Unlocked!
Grace pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The cavernous room extended well beyond her range of vision in the dim light. A narrow corridor ran down the center of the room between tall rows of industrial machinery that hummed and buzzed. Dull silver ductwork snaked from large air handlers and ran across the ceiling. Air compressors and exhaust fans populated the room with a chorus of metallic noises.
Water condensate on overhead pipes dripped an intermittent rain on the metal grating that covered the floor. Steam hissed from pipes overhead, belching plumes of white fog into the moist, musty air.
Grace advanced down the corridor, through the forest of machinery, pipes, and electrical equipment. Beneath her feet, gaps in the thick metal grate revealed a yawning chasm below.
Ahead and to the right, she saw a phone mounted to a steel column. Tacked above the phone was a yellowed paper listing last names and phone extensions.
She removed the handset and placed it to her ear. There was only silence. She clicked the receiver several times in rapid sequence.
Still no dial tone.
Frustrated, she slammed the handset against the wall.
Goddammit!
Her muscles ached with fatigue, and pain lanced through her head. Her breath came in ragged gasps.
High overhead, a burst of steam jetted upward into the darkness. At the end of the room behind her, the door through which Grace had recently passed swung open with a groan. Faint fluorescent lighting backlit the figure that stepped through the doorway.
Grace froze.
Not big enough to be Crowe.
The figure walked into the room, pulling the door shut behind it.
Definitely a man.
“Christian?” she called out tentatively.
The figure paused.
“No,” he replied. “Not Christian.”
Ninety-eight
Subbasement, Level C
Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
Crowe rose slowly to his feet, careful to avoid placing any weight on his right knee. He tried to raise his right arm. Coupled with the sharp pain radiating down his arm, his right shoulder’s refusal to move indicated to Crowe that it was dislocated.
Crowe tested his injured knee.
Remarkably, it held his weight, but spikes of pain lanced through his right leg.
Time for the Queen’s cocktail.
He reached into a pocket inside his blazer and withdrew a syringe packaged in plastic. Crowe tore off the plastic wrapper and jabbed the needle into a vein on the underside of his wrist. He depressed the syringe’s plunger, draining its contents into his bloodstream.
Crowe recalled the first time he felt the euphoria of the Queen’s cocktail, an injectable mixture of painkillers and stimulants used in combat to fight injury and fatigue.
God save the Queen.
Crowe palpated his dislocated shoulder with two fingers. He gingerly rotated the ball-and-socket joint, lining up the bones on either side of his torn rotator cuff. Then he unbuckled his belt, pulled it through the belt loops of his trousers, and folded it in half.
The aroma of leather filled his nose as Crowe stuck the belt in his mouth and clamped his jaw down against the soft leather. He made one final adjustment to his dislocated shoulder and turned to face the wall.
With a grunt, Crowe threw the weight of his body against the wall, driving the bones of his shoulder joint back into place with an audible pop.
Feeling the effects of the Queen’s cocktail flowing through his veins, Crowe rotated his injured shoulder.
Much better.
Crowe retrieved his 9mm from where it lay on the concrete floor. Squeezing the grip, he tested the laser sight. A thin beam of red instantly shot across the room.
As the stimulants kicked in and the painkillers flooded his body with synthetic endorphins, Crowe felt euphoric.
Powerful.
Acutely aware of his heightened senses.
He took a moment to deliberate and consider his options.
Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.
Coming quickly to a decision, Crowe sprinted toward an open doorway. As he stalked his prey in the bowels of the Millennium Tower, his thoughts surged in random directions, drifting undercurrents of thoughts and memories colliding in the hyperstimulated synapses of his brain. His mind drifted back in time. He could almost smell the hot desert wind as his mind’s eye recalled the Iraqi city where Crowe had lost his humanity.
After Saddam Hussein’s military had collapsed under the onslaught of the American and British invasion in the Second Persian Gulf War, Omar Crowe’s SAS unit roamed the streets of Basra, rooting out insurgents and remnants of the Iraqi Republican Guard hiding among the civilian population.
One moonless night during the first week of Ramadan, his six-man squad was searching a dilapidated apartment building for Iraqi insurgents when Crowe walked through a thin trip wire hidden in a dark narrow stairwell, detonating a pipe bomb affixed beneath the rickety steps. Three of Crowe’s men were cut down instantly in the storm of shrapnel that exploded in the confined space. The remaining two were gunned down by insurgents who rushed into the stairwell after the detonation. Only Crowe, who had himself triggered the explosion that caused the violent deaths of his men, remained uninjured.
Their dying screams filled his ears as Crowe killed the two insurgents, emptying his assault rifle into the bodies of the young Hussein loyalists. One of Crowe’s men screamed for help, lying in a twisted heap on the stairs, his body shredded by the violent blast. The dark red blood of his brother-in-arms soaked through Crowe’s desert fatigues as he cradled the young man, whose last breath bubbled on his lips.
It seemed to Crowe that a demon had possessed him that day in the silence that followed those horrific moments. With the terrible rage of an avenging angel, he stalked the apartment building, indiscriminately slaying the Iraqi men, women, and children who huddled together in desperate fear in their tiny apartments. When a second SAS unit finally found Crowe, he had run out of ammunition and was frantically beating the mutilated corpse of an elderly man with the butt of his rifle.
The British government quietly discharged Omar Crowe from military service. The incident was never disclosed to the public. Crowe returned to England, drifting from town to town, shunned by his former comrades. The demon inside him remained.
Two weeks later, in a seedy bar in London’s East End, a beefy sailor from the British Merchant Marine accidentally bumped into Crowe, spilling his pint across the bar. Crowe snapped, his fiery rage consuming all reason, and savagely beat the man to death with a barstool.
The next morning, Crowe awoke in shackles, charged with homicide. The trial that followed was swift and just. A jury of his peers and countrymen gave Crowe a life sentence in London’s infamous Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
Just when it seemed his life was over, salvation came to Crowe in the form of a bespectacled prison warden with a tattoo of two intertwined serpents on the inside of his wrist. He offered a simple choice: die in prison or serve a new master. For Crowe, the decision was easy. He was spirited out of Wormwood Scrubs Prison in the dead of night. The Order gave Crowe a new identity and a new sense of purpose. He was reborn. Now Crowe served a new master. And so did the demon inside him.
Ninety-nine
Subbasement, Level C
Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
Madison froze in the darkened hallway and listened intently. For a moment, all he heard was the faint sound of an alarm from the floor above.
Then there were footsteps.
In his flight to escape from Crowe, Madison had lost his bearings in the maze of corridors and passageways in the subbasement. In the utilitarian hallways and rooms beneath the Millennium Tower, there were no signs to direct him toward an exit, and no windows or other visual cues to orient himself.
Madison’s thoughts turned to Grace, alone in the subbasement, trying to
make her way out of the building. Guilt weighed heavily on his conscience for leaving Grace by herself to find her way to safety.
He couldn’t bear the pain of her loss. Not that kind of pain. Not again.
Justin was a ghost of a child, lying thin and frail under the starched white sheets of a hospital bed. A tangle of tubes and wires crisscrossed his chest, connecting his dying body with IV bags, monitors, and machines.
The monotonous beep of a heart monitor ticked off the passage of seconds. Christian Madison sat at his bedside, gently holding his son’s hand.
Most of time, Justin didn’t seem to know what was happening. He stared straight ahead, his eyes glassy and vacant. His breathing was labored. At times, the rise and fall of his chest would stop completely. He would make a small gurgling sound, swallow, and then his breathing would start again.
The sound of footsteps came again, closer this time.
More than one person, thought Madison.
They were close, and coming closer.
Madison tried to spot a place to hide. The only door in his immediate vicinity was locked. The smooth walls of the hallway afforded no protection.
The yellow oval of a flashlight beam flickered around the corner in the hallway ahead.
Too late.
Madison tensed, readying himself for either fight or flight.
The flashlight beam swept around the corner, momentarily blinding Madison. He crouched down, squinting at the figures behind the bright light.
“Christian?” asked the figure holding the flashlight.
Quiz lowered the flashlight, pointing the beam away from Madison.
“Thank God,” said Madison. “I don’t think I have any fight left in me.”
“You look like hell,” said Quiz, grinning.
“You should talk,” said Madison.
“How’s the arm?” asked Quiz.
A makeshift bandage around Madison’s arm was soaked with blood. His face was ashen. Dark hair was matted against his forehead.
“I’ve been better,” he said. “But at least the bleeding seems to have stopped.”
Madison noticed that Quiz was gripping his left hand, rubbing his right thumb against his left palm. The fingers of his left hand arched backward in an involuntary muscle spasm.
“Quiz, you okay?” asked Madison.
Quiz nodded. His eyes darted back and forth. “I think so. But I don’t have my pills.”
Madison looked at his watch.
“We have to get out of here,” said Madison. “Do you know a way out?”
“Yes,” said Quiz. “Well, maybe. I’m not that familiar with this part of the subbasement. But I think I can get us back to the server farm. From there we can make it to street level.”
“Let’s go,” said Madison. “We’re running out of time.”
One Hundred
Subbasement, Level C
Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
Five minutes later, Quiz led Madison and Ambergris to a steel door leading into the Triad Genomics computer core. His security badge triggered the locking mechanism on the door with an audible click.
“We’re back at the server farm,” said Quiz, looking over his shoulder at Madison. His forehead was covered with tiny beads of sweat.
Quiz opened the door and the trio walked through. Inside the server farm, the temperature was a good fifteen degrees colder, with almost no humidity. Evaporative condensers removed the moisture from the air to protect the sensitive processors and machinery.
Quiz pointed across the room, beyond the rows of tall black servers interconnected by a tangle of colored cables and wires.
“The door we want is there.”
Fifty yards away, a nondescript door marked EXIT beckoned from the opposite wall. Flashing red security beacons pulsed in the darkness.
“Let’s move,” said Madison.
Quiz edged toward the center of the room.
Walking closely behind with an unsteady Ambergris in tow, Madison almost plowed into Quiz when he stopped abruptly. Madison lowered his voice to a whisper and scanned the room for any signs of danger.
“What is it?”
Quiz turned around. His face was a mask of fear. Sweat streamed down his forehead.
“I think I’m in trouble…”
His speech became garbled and Quiz’s eyelids began to flutter. With a loud clack, his jaw snapped shut. The muscles in Quiz’s neck bulged as they tightened involuntarily.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Ambergris.
Madison released his hold on Ambergris’ arm and took a step toward Quiz.
“He’s having a seizure,” said Madison. “Sit down if you feel unsteady on your feet, Dr. Ambergris.”
Quiz’s body convulsed and his back arched uncontrollably. Madison grabbed him in a bear hug, and gently eased Quiz off his feet to the floor.
“What should I do?” asked Ambergris. “How can I help?”
“It should pass,” said Madison. “We just have to wait it out and try to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”
As Madison lowered Quiz to the floor, Quiz’s head jerked back and forth violently. Madison tried to cradle Quiz’s head in his hands to keep it from striking the concrete floor.
Quiz cried out—a loud, terrible wail.
Crowe silently stalked the hallways around Quiz’s office near the Triad Genomics server farm. He reasoned that Quiz, when confronted with a threat, would try and make it back to familiar territory. Dr. Ambergris would be with him.
A faint cry echoed down the hallway.
How very predictable.
Crowe raised his weapon and sprinted in the direction of Quiz’s cries.
One Hundred One
Subbasement, Level C
Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
Madison struggled to keep Quiz’s flailing body from smashing into anything.
“See if you can find something to put under his head. Anything soft,” said Madison.
Ambergris surveyed the room for a blanket or a piece of insulation. Anything.
“I don’t see anything…”
Quiz coughed violently, sending a spray of pinkish red foam across Madison’s face. A rivulet of blood trailed from the corner of his mouth.
“Shouldn’t you put something in his mouth, like a spoon or something, to keep him from biting off his tongue?” asked Ambergris.
Quiz’s legs thrashed wildly.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. He could break his teeth if we try to cram something into his mouth.”
Quiz’s right arm shot up and smacked Madison in the face.
“Christian…,” said Ambergris.
“Trust me, dammit,” said Christian. “We just have to wait it out. It will—”
“No,” interrupted Ambergris. “It’s not about that.”
There was panic in his voice.
“Someone’s coming.”
One Hundred Two
Subbasement, Level C
Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York
Quiz rolled onto his side and curled into the fetal position, limbs twitching, as Crowe stormed into the climate-controlled chamber housing the Triad Genomics server.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Crowe, leveling his 9mm at Madison’s crouched figure.
“Seizure,” said Madison. “He has epilepsy.”
“Shame.”
Crowe shifted his eyes to Dr. Ambergris and smiled.
A red dot appeared on Ambergris’ forehead.
“How’s the arm, Doc?”
“Fuck you.”
Crowe’s smile vanished and his eyes narrowed.
“Run,” yelled Madison at Dr. Ambergris.
Ambergris slowly shook his head.
“I won’t die running away from the likes of him. I’d rather take it in the face than in the back.”
“As you wish,” said Crowe.
Crowe stilled his br
eathing and applied pressure to the trigger.
The fog began to lift from Quiz’s mind. His body ached terribly, muscles screaming in protest. The floor was cold and hard against his face.
His eyelids fluttered open. Indistinct shapes swam in his field of vision.
“Christian?” His voice was a raspy whisper.
As his eyes began to focus on a figure across the room, a shot rang out. Then a scream.
Madison watched helplessly as Ambergris stared into Crowe’s eyes, facing down his executioner. Quiz stirred on the floor beside him, mumbling his name.
Behind Crowe, the door silently swung open and a darkly clad Asian man edged through the narrow opening.
A long, thin knife glinted in his hand.
Grace followed Arakai through the door into the Triad Genomics computer core. As her mind registered the scene within, Arakai drew his knife.
Before Crowe could react, Arakai leapt into the air onto Crowe’s back, driving the knife down into soft flesh at the base of his neck, severing Crowe’s carotid artery with a vicious twist of the blade.
Blood spurted from the gaping wound.
Screaming, Crowe pulled the trigger of his 9mm.
Ambergris watched in amazement as Arakai leapt onto Crowe’s back, plunging a knife into the side of his neck. Crowe cried out in shock and pain, his knees buckling beneath him. Dark arterial blood jetted from the base of his neck.
Crowe squeezed the trigger and fired.
The shot went wide, slamming into the server next to Ambergris in a shower of sparks. Bullet fragments ricocheted off the ruined metal housing of the server, tearing into his chest and shoulder. Ambergris screamed as he fell to the ground.
Crowe fell hard, the weight of Arakai’s body driving him to the floor. He hit the ground chest first, his limp arms making no effort to break the fall.
And then Crowe was still, the crackling buzz of electricity from the ruined server filling the air, a widening pool of blood beneath Crowe’s lifeless body staining the concrete floor.
The Genesis Code Page 21