Nicole swiped her card and opened the front door. She stepped across the threshold and an idea popped into her head. They would stop by the security offices first and see for themselves if anyone was watching.
Nicole was shocked to find the rooms completely empty. Either the Tarians were very trusting, or they really did have no reason to fear an attack from their enemies.
She hoped it wasn’t a trap.
Partially satisfied about the security situation, the girls rushed through the building, crossed the courtyard, and entered the room where the hazard suits were hung up. With some difficulty, they helped each other get into the suits, then turned on their mics and speakers. After triple checking that they were fully zipped and strapped up, the girls slipped into the lab and crossed it, then walked through the testing rooms.
Before going through the door to the room where the test subjects were kept, Lizzie stopped Nicole. “How do we open their doors?”
Huh. That was a good question. Nicole shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the box at the other end of the room?”
“Worth a shot,” Lizzie said, then pushed the door open.
The room was silent. No one moved. At first, Nicole was afraid they were all dead. Then she saw a sheet shuffle and a face appear—a man, staring at them. Nicole gulped. She smiled and waved.
“We’re here to help,” she said.
The man didn’t respond or act like he’d understood. Nicole hesitated. Did anyone here even speak English? She hadn’t considered that. Or maybe the glass was soundproof?
Deciding to act now and worry later, she strode down the very long room, noticing several people watching her. This had to be breaking up the monotony of their usual evening schedule.
She reached the big box and swung the panel open. Inside, labeled neatly, were all of the flip switches Sasha had mentioned, but nothing to show that there was a way to open the cells themselves.
“There isn’t anything here,” Nicole said, glancing at Lizzie. “Go look around. I’ll start flipping switches.”
She began with the top ones, working her way down. A little blue light next to the switches turned off as she flipped them, and she trusted that meant the power was leaving the boxes that prevented Aretes from gathering magic.
Lizzie had returned without luck and Nicole was nearly to the end of the last row of switches when a sudden explosion rocked the building. Nicole’s knees banged into each other as she struggled to maintain her balance.
Once she was sure-footed, she turned, trying to see through the dust.
A man wearing nothing but a hospital gown was standing at the other end of the hall from the girls. He stretched his hands out and screamed, looking up at the ceiling, fists clenched.
Another explosion shook the room. Glass shattered. All of the cell walls were destroyed.
When the smoke had cleared, Nicole saw the man striding down the hall toward Nicole and Lizzie, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was walking barefooted on glass shards.
Nicole nearly shrank against the huge metal box behind her.
The man stopped in front of her, and his magical pulse, which must have still been gathering after that last explosion, slammed into Nicole, again nearly knocking her to the ground.
This man was powerful. Very powerful.
He didn’t hesitate before grabbing Nicole by the shoulders and pulling her to himself, placing his lips on either side of her hazard suit mask and making loud kissing noises.
She froze, unsure of what to do. Obviously, this was a gesture of thanks. But she could have done without it.
She couldn’t tell what nationality the man was, he was so covered in sores. His eyes were small glints of light in the darkened room.
He pulled back, releasing her. “Thank you.”
“Who—who are you?” Nicole asked.
“Esteban, from Spain. A fellow Arete.” He glanced back and forth between Nicole and Lizzie, probably wanting an introduction.
“I’m Nicole and this is Lizzie,” Nicole said. “We’re Americans.”
“I know,” Esteban said. “I saw you earlier.”
“We’re here to help,” Nicole said.
“Yes. You know we can never leave this place, right?”
Nicole hesitated, wondering if it was for the reason Sasha gave her earlier. “Why?”
“We’ll infect too many people.” Esteban paused, hand over his stomach, and grimaced, bending slightly at the waist. He was obviously in pain.
“What do you have?” Nicole asked.
“Smallpox. They gave me an early strain of it—underdeveloped. Rather than killing me, it has made me ill and very contagious for many years. I’ll eventually experience a slow, painful death. Obviously, a failure from what they were hoping would happen.”
Nicole glanced over his shoulder, seeing that a few other people were leaving their cells. Only about five joined her—the rest were too sick to move, and Nicole’s heart ached for them.
Out of the five who’d joined them, three were Aretes. Now that the walls were destroyed, Nicole could feel faint pulses coming from several of the cells. She said a quick mental prayer for the care and protection of all those too sick to move, then glanced at Esteban and the others.
“Are you ready to create havoc?”
Esteban grinned. Then, when a couple of the others looked confused, he translated what Nicole had said into three different languages. Nicole raised her eyebrows. Smart guy.
“Lead us,” Esteban said. “We’ve been kept still far too long. Our powers yearn for release.”
Nicole nodded. “We need to destroy the lab. Prevent the Tarians from continuing their research and testing. Keep them from entering the building ever again, but especially make it so they can’t use the diseases here to hurt anyone else.”
“Good plan.” Esteban grinned, his teeth darkened and dirty. “How do we do this?”
Nicole shrugged. “I was hoping one of you would have an idea. I mean, destroying the lab shouldn’t be too difficult . . . but keeping the Tarians from returning? If we smash samples of diseases everywhere, I suspect that opening the doors would cause them to spread, which is what they want.”
Esteban raised a hand to rub his chin, but after he touched the blisters there, dropped it. “Yes, this is true.”
Lizzie grabbed Nicole’s arm. “Don’t diseases have a certain lifetime outside a body or something?”
“Yes, they do,” Esteban said. “I think many can die within hours, but I imagine some take weeks. I’m not sure which is which.”
Nicole took a deep breath. “Well, let’s head back to the lab and get started.”
“We should hurry,” Esteban said. “They’ll be looking soon.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows. “They?”
Esteban pointed at the camera Nicole hadn’t noticed. “They don’t watch around the clock, but someone checks every couple of hours or so.”
Nicole and Lizzie led the way past the destroyed cells and to the testing rooms. Nicole couldn’t bear to look at those too sick to move.
“Do you think the lab will have something to relieve pain for them?” she asked Esteban.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. We should check before we destroy anything.”
They entered the lab and started searching the cupboards and drawers. Lizzie grinned over at Nicole when she found a shelf full of containers of methanol. “This will probably come in handy,” she said, pulling out several gallons.
Nicole raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question her friend.
After several precious moments had disappeared, Esteban and Nicole both found treasures—Esteban some morphine, ready to administer, and Nicole several first aid kits. She was positive the morphine would be better than Band-Aids, but at this point, anything would help.
Esteban gave the morphine and first aid kits to the two non-Aretes, speaking to them in another language. Judging by his gestures, he was telling them how to use the morphine. They nodded, t
hen rushed from the room.
A phone on the wall next to Lizzie rang just then, making everyone jump.
Nicole and the others stared at it, no one making a move to answer. A sick feeling hit Nicole in the stomach. The Tarians had discovered them and were calling to distract them from their purpose. She was going to die tonight.
Before she could say anything, Lizzie picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
Her face turned white as she listened. Nicole stepped over to her friend and pushed the speakerphone button.
“Who is this?” she demanded.
“Raul. You didn’t answer your cell. Tarians are on their way. You must destroy the security system—otherwise, you’ll never get out of the building. Their fail safes will be going off soon and will trap you there until the Tarians arrive.”
A male voice in the background sounded over the phone and then got louder as Raul gave the phone to another person. “You’re being watched,” the new voice said. “Every available camera has been trained on you.”
Nicole looked up. Sure enough, the cameras were all pointed at her.
“How much time do we have before they get here?” Nicole asked, wondering who the man was who had joined Raul.
“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”
“And how much time until the traps go off?”
“About half that. Hurry.”
“We will.”
Nicole hung up the phone, then turned to Esteban and the other three Aretes. “We destroy the lab while the Tarians are watching. Let them know what they’ll be dealing with when they arrive. And it’s time for them to know who I am.”
An evil grin spread across Esteban’s face. “I like this plan.”
He turned and held his arms out, but Lizzie’s shrieking made him stop.
“You can’t destroy things like that,” she said. “Labs like this have tons of flammable things in them, even substances that explode the moment they touch oxygen. We can’t just blow the place up or we’ll kill ourselves. We have to be careful.”
Esteban cocked an eyebrow at her, but Nicole nodded. “Lizzie’s a Fire Arete. She studies this stuff in her classes.”
Esteban nodded. “All right. We’ll do things her way.”
Lizzie loaded the methanol on a wheeled cart, which she pushed to the doors. “Nicole, we’ll use this to destroy the security system. Neither of us will be able to hack into the computers—fire is our best bet. They’ll have sprinklers set up that’ll hopefully prevent the fire from spreading back here.”
Lizzie turned to the room. “Let’s trash the diseases and computers. Cause as much damage as possible without wide-scale explosions. Because I seriously want to live through this.” She glanced at Esteban. “And we need you to stay alive, too, to make sure no one comes into this room.”
“Agreed.” Esteban surveyed Nicole and Lizzie. “I and the other diseased Aretes will destroy the diseases. The two of you should focus on the machines. We can’t risk either of you getting stabbed by a needle.”
Nicole and Lizzie agreed, then everyone got to work. Nicole found a fire extinguisher. She began smashing computers and monitors and everything that looked valuable. Lizzie did the same.
Every now and then, she checked on the others’ progress. Esteban was pulling vial after vial out of fridges, smashing them on the floor, making sure that every glass container was broken.
Nicole knitted her forehead, realizing his “long” life of misery and pain would probably be shortened considerably. Not all of these diseases would make him sick through air or even skin contact, but she was positive enough of them would that he’d be feeling really sick soon.
She only hoped he wouldn’t die before he’d been able to stop the Tarians from entering the building.
The other three Aretes were following Esteban’s example. Two were overturning fridges, spilling their contents across the polished cement floor, while the third made sure everything was broken.
Suddenly, the phone rang. Esteban was the closest and put it on speakerphone.
“Nicole, what are you doing?” Sasha asked.
Nicole froze, her gaze going to a camera. “Preventing you from destroying the people I love,” she said.
She glanced at Esteban, who hung up the phone.
“Time to go,” Nicole said to Lizzie. “They’ve seen enough.”
Lizzie nodded, and the two girls turned, rushing from the room.
“We’ll keep it up,” Esteban called after them before the doors shut. “And we’ll prevent anyone from entering this room, I promise.”
Nicole waved at him. She realized she and Lizzie were both probably carrying thousands of bacteria merely from being in the same room with those vials as they were smashed. But there wasn’t anything they could do about it. They’d burn the hazard suits while they burned the security room.
Keeping the suits on, the girls pushed the cart of methanol across the courtyard and into the other section of the facility.
As soon as they got to the security room, the girls opened the gallons of methanol, dumping their contents everywhere.
For a moment, Nicole wondered how they’d start the place on fire. Then she remembered her best friend was a Fire Arete, and she couldn’t help but smile.
“I’ve never done this before,” Lizzie said. “I don’t exactly know how flammable methanol is. We’re going to have to be very careful.”
Nicole nodded, helping Lizzie shred several books that appeared to be tutorials and policy and procedure books. Did the Tarians have a procedure for what to do in case two teenage Aretes broke into the place, smashed up all their diseases, then burned down the security room?
Probably not.
Once Lizzie was satisfied that they had enough kindling, the girls stripped off their suits—being careful not to touch the outsides—stepped out of them, and left them in the middle of the methanol-soaked room.
Lizzie suddenly giggled. “You know, we wouldn’t even need to light this place on fire. The methanol would eventually destroy all the metal here.”
Nicole didn’t respond—she didn’t need to—and Lizzie grabbed a handful of the shredded papers. She mimed drawing in her hand, and the papers started burning.
Stepping just outside the heavy metal doors, Lizzie made sure Nicole was out as well, then she tossed the burning ball of paper back into the room.
The girls pushed the doors shut just as the methanol burst into flame. The ensuing explosion rocked the building, flinging the doors open and the girls across the hall.
Nicole’s ears rang and she felt like she’d been run over by a semitruck. She was vaguely aware of something buzzing in her pocket, but she had no idea what it was or what was going on. Water sprayed from above and the smell of smoke flooded her nose.
Finally, she drifted out of her stupor enough to realize the buzzing was her phone. With some difficulty, she pulled it out and answered, shielding it from the water.
“Nicole, get up. You have to move!” It was Raul.
Nicole groaned, rolling over. Lizzie was pushing herself into a sitting position, her arms shaking.
“The cameras did not turn off!” Raul shouted. “Alarms have been triggered. Locks have released on interior doors, but electric wires on the exterior doors have been triggered. You have to turn off the power to the building or you won’t be able to leave. Get up now!”
Nicole shook herself, realizing Raul was right. She and Lizzie would be stuck there for the rest of their lives. They’d be tortured, inflicted with diseases, and probably decapitated like Austin’s siblings if they didn’t act now.
Nicole gasped. She’d nearly forgotten about Austin’s siblings. “Come on, Lizzie. Let’s go,” she said, getting to her feet and pulling Lizzie up as well.
Raul was still on the phone. “I’ll direct you to the security room. The Tarians will arrive any moment. The faster you turn off the power, the easier it will be for you to get out. Go straight down this hall. And hurry!”
/> Nicole and Lizzie limped forward, and a random thought entered Nicole’s mind that with how wet everything was, the fire probably wouldn’t spread. Lizzie was right—Esteban and the others wouldn’t be burned alive. Thank goodness.
After several turns and lurching down a few more hallways, Raul directed Nicole and Lizzie into a large room. He instructed them to flip several switches and pull on a few handles and suddenly, they were bathed in complete darkness. Not even the standby generator was on anymore.
Raul sighed in apparent relief. “That worked.” He said something to the guy who was with him, then came back. “The Tarians won’t know where to find you. I suggest you make your way to the front of the building, as that’s the last place they’ll expect you to be. They’ll surround the other entrances, but will possibly overlook the front door.”
Nicole nodded, though she knew Raul couldn’t see it. “Lead me to the art room. I know how to find my way from there.”
Raul started doing so, then paused. “They’ve arrived. Stay away from windows. Keep low. Go through this hall, then take the second door on the left. That’s the art room. We need to end the call—we can’t risk you making any noise.”
They did so. Nicole made sure the sound on her phone was turned off and tucked the device into her pocket.
She and Lizzie snuck through the art room, weaving around statues, staying away from the light the moon cast onto the stone floor from the windows.
The girls reached the front entryway and saw headlights through the doors. They pressed themselves up against the wall, creeping along it. They were on the same side of the room as the door to the head exhibits. The girls stepped into that room and, at a crouch, dashed to the other side of the huge center table.
Just then, Nicole heard the front door open. Dark-clothed people began pouring silently into the building.
They were followed by Sasha—Nicole recognized him immediately from the moonlight that flooded over him. He started mouthing orders, and the people rushed to obey. Soon, only Sasha waited in the front entry. They’d neglected the exhibit room, and Nicole said a silent prayer of thanks. The thought probably wouldn’t even enter Sasha’s mind to have someone check this room.
Reclaim, Mosaic Chronicles Book Five Page 11