by Amy Hopkins
Cisco joined her, one hand on Penny’s back for balance. “Am I the only one thinking we really need a plan here?”
Penny bit her lip, still watching the screen. “We follow the goons home, bust in, and steal Trevor back. That’s a plan, right?”
“Ha.” Cisco snorted. “Sure.”
“They’re a secret agency that can disappear on a whim. They made a whole damn office block vanish!” Penny blew out a frustrated breath. “If they’re supposedly government, they’re probably armed to the teeth.”
“Even the government has weaknesses,” Cisco pointed out. “Think, Penny. How many movies and urban legends are there of people sneaking into Area 51 or other secret bases?”
“A few,” Penny admitted.
“So there’s probably a way in.” Cisco tapped the screen. “The very fact that there were stories about them in the first place means they were never believed to be completely invincible.”
“Good point.” Penny stood but didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “I have an idea. Stand watch for a moment?”
They swapped positions, Cisco leaning one hip against the desk with his eyes locked on the surveillance screen while Penny dug around for her phone.
Hey Amelia, does your new blog have a video channel?
Her phone rang a few seconds later.
“Of course! You know I love that shit. Why? You want the link?” Amelia took a breath, but Penny cut her off.
“No, I want the logon. I swear, it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.” Penny held her breath for a beat. Please don’t ask questions.
“Sure, I guess.” Amelia sounded curious but thankfully didn’t press for answers. A low chuckle nearby suggested she was otherwise occupied and Penny thanked her lucky stars. “It’s just my regular email address as the login. The password is K9LOVR5861.”
Penny snorted a laugh. “Really? K9LOVR? That’s gold.”
“What’s yours?” Amelia shot back. “LatinoHottie123? Oh, hey, while I remember, I love you, girl but can you not trash our room like that without warning? Red came over and I nearly died!”
Penny’s heart skipped a beat. “That wasn’t you?”
“Me?” Amelia squealed. “Stop it, Red, this is important! No way. I left this room spick and span.”
“Where is Boots?” Penny demanded.
“Boots?” All traces of laughter left Amelia’s voice. “I thought she was with you. Penny, if you didn’t make this mess…”
“Someone broke in,” Penny finished. “Dammit! I knew Steele was acting shifty.”
“Penny!” Cisco’s hiss grabbed her attention. Penny saw two large shadows near the arcade machine, just out of the line of sight of the camera.
This is our only chance to get Trevor. But I can’t leave Boots!
“Shit!” Penny’s heart tore. “Goddamn it. Amelia, I need to call you back in a second. Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Penny pressed the end call button, her movements weighed down by a heavy blanket of guilt.
Behind her, Howler shuffled to his feet and tapped Penny on the shoulder. He passed her the block of wood.
“Um, thanks?” Penny turned it over and blinked. “Wait, that’s me!”
The monkey god had carved her likeness into one side of the block, depicting Penny standing tall with a sword in one hand and a rose in the other. Petals floated away from the dying rose, carved with such precision they looked as soft as silk.
Penny stared at her own face, the sculpture staring back with a hard expression.
“The rose is a symbol of secrecy,” Penny whispered. “The secret organization. You mean, I should go after Trevor?”
Howler nodded.
“Will Boots be okay if I do?” she asked.
Penny waved off Cisco’s questions with a hand as Howler nodded again.
Penny didn’t hesitate. She called Amelia back and cut her friend off before she spoke. “Amelia? I need your help. I can’t tell you what I’m doing, but I have to go.”
“What?” Amelia snapped. “If Boots is—”
“If she is, I need you to find her for me.” Penny clenched her jaw. “Please. You know how much she means to me. You know I would go to her if I had a choice.”
“Okay.” Amelia’s voice changed from stunned to compassionate in a heartbeat. “I trust you, Penny. And you can trust me. You do what you need to do, and don’t worry about Boots. I’ve got this.”
Penny tapped the end call button. Cisco grabbed her arm. “What happened? You’re white as a sheet.”
She shook him off. “Nothing we can fix right now.”
“Then let’s go.” The surveillance screen showed two suited men loading the arcade machine onto a dolly to wheel it out of the bar. Penny cracked the office door open and slipped out as they left. “Thanks for the help, guys.”
“Bye!” Gus waved them off. “When you get the bastards, shoot them a few times for me!”
“Will do!” Penny ran to the door, paused, then followed the goons outside. The soft evening light cast long, deep shadows perfect for hiding. She passed Cisco a tiny adhesive tracking device. “Do it.”
Cisco waited until the goons slammed the back door of the van shut and hauled themselves into the front. He darted across the alley they’d parked in and ran a hand softly along the bumper. He rolled behind a dumpster on the other side and gave Penny a thumbs up.
Penny waited for the van to sputter to life and roll away before sprinting for the Jeep she and Cisco had borrowed from the college. She threw herself in behind the driver’s seat. “Let’s get the bastards.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Whether it was a trick of the light, the traffic headed to a football game, or plain, dumb luck, the drive went smoothly. The van crawled through the traffic several cars ahead, then pulled off on a side street. Penny idled around the corner, then followed at a distance, headlights off.
The van stayed tantalizingly out of sight, but Cisco rattled off directions from the GPS tracker, guiding Penny into an industrial estate on the opposite side of town to the compound they had discovered last time.
“This must be it,” Penny whispered as they crawled past. The van had taken a right turn into a gated driveway.
The Jeep cruised past, and once they were out of sight, Penny pulled into a vacant parking lot, positioning the car behind an old picket fence.
Cisco eased his door shut and eyed the car. “They’ll find it if they look,” he told her.
“Then let’s hope they don’t.” Penny shut her own door and grabbed her phone.
Paranoia in full force, she quickly scanned her apps for anything that shouldn’t be there. “All normal,” she muttered as she dialed a number. “Are you ready to bring the light?” she asked.
“Affirmative.” Cisco’s voice was cold.
“I have a plan, but I need your help to make it work.” Penny shivered in the cool evening air as she waited for an answer.
“Of course,” Cisco told her. “Just tell me what to do.”
Penny rattled off a list of instructions as Cisco set up the laptop. He pulled up a satellite view of the area.
When Penny was done, he pointed at an area of flat concrete. “What’s that?”
Penny reached over him to zoom in on the area. “Our target.” She scrolled around the edges, swapping into street view for a better look. “Hello, beautiful.”
“That’s a sewer cap,” Cisco countered. “That’s not beautiful. It’s gross.”
“It’s exactly what we need,” Penny urged. “Come on. When you picture breaking into a secret base, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
“Subterranean adventure.” Cisco sighed in defeat. “Let’s hope it’s as clean as it is in the movies. But if we meet any giant turtles down there, I’m out.”
“Even if we did, they’d be on our side.” Penny popped the trunk and started hauling out gear. “Headlamp?” She passed one to Cisco. “Body cams, pistols, smoke grenades. Oh, where are the signal jammers?”
/> “In that box.” Cisco clipped a small glass hammer to his belt, then looped a length of rope around his middle. “Pity we don’t have gumboots in here.” He shuddered.
“You’re such a girl,” Penny told him.
“Really?” Cisco shot back. “You’re really okay with traipsing through poop?”
“To get Trevor out?” Penny asked quietly. “Yeah.”
“Of course I’ll do it,” Cisco hurriedly backed up. “But damned if I’m not gonna complain the whole way.”
“Fair enough.” Once she had all her gear, Penny locked the Jeep and tossed the keys under a wheel well. “That drain was around the east side of the building. Let’s go.”
They easily found the heavy metal plate covering a drain beneath the street. Cisco used a grappling hook to lift it and gestured for Penny to go first. “Let me know if I need to bag my feet,” he called as she shimmied down the iron rungs.
“It’s actually not too bad.” Though a thin stream of water ran down the center of the tunnel, the smooth concrete walls were clean. A narrow ledge ran along the tunnel, toward an intersection that branched off in two opposing directions.
“Go left,” Penny instructed after a glance at her phone.
They hurried through the tunnels until Penny pointed up. “Right here,” she whispered. “We’re about forty feet inside the boundary.”
“What if it’s swarming with gun-toting agents?” Cisco asked.
Penny shrugged. “Then we deal with that when we get there.”
Ignoring Cisco’s protest, Penny went up first. She climbed the steps embedded into the vertical tunnel and switched her headlamp off when she got to the top. As carefully as she could, she lifted the drain cover, looked around, then let it drop.
“We’re in a loading bay,” she whispered down to Cisco. “Looks empty.”
“Great,” Cisco muttered. “It looks empty.”
Penny lifted the cap again and crept out, sliding the cover over to one side so Cisco could follow.
The section of the complex they had emerged in was clearly where the game machines were brought in. A row of white vans was parked against the building, and another van was parked with its back to an open loading dock.
Cisco re-covered their entry point as Penny kept watch.
The headlights of the van parked at the dock flashed twice. “Take cover!” Penny hissed.
The two friends dashed for the row of vacant vans. Penny peered through a tinted window as two heavyset men strode out from a loading dock door and climbed into the van.
“You want how many tacos?” one called.
“Nineteen altogether.” A third man stepped out of the doorway, letting it swing shut behind him. “Gary said to remember his extra jalapenos. Moses forgot last time, and he was pissed.”
“Whatever.” The van doors slammed shut and the engine started.
Penny watched it drive away. A moment later, she heard the buzz of distant voices. He must be talking to the guards at the gate.
The man at the door touched his belt, then cursed. He lifted a large, box-shaped radio to his face and pressed a button. “Yo, Mike. Can you let me back in? I left my ID on the table.”
After a brief moment of static, Mike answered. “I’m on the other side! You’ll have to come in through the big door. Jesus, Bert. You’re hopeless.”
The roller shutter door beeped and slowly began to rattle up into the cavity above. Bert didn’t wait for it to hit the top, ducking under it instead and disappearing around the corner. As soon as the bottom of the door reached the ceiling, it began its slow descent back down.
“Can you make it?” Penny whispered.
“Can’t you?” Cisco teased.
The two bolted from their hiding place and sprinted across the loading dock. They came to a panting halt outside the door when it was still two feet from the ground. Penny dropped to her stomach to look inside, then flicked a hand signal at Cisco before rolling under it.
She sprang to her feet in time to see the door graze Cisco’s hip as he slipped under. She motioned him to be silent, then pointed at a narrow hallway to one side. “Enemy that way,” she mouthed.
“Go that way,” Cisco responded.
Penny nodded. The guys in charge of loading the corrupted game machines were unlikely to hold notable positions in whatever this organization called itself.
They crept away from the low hum of voices, toward a corridor lit with bright, white fluorescent bulbs that reflected off the white tile floor. Penny walked fast, her gun trained at the corner ahead. When voices approached she held up a hand, but Cisco had already halted.
Penny pressed against the wall, a length of wire dangling from one hand.
Two men walked around the corner side by side, lost in conversation. “I swear to God, if they’re using the vans for a taco run again—”
Penny sprang, looping her garotte around the closest man’s throat before he had time to react. He clutched his neck but she tightened her grip, ignoring the strained gurgling sounds he made as he struggled.
Next to her, Cisco stood back as the man he’d taken down slumped to the floor, his neck broken.
“I wish I was better at that,” Penny murmured.
“You do just fine without it.” Cisco gestured to the man in her arms. He’d stopped struggling a few moments earlier.
She let him fall to the ground and began searching his pockets. “Ha! What’s a secret agency without magic ID cards, eh?”
Cisco grinned and plucked a similar plastic square from the body at his feet. “Let’s hope these do the trick.”
He made to leave, but Penny yanked his arm back and motioned to a nearby door. “Ugh. You boys are such slobs! Are you gonna help me clean up this mess, or what?”
Penny dragged the body over to the door. The handle didn’t budge when she tried it, but when she flicked the stolen ID near a small black box beside the jam, it beeped, and a green light flashed. “I’ll hold the door.”
Cisco stuck his tongue out at her but pulled the men one by one into the room. He stood and stretched. “Someone needs to skip taco night, that’s for sure.”
“Let’s go.” Penny let the door swing shut and watched as the green light changed to red. “Hopefully, no one misses those guys for a while.”
The hallway linked to a labyrinth of winding corridors. Twice they avoided notice by slipping into vacant rooms and once by simply shooting the three guards that appeared out of nowhere. Just when Penny was about to give up in frustration, they came upon an old cage elevator.
“That thing looks like it’s about to fall apart,” Cisco remarked.
Penny used her stolen ID on the black sensor beside her. The elevator sprang to life with a shuddering groan. “It’ll be fine,” she told him. “This is a world-class facility…probably.”
The metal grate parted when the elevator reached them. Penny hopped in, then grabbed Cisco’s arm to drag him in too. “Look, this is so cliché my eyes are about to roll out of my head,” she assured him. “Creepy old elevator that leads down to a cold and dripping basement level where they run creepy experiments on their prisoners? That’s so overdone it’s almost boring.”
“It’s boring in b-grade action movies.” Cisco stabbed the button for the bottom level. “Not so much when you’re in it.”
The floor trembled and began to lower. Penny took the time to check her body cam and quickly scroll through her phone.
Amelia had texted.
I’m just gonna assume you’re doing something REALLY important. I called Crenel, he said he’ll find Boots. Where the hell are you, Penny?
Climbing a tree to rescue our lame duck.
Penny pressed send to her reply, hoping Amelia would get the reference. Back in first semester, Penny rescued an injured Trevor from a tree. It shouldn’t take much for Amelia to connect the dots and realize Penny was on a mission to save him now, but that she couldn’t risk tipping off the goons if Amelia’s phone was tapped.
T
he elevator jerked to a stop, and Penny pulled back the metal barrier. The basement looked much like the upper level, though somehow gloomier. The gleaming white floors didn’t shine as brightly and the lights overhead held just a hint of yellow. They flickered when Penny and Cisco stepped out of the elevator.
“He must be down here,” Penny said in a low voice. “Come on.”
The corridor ahead was lined with doors. Penny stopped to peer into the first room, holding her flashlight up to shine through the small glass window.
The room was dark except for a sliver of light from a glowing panel that highlighted a cluster of X-ray images. The details it revealed made little sense to Penny. Rather than bones, it showed solid rods and limbs with too many joints.
She moved the beam of light around until it rested on a white hospital bed. Tall stands held bags of fluid linked to the prone figure on the bed by numerous lengths of plastic tubing. Next to the bed, a heart monitor flatlined.
Penny stretched onto her toes to try and see who was on the bed. She reached the light up, trying to angle it between machines.
“Holy… what?” The mutilated face stared back at her with one lifeless eye. Swollen lips, stitched at the corners, wrapped around a breathing tube and several thin cords attached to the creature’s forehead with white adhesive patches.
Penny ran her flashlight down the length of the body. The lumpy mass didn’t look at all human. A dangling limb confirmed her guess. Instead of fingers, a translucent flipper peeked out from under the white cloth that covered the rest of the body.
“It’s not Trevor,” Penny said. She swallowed hard, unsure if relief or horror would win out. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Trusting her instincts—or possibly because of impossible optimism—Penny didn’t stop to look in any of the other rooms. Instead, she went straight to the end of the corridor.
The door it led to was different from the others. “It’s a retinal scanner.” Cisco pressed a few numbers but the keypad gave a loud beep and an LED flashed red. “What next?”