Don't Look Now

by Michelle Gagnon

  Still, it made her shudder. She’d experienced a similar reaction during prior raids. An oppressive sense of claustrophobia, the walls closing in. Her wrist itched where her bracelet used to rest, and a tide of panic rose in her chest.

  She fought it back down.

  “All good?” Zeke asked, eyeing her with concern.

  Noa nodded and said, “Yeah,” even though she felt faint and nauseous.

  The stream of teens slowed as they wound deeper into the building. Around them, kids were starting to protest; this wasn’t the club scene they’d expected. No black lights or neon decorations, and the music sounded tinny and fake. The hallway was lined with doors on either side. Noa checked one as they passed: locked. She swore under her breath. Peter had promised to override the interior locks—hopefully he’d succeed by the time they reached their target.

  And then: a loud boom from the depths of the building.

  The crowd abruptly stopped moving and fell silent. “What was that?” Zeke asked.

  Noa shook her head, puzzled. The whole building had shaken, and there had been a distant whomp. Like a bomb, she thought with a frown. But her team was only armed with Tasers and pepper spray. A needle of fear wormed inside her: Had the guards counterattacked? Were her people okay?

  Noa felt a tremor beneath her feet. The teens in the lead suddenly surged back, screaming. They were chased by a wave of dark, noxious smoke.

  The hall rapidly descended into a melee: people pressed into them from behind, forcing them deeper into the building, while, simultaneously, panicked kids tried to push back toward the front door. Noa gasped as she took an elbow to the ribs—then something slammed into her back and she went down, hitting her head hard against the wall.

  She was lifted forcibly by the elbow. Woozily, she looked up: Zeke. It took a second for her to make out what he was shouting. “We have to get out of here. Now!”

  The hallway was rapidly filling with smoke.

  Her parents had died in a fire. And for a moment, she was back there with them: strapped into a car seat, staring at a jagged window as smoke writhed and coiled around her, heat searing her skin. . . .

  Noa fought for air as her throat closed up. She could hear Zeke yelling, and felt the press of bodies all around her, but they seemed far away.

  She barely reacted as Zeke hauled her along. They were suddenly next to one of the locked doors off the hallway. Zeke’s hand released, and Noa dropped down, her knees crumpling beneath her.

  Cool air. She opened her eyes.

  They were in a utility closet filled with metal shelving stocked with plastic jugs of bleach, floor polish, and cleaning rags. Noa blinked, trying to clear her vision. Her head throbbed, but she didn’t think it was a concussion; she was just a little stunned. Zeke was beside her, panting hard. He still held her arm.

  “I’m okay,” Noa said, fingering the lump on the side of her head.

  “Yeah?” He regarded her with concern. “Because you just froze. I’ve never seen you like that.”

  “I hit my head,” Noa said. “But I’m fine.”

  Zeke threw her a skeptical look, but she wasn’t about to explain the rest, at least not now. Noa swallowed hard—her throat tasted sooty, and she wished she’d brought along a water bottle. “What happened?”

  “Damned if I know,” Zeke growled. “Someone set a fire.”

  “Apparently,” she said drily. The noise in the corridor was abating; most of the club kids had probably made it out by now.

  “So.” Zeke looked at her expectantly. “What now?”

  Noa glanced at her watch. Four minutes had elapsed since they’d entered the building. “Remo?” she said into her radio. “Do you copy?”

  No response.

  She exchanged a worried glance with Zeke, then tried to raise Teo.

  Nothing but static.

  Noa chewed her lip. Had the radios stopped working again?

  If the other team had stuck to the timetable, they should be returning to the van, where Crystal was waiting. But without radio contact, she had no way of knowing where they were.

  “We should just get out,” Zeke said. “Leave through the back, cut across the desert if the van is gone. Hell, the fire department might actually be on the way—”

  “They’re not,” Noa interrupted. “P&D wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “The doors were all still locked, Noa. I had to pick this one. Checking the other rooms would take hours.” He bent down beside her. “We’re going to have to call this one a wash.”

  “Three minutes,” she said firmly. “If we don’t find anyone by then, we’re out of here.”

  Reluctantly, he nodded. Noa pushed off the wall, easing back to her feet. The air in the small room was smoky—she wondered how much worse it had gotten in the hallway. She experienced a moment of self-doubt; was she nuts, insisting they go ahead with this even though the building was on fire?

  Probably, she thought. Still, she pulled her scarf up over the lower half of her face and motioned for him to open the door.

  Peter focused intently on the monitor as his fingers flew across the keyboard. As soon as the fire had started, some sort of override kicked in and every interior door in the place had rebolted. Which meant that if Noa and her team were still inside, the chances of them salvaging anything out of this mission were just about nil.

  At least his adversary in the control room wasn’t trying to stymie him anymore. “Couldn’t handle the heat, huh, buddy?” Peter muttered as he worked. “Maybe Mason isn’t paying you enough after all.”

  He clicked through a series of commands, trying to reset the parameters so that the doors would open. The building’s systems were battling his efforts: Someone had done a decent job with the initial software, making sure that in the event of an emergency everything locked down. While Peter could appreciate the wisdom behind that, it was making his life a lot harder.

  And Noa’s, he reminded himself. She was in there somewhere. What the hell had happened? Had Noa’s team set the fire intentionally, to create a distraction? Or had something gone wrong?

  A flashing window in the upper-right corner caught his eye: Crap, the doors had locked again. Peter forced himself to focus, digging back into the controls to unlatch them again.

  The corridor was devoid of people, but filled with a dark, heavy cloud of smoke, which billowed down the hall, descending halfway to the ground. Noa felt the primal terror rising again, threatening to overwhelm her. With great effort, she tamped it down and said, “That’s the way we have to go, right?”

  “Based on the blueprints, yeah.” Zeke’s voice was muffled by his scarf. “You sure about going through with this? Daisy and Teo are probably still out front. Last chance to bail.”

  In response, Noa dove into the wall of smoke.

  Immediately, her eyes started tearing. The heat was so intense she could practically feel her skin crisping. The front door was probably still propped open, and the fire raced toward it as the most accessible oxygen supply. It was impossible to see more than a few inches in any direction. Noa pressed her right hand against the wall and used it to guide herself along, moving at a slow jog.

  Based on the building schematics, this corridor should dead-end at another that ran perpendicular to it. And according to the wattage usage, also courtesy of Peter, two sections of the building consumed the bulk of electrical power. One was the control room.

  The other was a suite of rooms set in the exact center of the building, along the hallway they were approaching. Smart money said that all that power was being gobbled up by medical equipment.

  But would there be anyone left alive in there?

  Her hand suddenly slid off the wall into open air. She’d reached the adjoining hallway.

  Zeke bumped into her from behind; he was coughing hard. The smoke seemed to be dissipating, although she could still hear the fire raging deeper in the building. It was easier to breathe through the bandanna, though, and her eyes were able to focus bl
earily.

  Doors were set on either side of the hallway, identical to the ones they’d passed on their way in. “We need to check each room,” she said.

  Zeke was barely visible through the shimmering smoke cloud, but his head shifted slightly and he stepped away from her.

  Every breath left a sharp, bitter aftertaste in her mouth. Ash coated the back of her throat, which felt swollen and sore.

  While approaching the door, Noa slipped her jacket sleeve over her hand, remembering that you were supposed to do that in case the handle was hot. Not that the thin cotton offered much protection, but at least she’d be able to yank her hand back without leaving a layer of skin behind.

  She issued a short prayer that Peter had managed to unlock these doors.

  The knob wasn’t cool, but it didn’t burn her. She twisted it to the right, and the door opened.

  Noa peeked inside. No guards, which was good. But no one else, either. The room was bare, save for a stripped-down hospital bed and an empty IV stand.

  She closed the door behind her and tried the next one down the hall, following the same drill: It was exactly the same. Empty bed, empty IV stand, no signs of life. By the fourth room, Noa was starting to despair. In most of their prior raids, there had been clear evidence that the facilities were active. They’d recovered at least a half dozen kids at each site. Some were too far gone to be saved, but they’d managed to get them out anyway.

  Whatever patients had been held here were apparently long gone. Or maybe it hadn’t even been used yet.

  There are all those guards, though, Noa reminded herself. Overkill for a building in the middle of nowhere if there was nothing inside.

  She heard a shout and reflexively dropped into a crouch, her hands darting to her Taser and pepper spray. Figures emerged from the smoky recesses of the hall.

  Noa tensed, ready to strike. Before she could react, she recognized the person in the lead: Remo. Janiqua and Danny were behind him. They were covered in soot, their eyes startlingly white in contrast. And there was a grim set to their jaws.

  Her shoulders sagged with relief. It was the team that had entered through the back of the building. But where had they been all this time?

  “What the hell happened?” Remo demanded. “You didn’t say anything about a fire.”

  “It wasn’t us.” Noa automatically checked over her team: They looked filthy and tense, but no one appeared hurt, which was a relief.

  “Well, it wasn’t us, either,” Janiqua chimed in.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Remo said urgently. “Teo and Daisy probably already took off.”

  “I’m almost done,” Noa responded. “Did you pass Zeke? He was going to check the rooms down the hall.”

  “Didn’t see him, and we didn’t find anything,” Remo said. “There’s no one here. C’mon, let’s—”

  A shout from behind interrupted him. Zeke staggered into view, carrying a girl in a hospital gown. Her feet trailed along the floor as he dragged her. “A little help!” he called out.

  Remo and Danny rushed over. Two other kids emerged from the haze: a teenage girl and a young boy. Dressed in matching hospital gowns, they clutched each other’s hands.

  Noa felt a wave of relief. There were kids here, and they were alive. She’d done the right thing by going ahead with the operation.

  As Remo and Danny lugged the girl between them, making a sling of their arms, Noa yelled, “Any others?”

  The new kids stared at her. She realized how she must look, covered in soot with a bandanna over her mouth. She yanked it down and repeated, “Are you alone here, or are there others?”

  “Just us, I think,” said the girl. She was nearly as tall as Noa, sixteen or seventeen years old. The kid clutching her hand couldn’t have been more than twelve. Blond hair hung over his eyes, nearly covering them.

  “You’re sure?”

  A look that she couldn’t read passed between the two of them, then the girl said with more certainty, “Yeah, it’s just us.”

  “Okay.” Noa had checked all the rooms on her side of the hall. She’d have to trust that Zeke had done the same.

  Remo paused at the intersection of the corridors. “Which way?”

  “Probably still guards out front,” Noa said.

  “The fire’s bad back the way we came,” Janiqua said fearfully. “We couldn’t get to the van, so we headed this way.”

  “Shouldn’t there be sprinklers or something?” Remo asked.

  “Maybe they turned them off,” Noa said, not adding what she was thinking, that the goal had been to smoke them out. This might have been a setup all along.

  Noa’s mind raced to come up with alternate exits. If only she could call Peter. He was probably sitting in front of the schematics right now, with a clear view of their options.

  “Wasn’t there a loading bay?” Zeke asked.

  “Yes!” Noa said, suddenly flashing on it. “It was near the control room, though, so we decided not to use it.”

  “Well, I don’t think we have a choice now.”

  Noa took in their ragged little group. There were at least five armed guards clustered around the building. If the club kids had taken off, the van would stick out like a sore thumb. They’d left Crystal behind to man the wheel—hopefully she’d been smart enough to move it. If they lost that van . . .

  First things first, Noa thought. She needed to know where the rest of her team was. She unclipped the radio from her belt. “Teo? Daisy? Crystal? Does anyone read?”

  A pause, then Crystal said in a panicked voice, “What the hell happened? The whole building’s burning!”

  “Crystal, where are you?” Noa said.

  A longer pause, then Crystal sounding abashed as she said, “I’m about a mile away. When all the cars took off, I followed them. I wasn’t sure—”

  “That’s good,” Noa said, relieved. “You did the right thing. Have you seen the taco truck?”

  “Not yet. It was still there when I left.”

  Noa frowned. Teo and Daisy were supposed to pull up stakes immediately if anything went wrong, and to leave within five minutes of the building breach even if it hadn’t. So what the hell were they doing out there? And why hadn’t they answered when she radioed?

  She hesitated for a second, frozen by indecision. Zeke met her eyes, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing. “Someone set that fire,” he said in a low voice.

  “It was us.”

  “What?” Noa spun.

  The tall girl had spoken. Her hospital gown was too long; it draped past her knees. “I set fire to an oxygen tank. I figured it would create enough of a distraction for us to escape. But then the doors all locked again, and we couldn’t get out. Until he showed up,” she finished, jerking her head toward Zeke.

  Noa felt a flare of admiration. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to her to do something like that. The fact that the guards had nothing to do with the fire was a relief, too. Maybe they had a shot at getting out of here after all. “Crystal, I want you to drive back.”

  “What?” Crystal’s voice crackled. “But—”

  “Drive fast and go straight to the south side of the building.”

  “Are you sure? Because—”

  “Just do it! We’ll be there soon.” Noa clicked off, ignoring the stream of protests still issuing from the handheld. She had to get them through this maze of corridors to the control room, then past that and out through a loading bay. All with an unknown number of guards between them and the exit.

  Noa tightened her grip on the Taser and pepper spray. “All right,” she said, trying to inject more certainty into her voice than she felt. “I’ll lead, the rest of you stay close.”

  They didn’t look happy about it, but no one protested. Noa tugged her bandanna up and dove back into the wall of smoke.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .”

  Daisy wouldn’t stop wailing. She was doing it quietly, but it was only a matter of time before
the guards came back. Teo could hear gravel flying as cars skidded out of the parking lot. Soon, they’d be the only ones left.

  They were sitting ducks.

  “Daisy, c’mon!” he said, shaking her by the elbows. She was huddled on the floor of the truck behind the counter, arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth.

  He checked his watch again. It had been eight minutes since the music started inside the building, so they should have left three minutes ago. But Daisy was supposed to drive the van. He’d do it instead, but he’d never learned how. As a foster kid, he hadn’t exactly had a car and driver’s ed at his disposal.

  Daisy was still unresponsive, though, and any minute now those guards would be coming back. He had to do something.

  Teo got stiffly to his feet and awkwardly climbed through the gap into the driver’s seat. Keys dangled from the ignition, which was a good sign. But the stick shift was not. He had a basic grasp of how to drive an automatic, but a standard? He didn’t know the first thing about that.

  “Daisy?” he called pleadingly. “I really need you up here!”

  No response, except for her continued murmuring.

  Teo peered through the windshield. The parking lot was smoky, and nearly empty; the stream of kids from inside the building had slowed to a trickle. The last few were rushing toward the remaining vehicles looking frantic and terrified. The atmosphere of gaiety had vanished, and a pall as heavy as the smoke hung over the scene. No sign of the guards—maybe they’d gone back inside the building?

  A strange crackling sound from the passenger seat. He frowned, perplexed, then suddenly realized: the radio! He picked it up and pressed the button on the side. “Um, hello?”

  A faint voice emitted from the speaker. Teo fumbled with the unit, finally locating the volume knob and dialing it all the way up. This time, when Noa spoke, her words were clear. “Where the hell are you guys? We need you, now!”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Noa cursed. Teo had finally answered the radio, but it didn’t sound like any help would be coming from that direction. He didn’t know how to drive, and apparently Daisy had gone catatonic. Crystal had driven nearly to the highway before pulling off the road to await further orders. Not much of an army, Noa couldn’t help thinking. Sure, they weren’t trained soldiers, but she hadn’t expected a total meltdown at the first sign of trouble. It was her own fault—she should have had a better backup plan.