missing a moment of privacy here but even with my pulse spiking and adrenaline eroding my common sense, I could tell that it wasn’t wise to ask Bucky if we had time for me and Nate to disappear for a couple of minutes. But damnit, I needed to get my hands on another dose of that shit—for research purposes, of course.

  A metallic clacking sound, followed by a low drone starting up behind the still-locked door distracted me, silence falling in the before noisy room. “That’s the ventilation system,” Cole needlessly confirmed. “I’d say we’re ready to roll in five.”

  I waited for Hamilton to ooze his charm all over me but when nothing came, I had to speak up. “So how exactly are we going to do this now? I presume you’ll need my iris scan to open that door, and likely a few more?”

  Bucky remained silent, but thankfully, Cole had an answer. “We’re trying to reactivate the access profiles right now. If we can get yours working, things would be a lot easier. Else, we’ll have to make a new one, and it looks like we’ll need to do that from the central console in the security station. Hell, even rewriting an existing profile would be easier.” He suddenly drew up short, going as far as sitting up straight before he looked from his console to me. “Didn’t you mention something about knowing his brother’s access codes?”

  Nate didn’t react, but no one had expected him to. I shrugged. “I know Raleigh Miller’s password, but it’s useless without his actual eyes to scan. Iris patterns are more unique than fingerprints, so no luck with that, even if they kind of do look similar.”

  Cole was already shaking his head, grinning. “Yeah, we can’t use that profile to get inside. But we can use it to verify activation of yours if we’re lucky.” His attention snapped back to the laptop, his fingers perfectly flying over the keys. “Almost got it…” he murmured to himself, then, “Code, please?”

  I prattled off the sequence, feeling like it had been a million years since the last—and only—time I’d needed it, when I’d broken into the viral vault of the Green Fields Biotech hot lab.

  “And your access key?”

  I offered that as well. The previously unlit panel by the door flashed white for a second before a single red light started blinking at the top of it.

  “Is it supposed to do that?” Red didn’t look too comforting, really.

  “Only one way to find out, right?” Cole was way too enthusiastic for his own good. “Step up to it. If it works, your iris scan should open the door.”

  “With a potential formaldehyde cloud waiting on the other side.” Really, did Hamilton have to put that bug in my ear?

  The asshole in question gave me a sneer as he readied his own mask, everyone else following suit. “Only one way to find out,” he echoed Cole’s sentiment.

  Dropping the M16 onto its sling, I got my own mask ready yet kept it up on my forehead as I stepped up to the panel. Worst thing that could happen was that the scanner blinded me, right? Or set off some other security measure like spraying the room with corrosive acid or sarin gas. Or engaging built-in flame throwers. Endless possibilities!

  I realized just how much the booster shot was screwing with my mind as I felt myself grinning at the idea of evading that challenge, should I have to. Sure, who needed caution if you could just accidentally kill yourself from believing you were invincible?

  We didn’t, it seemed.

  Even though my mind blared at me that we were all going to survive this, I was still tense as I stepped up to the panel, blinking a few times to make sure my eyes were well moisturized before I stared at the scanner panel, willing it to do its thing. At first, nothing happened, yet just as I wanted to turn away and complain, I more felt than saw something cross the right side of my field of vision. Not exactly a red beam of light, but something was triggering the more sensitive bits and pieces of my freak eyes, something I likely hadn’t been equipped to notice in the past.

  The red light went out and flashed green once, the locks of the door disengaging with an audible “clack.”

  I quickly pulled my mask down and made sure that it was fastened securely, not letting in air anywhere around my face. Aimes, Wu, and Davis were the first through the door as soon as Hamilton wrenched it open, the bright beams of the flashlights fixed to their rifles lighting up the long, white corridor opening up in front of them. For a second, I had a really unhealthy kind of dejà vu as the hallway reminded me of Raynor’s lair, but my mind quickly snagged on all the differences. For one, there were more doors, most of them torn off their hinges, and debris littering the floor. I’d never been so happy to see what looked like someone had rampaged through a break room.

  I remained standing to the side of the door until most of the soldiers had filed through, happy to take my place toward the back. It was only a matter of time until Hamilton would need me for the next barrier he couldn’t barge through, and if anything in there was actually out to get us, I’d rather it got them first. Nate seemed to subscribe to a similar doctrine as he paused next to me, waiting until I looked at his face, then down to his hands. He silently gave me the signal for “save yourself first,” making me smirk under my mask. Yeah, I had zero intentions of laying down my life for this mission, scientific interest and morbid curiosity be damned.

  I was a little surprised when Cole and Gita grabbed all their equipment to take inside with them. Not my place to question, and I absolutely couldn’t concern myself with everything, so I simply didn’t.

  Hill and Tanner brought up the very rear, and into the lair of evil we went.

  Chapter 12

  The corridor behind the door was just that—a corridor, and not yet part of the real complex. Sure, there was a station where a security guard would have been sitting, bored out of his mind, and locker rooms for the personnel to change into their most clandestine work clothes; also a small break room—where the splintered tables and bent chairs came from that had ended up in the corridor—and doors leading to maintenance panels, but all that could have been part of any lab—or office building, really. There were no corpses—long dead or still quite active—but also no blood or remains anywhere in sight. I figured it would have been creepier if it had all been in pristine condition, but not by much. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but this was still too clean, too neat. None of the doors showed any signs of anyone trying to get out. While the one behind the scanner lock was massive enough that it wouldn’t have budged, even if assaulted with said chairs or table legs, that still would have left some scratches or chipped paint. Yet something must have destroyed that furniture, and suddenly, not knowing what was a bigger concern than I could ignore.

  Richards and Munez quickly checked on the locker rooms, coming back out after declaring them “clear.” There were two vending machines in the break room, their glass fronts still intact, half full of snacks and sodas. The fact that nobody had tried to get to them made the destroyed furniture even more suspicious. If I’d found myself locked in here, knowing I was about to die, the least I would have done was stuff my face with candy.

  As expected, Hamilton was cooling his heels at the next security door, waiting for me to work my magic—which I was reluctant to do as that gas mask was as comforting as it was uncomfortable to wear.

  “Who’s gonna play guinea pig?” I asked, not pointing out that until we were done here, I really wasn’t expendable. I was surprised when Russell of all people—one of the few I was certain hadn’t been inoculated with the serum, and hadn’t received a booster shot as well—pulled his mask off, his face pinched with anticipation. We all waited with more or less bated breath. Nothing happened, until Richards did the same, experimentally sniffing the air. “Stale but could have been worse with the ventilation system on standby f
or so long. Not a hint of a chemical smell—or decay.”

  One after the other, the soldiers removed their masks but kept them on the outsides of their packs where they were easily retrieved. I waited until the absolute last moment—after getting an exasperated look from Hamilton—before I pulled mine off and stepped up to the scanner. Again, it tickled my eyes before the door locks disengaged.

  On the other side, a corridor led deeper into the building, yet another one was crossing it just after one more—equally abandoned—security station. After they’d made sure that nothing lurked in the vicinity, Cole checked on the dead computer while Hill got out a spray can and, quietly humming to himself, left four arrows on the walls of the straight corridor, one on each side of the intersection, all pointing the way we had come. When he saw me watching him, he shrugged—after making sure not to inhale the fumes. “When you’re on the retreat, it’s easy if you don’t have to guess which way is out.” He then proceeded to paint two red Xs on the floor of the crossing corridor.

  “Station’s dead,” Cole reported. “We’ll have to get to the main server room. That should be on standby.”

  Hamilton took that with a nod. “Aimes, Wu, check left. McClintock, Williams, right. Meet up with us at the main level common area once you’ve secured the rooms back here.” Apparently, now that we were at our objective, the asshole-in-charge was doing just that, being in charge. Red didn’t seem to mind, although I got the sense that he was keeping an eye on me. Or, which was less likely, he was eyeing my ass. I preferred to think he expected me to either run off or do something exceptionally stupid. My weird mind supplied that both was easily possible at the same time.

  The rest of us went down the main corridor, stopping at the few doors that were unevenly distributed along the way. The first few were offices and a library, the rest labs and the assorted rooms belonging to them. Nothing interesting, although I noted that all the machines were on the high end of state-of-the-art, even though the equipment wasn’t much more complicated than you’d find at any college’s basic chemistry labs. While Hamilton was moving forward, I hovered in one of the labs for a bit, randomly pulling one of the black lab journals from where they were neatly stored above a desk by the door. As I’d expected, only basic-level prep and analysis work, nothing interesting. Any lab, even the most secret, clandestine one needed the facilities where the lab monkeys mixed the buffer solutions and ran endless series of PCRs.

  None of the lab spaces looked out of the ordinary, and only in a single one did I find a smashed glass bottle on the floor, likely having slid off the shelf as it had been placed too close to the edge. I had no idea if earthquakes were common here—or how the lab had been sealed off—so it really might have been a matter of gravity. Hill continued with his arrows, appearing way more relaxed than any of the others, making me wonder if that was his tell. Not that I cared. It was just something to occupy my mind with while I got more bored by the second—and really wanted to do other things than stand around and look at broken bottles.

  From remembering the blueprints, I knew that we were coming close to that recreational area that Hamilton had referred to when Nate sidled up to me—or probably just took one more step than necessary. It was hard to tell. He stopped scanning the white walls and instead looked intently at my face, his gaze skipping all over before it settled on my eyes. I stared right back, widening my eyes just a little as I continued to hold his gaze. It was tremendously hard not to smile.

  “Are you high?” he whispered, low enough that the mic probably wouldn’t pick it up.

  I shook my head, but that damn smile escaped me. “Nope. But a different word starting with ‘h’ comes to mind.”

  Steps behind us alerted me to our four explorers returning to the fold, and Aimes didn’t waste a golden opportunity. “Horrendously annoying comes to mind,” he offered as he pushed past us. I glared after him for a second before I looked back at Nate, pursing my lips. He was biting his, hard-pressed not to laugh. Oh, he’d definitely gotten that message. And speaking of hard—

  I forced that train of thought to derail and followed the others. “I’m good. Just give me something to do and I’ll be great.”

  “Keep that thought,” Nate murmured, still amused. It was highly unusual for him to be so easy around me in situations like these, but maybe that was the lack of the burden of command. What did I know?

  Up ahead, the corridor opened into a huge room, and just before that, another corridor branched off. Hamilton waited at the intersection, sending Richards and Tanner forward to check. They returned maybe a minute later, both looking strangely quiet. “It’s empty,” Red reported, his eyes skipping over the lot of us, evaluating. “But I wouldn’t necessarily call it ‘clear.’ No hostiles.”

  Hamilton set four people to guard the intersection and had the rest of us move forward. At first, I didn’t get Red’s cryptic remark, but then we got deep enough into the room to see the opposite wall—and the massive, dark splatters on it. I couldn’t see any bullet holes—and the dried blood looked more like it had sprayed in arcs rather than the patterns exit wounds might have caused—but it was impossible to deny that these were signs of violence. Instantly, everyone seemed more alert, their motions more precise, eyes never stopping as they roamed over every available surface. There were no other signs of disturbance; not even one of the sofas or chairs was misaligned. Or so I thought, until I looked up to where the upper floor ended in a room-spanning balcony, and noticed that a single ceiling panel wasn’t quite matching up. Probably whatever had smashed that bottle in the lab had been responsible for that as well, I told myself. Hell, if I hadn’t had my own adventure of crawling through ducts, I never would have noticed. But I did notice, and there was no ignoring it now.

  Once the room was secure, Hamilton sent a few teams of two to check on the two corridors that led away from the area—one to the more interesting labs, the other to the animal facility—and set a guard at the stairs to the upper level. As soon as they got the okay, Cole and Gita scurried into the first room on the right on the animal facility branch—the main server room, as Cole explained.

  And three minutes and a whoop later, the emergency lighting came on, green signs glowing ominously along the corridors. It hurt my eyes a lot less than the bright flashlights and let me see more of the upper floor—and the ceiling, with the dislodged panel.

  Nate flicked me an inquiring question with his fingers, finding what irked me himself when I pointedly stared at the upper corner of the room. There must have been barely enough light for him to see without shining his light directly at the panel, but he gave the slightest of nods as he looked in my direction once more. He didn’t really look concerned but also didn’t tell me to forget about it.

  With nothing else to do, I followed Hamilton when he walked into the server room, finding Cole and Gita quite busy in there. I’d expected a small room, crammed top to bottom with hardware, but the space was easily as large as the recreational area outside, and warm enough that I felt sweat bead on my forehead within a minute. Gita had already shirked her jacket, and Cole looked like he wanted to yet was too busy typing to bother. One of these days I had to ask him how he’d acquired those skills, and not ended up working for a Fortune 500 tech giant instead of Special Ops.

  “So nobody’s going to mention that huge blood splatter out there, eh?” I drawled, mostly to amuse myself than expecting a reply. “And still no bodies. Doesn’t look good.”

  Cole ignored me, and so did Hamilton. Too bad.

  “Do you have access to the security logs yet?” Hamilton wanted to know.

  “Just a sec,” Gita mumbled, hammering away at the keyboard of one of the resident workstations. “Got them right here.” She briefly scanned the many, many lines appearing on screen. “Pretty much matches the info you already got. The shutdown sequence was started at 3:49 in the afternoon. No further entries after that, except the automatic switch to standby once power failed two months later and nobody manually d
isengaged it. The next entry is us hacking into the system.” She briefly glanced at Cole. “We should probably delete that.”

  “Too much work,” Cole muttered. “Just leave it.”

  I studied the entries before the ones she’d indicated. “Do they log every single access?”

  Gita hesitated, as if asking permission from Hamilton. “That’s the main system log. It’s admin level entries plus who passes through the outer door by the elevator.”

  “So nobody left after the shutdown?” She nodded at my observation. “Anyone leave just before that?”

  “Not in the last six hours leading up to the shutdown,” she noted. “But that doesn’t seem unusual. I briefly checked the days before that. Almost nobody left during the day, and most stayed for ten hours minimum. If you consider the decontamination protocols, it wouldn’t make much sense to just drop by for an hour or two.”

  I was burning to tell her that I was very aware of that myself from years of practice but swallowed the remark. “How many people were here the day of the shutdown?”

  Another window went up, more endless lines and columns. “A hundred and thirty-eight,” Gita reported, then hesitated. “Plus twenty-one in the other wing.”