Dangerous Minds: A Cyrus Cooper Thriller: Book One

by Xander Weaver

  Cyrus knew he needed a plan.

  The lab had no secondary entrance, so they were literally cornered. When he had asked Gertrude why she had led them to the lab once she realized the facility had been compromised, she said simply that she couldn’t allow her research to be taken. She would destroy it before letting it fall into the wrong hands.

  He still didn’t know what constituted the wrong hands. The fact that her grandson was behind the attack on the lab seemed more like a personal matter than anything relating to her work. But that this was happening at all suggested that William was after far more than just a personal attack on his grandmother. Confronting her here clearly indicated that his goal involved the hidden research facility.

  In light of current events, Cyrus had given more thought to his chance meeting with William earlier that morning. While it was obvious that the encounter was anything but accidental, Cyrus had been slow in coming to his ultimate conclusion. The awkward encounter had been William’s attempt to use his gift to Push Cyrus into doing something; perhaps even killing Gertrude, or possibly manipulate him to take control of the underground lab. Whatever his plan, all Cyrus knew was that he had proven himself immune to William’s influence—and without the aid of the strange patch that Gertrude and the security force had worn. Since that patch had suddenly proven ineffective, he had a unique advantage.

  Forcing those thoughts from his mind had proven more difficult than Cyrus would’ve imagined. Even though the analytical portion of his brain told him that he needed to focus on the more pressing threat posed by the armed men attempting to breach the lab, he still had trouble wrapping his mind around what he’d learned in the course of the last twenty-four hours. William was a violent threat with some sort of supernatural power that allowed him to Push his thoughts and will into the minds of those around him. And his sister, Ashley, had the ability to Read the minds of people in close proximity. It was just too strange to believe.

  No, Cyrus realized, as he looked back at Gertrude who was still busy at the far side of the lab, there wasn’t anything supernatural happening here. There was a common thread and she was it. It wasn’t a coincidence that she was a neurobiologist and neuroscientist, with two family members exhibiting exceptional neurological traits. There was more to it. But he needed to escape the lab before he could look into the matter more carefully.

  Though his careful examination of the lab hadn’t turned up any viable escape routes, the lab’s ventilation system had caught his eye. The ceiling was about twenty-feet overhead with row after row of lighting ballasts suspended from lightweight chains that were anchored into the face of the concrete ceiling. Suspended in the space between the lights and the ceiling was a network of tubular eighteen-inch aluminum ducts. Some led to vents which brought fresh air into the lab, while others were part of a heavy duty exhaust system.

  Gertrude had explained that the lab could have its entire atmosphere vented in less than a minute. In case of a dangerous chemical spill, all of the labs inside the facility had been equipped with identical emergency exhaust systems. It was necessary, particularly since they were located so far underground. Without it, a potent enough chemical spill or gas leak could render the entire facility permanently unusable.

  Fresh air would be pumped into the room through vents situated along the floor while exhaust panels along the ceiling voided the atmospheric contents of the lab. It was an interesting system, Cyrus thought. But not for the way it functioned. He was more focused on the mechanics of the system itself.

  Each of the ceiling vents opened into a wide four-foot by two-foot screen that hung from the ceiling, just beyond the overhead lights. The vent led to an eighteen-inch circular aluminum tube. But, most importantly, each vent and tube in the room backtracked to the same large aluminum box that was suspended from the ceiling in the back corner of the room. The box was cube shaped, measuring about eight-feet in each direction. It contained the fan unit that generated the vacuum needed to suck the air from the lab.

  A system capable of moving such a massive amount of air in such a short amount of time would require both a powerful air draw and tubes wide enough to move the requisite volume of air. Cyrus quickly decided that the ventilation system was a potential way out.

  A few minutes later, he had positioned a wide table beneath the massive ventilation box. Atop the table he placed another smaller table, before positioning a tall lab stool at the apex of the pile. The improvised ladder provided him hazardous, but adequate access to the panel on the bottom of the exhaust system’s main housing.

  Gertrude had been working at a nearby computer station, entirely consumed by her work on his blood sample. But as Cyrus prepared to climb his ladder, he saw her tap the same key on the keyboard repeatedly and with increasing frustration. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  She entered several additional commands before responding. But when she finally pushed the keyboard away and slammed her fist on the table, it was almost as good as an answer.

  “I just lost access to the server,” she snarled. “The central database is offline.”

  Cyrus had a fair guess, but he needed to be sure. “What does that mean?”

  She glared at him as if it were a monumentally stupid question. “I would say that William has just breached the server room. He won’t get whatever he needs, but he’ll want to make sure I can’t stop him, so he’s disabled remote access.” She practically seethed, “He can’t access the encrypted data without my help, but he’s apparently crafty enough to keep me from accessing what I need from here.”

  Gertrude retrieved a small USB thumb drive from a drawer under the counter and inserted it into a port on the side of the keyboard. “I can’t run a full analysis of your blood sample until I get back into the central server,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m storing the raw data on this drive until the server’s back online. If you’re right and they’re about to enter my lab, I don’t want them accessing this information. William will want to know why he couldn’t Push you. I don’t want to give him anything to work with.”

  Cyrus was surprised to find out that William would even be interested. Was it really that unusual for him to encounter someone with a natural immunity to his neural abilities? It was a subject Cyrus planned to raise once they had reached safety.

  Though he had managed to construct his ladder without drawing Gertrude’s attention, once she pulled the flash drive free from the computer keyboard, she regarded him on the primitive perch through bulging eyes.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Gertrude snapped.

  Cyrus didn’t look at her or stop his effort to free the access panel. There wasn’t time. “We need a way out of here,” he said simply. “I figure we have fifteen to twenty minutes before they breach. We have to get moving.”

  Lacking the tools to properly unscrew the access panel on the bottom of the large aluminum box, Cyrus slipped his fingers under the edge of the thin sheet metal and simply tore it free; it peeled back, offering a minimum of resistance.

  “What are you talking about? We’re perfectly safe in here,” Gertrude said with gritty frustration. “The integrity of this lab is monitored off-site. I’m sure that a team has already been dispatched to recapture the facility.”

  Cyrus stopped what he was doing and looked down at Gertrude. She stood at the base of his improvised tower and leaned heavily on her cane with both hands. A deep scowl decorated her wrinkled face.

  “William took control of the facility without firing a shot,” Cyrus explained calmly. “If what you say is true, he’s the puppet master, and he’s now pulling the strings of the men who previously guarded this base. That means no alarms have been triggered, and no help is on the way. And it might be for the better. If William is as powerful as you say, the last thing we need is to hand him control of even more armed soldiers.”

  The scowl on Gertrude’s face darkened.

  “So no help is coming,” she admitted. Judging from
the sound of her voice it was as much a realization to her as it was to him.

  “But we are safe in the lab…at least for the time being, so what are you doing?”

  “They’re cutting through the door,” Cyrus said, pointing to the far end of the lab. He could already see an orange tint appearing along two separate sections of the wall. They were using cutting tools and torching a small access port, creating two separate lines which had started from the floor and were now working their way vertically. Before long, the lines would converge and complete a single breach in the door. “It won’t take long.”

  Five minutes later, Cyrus had managed to tear the guts from the inside of the ventilation system exhaust box. He’d torn a powerful impeller motor from its mounts with his bare hands, and then proceeded to rip away the aluminum and stainless steel ductwork surrounding the air exhaust. By the time he was done, a pile of sharp metal wreckage had collected beside his stack of tables below.

  Climbing down from the improvised ladder, Cyrus wiped the sweat from his eyes and took a deep breath. It had gotten hot, working inside the metal box suspended from the ceiling. And tearing the ventilation apart with his bare hands had taken its toll. His hands were lacerated; a spider web of small to medium-sized cuts now dripped blood on his clothes and the concrete at his feet.

  Gertrude passed him a clean rag. “We need to put some antiseptic on those cuts,” she said simply, before staring up at the jagged hole that was their only chance at freedom.

  Cyrus saw a concern in Gertrude’s eyes that wasn’t related to his well being, and he knew something was wrong. He asked her what the problem was.

  “The computer network is offline,” she replied quietly.

  So? He wondered, offering a shrug.

  “All of my research is stored on the facility’s main server,” she explained. “At first I thought William was after me, but he could get to me anywhere. If he’s gone through the trouble of coming here, he must be after the database.”

  It was a concern that had been bothering Cyrus for some time. Why would William go to the trouble of attacking the lab when he had the power to attack Gertrude anywhere, and at any time?

  “Why would he want the database?”

  A frown crossed the old woman’s face, but she said nothing.

  “I think the answer is pretty damn relevant right now,” Cyrus insisted.

  It was several long moments before Gertrude spoke. Cyrus was just about to accept the idea that she wasn’t willing to discuss the matter when she finally gave in. “I think he’s working for someone who’s after my research,” she said at last. “My relationship with William has been strained for some time. We have certain…issues. I think that undermining my work is his way of striking back at me.”

  That confused Cyrus. “So which is it? Is he trying to kill you, or is he trying to undermine you? There’s no point in doing both.”

  The question brought a penetrating stare from Gertrude. “What are you talking about? What makes you think he’s trying to kill me?”

  Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Well, the men with guns who are currently trying to break down the door, for one! Plus, I was told that your last assistant died under suspicious circumstances. It’s currently believed that her death was actually a botched attempt on your life.”

  Another scowl from Gertrude appeared. He was getting those a lot lately.

  “Sometimes an accident is just an accident,” she corrected, and not very convincingly.

  Cyrus was content to let that part of the conversation drop. It wasn’t going anywhere useful. Either it had been an actual accident, or it hadn’t. They had reached a point where it no longer mattered.

  Looking back at the dark hole in the ceiling, he shook his head. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave without the data,” Gertrude said in a tone that left no room for discussion.

  “You don’t have an off-site backup?”

  She let out an audible sigh. “Not at the moment. The off-site backup was scrubbed while you were being vetted. Until I knew you were on the level, I couldn’t risk having the information compromised. We were coming here today so I could reinitiate the upload and get the data replicating once more.”

  Cyrus felt his temper begin to flare. She was paranoid to an extreme. But was that the case, or was there something legitimate that she needed to hide? The more he learned of the woman, the less certain he felt.

  “What if William already has your data? What if he’s wiped it from the system and has already left the building?” Cyrus asked.

  “He can’t access the system without me,” she practically shouted. “I’m the only one with the passwords. That’s why he needs me alive.”

  Great!

  What would William be willing to do to her in order to get that information? And what would he do with her once he had the data? Perhaps just as importantly, what had happened to that family to put them at such odds? The more he learned about this case, the more questions were raised.

  “Okay, so we get the data and then we get the Hell out of here,” Cyrus grumbled. “But step one is getting out of this lab.”

  Gertrude’s eyes followed the stack of furniture leading to the dark hole in the ceiling. “How in God’s name do you expect me to get up there?” she asked quietly.

  Cyrus smiled. Running his hands under cold water in the lab’s sink, he settled for wrapping them in thin white rags. The cuts in the exterior door had progressed, and they didn’t have time for additional first aid. His only concern was that the wraps didn’t interfere with his mobility, so they had to be kept thin; just bulky enough to stem the flow of blood. William’s men would gain access to the lab in a matter of minutes. He had just enough time to prepare the next stage of his plan.

  Pocketing a long shafted, flat-tipped screwdriver that he found at the back of a drawer while searching the lab, Cyrus also retrieved a pair of extra large latex examination gloves from the dispenser on the wall. Wrapping the wrist opening of a glove around the stem of the gas valve in the wall along the back of one of the counters, he feathered the release mechanism until the glove was inflated to just short of its rupture capacity. Then, twisting the latex at the wrist end of the glove as he slid it from the gas valve, he created a temporary seal that held long enough for him to tie it off as one would a child’s balloon.

  It took only a matter of seconds to complete the procedure with the second glove. Once his work was complete, he and Gertrude were ready to make their escape. She was already standing by, ready for the next step in his plan. Her scowl made it obvious that she had doubts regarding their chances for success, but for once she kept the thought to herself.

  It was just as well. The orange line in the steel door had turned from a warm sunset into a burst of flame…they had only seconds left to make their escape.

  Chapter 19

  Mayflower Lab Facility

  Hennings, South Carolina

  11:08 a.m.

  Clutching her cane in the darkness, Gertrude was afraid even to breathe. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she realized at that moment that it was a good thing she didn’t need to stand. She wasn’t sure she could; her entire body was shaking. She couldn’t see anything, but she sensed Cyrus beside her. Reaching out a hand, she touched him just to be sure. How could he be so calm in this situation? She swallowed hard, a difficult task given how dry her mouth had become.

  Finally, a thundering crash arrived, just as Cyrus had warned. Still, Gertrude felt her breath catch in her throat once more. This time it felt like her heart had actually stopped. The clamor of boots across the floor reached her ears, and she realized the guards were moving quickly. She struggled to discern how many there were based on the sounds of the footsteps, but the metallic rattle that accompanied each step made it impossible.

  What struck her next was how quietly they moved. Aside from the footsteps and the slight crackle of a distant handheld radio, she heard no voices. Still, the rattle of the footste
ps made their general location obvious. She could also tell when, one by one, the men left the floor. Feeling the line of cold sweat on her forehead, Gertrude knew that they were ascending Cyrus’s improvised ladder one at a time.

  The silence that followed the last rattle of the floor tiles seemed to last an eternity. Still, Gertrude waited for the command.

  “Okay,” Cyrus whispered in the darkness. “Watch your eyes, and remember to move as quickly as you can.”

  Out of nowhere a searing light blinded Gertrude, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes. She didn’t have the luxury of letting her eyes adjust, so she accepted the discomfort as light flooded their hiding place. She watched as Cyrus pushed the large heavy tile away and sat up, sticking his head through the hole—gun drawn, ready to fire.

  When no shots rang out, Gertrude counted her blessings. Their hiding place had been a gamble, but so far it seemed to be paying off. She pushed a bundle of network cables off her leg and propped herself up on both elbows. Cyrus had already extracted himself from the eighteen-inch recess beneath the laboratory floor. A moment later, he pulled another of the three-foot square tiles free, allowing her to stand.

  The entire lab sat on a floor of metal tiles. The tiles were raised eighteen inches over a recess in the concrete floor that made it easy to route plumbing, electrical conduit, and network lines as needed, anywhere in the lab. Every lab in the facility was configured similarly for ultimate flexibility. The raised floors were common in computer network data centers, but proved equally flexible and effective in a laboratory environment.

  Accepting Cyrus’s hand, Gertrude allowed him to hoist her up from where she had lain flat on her back beneath the floor. With surprising ease, he lifted her out of the hole in the floor and set her aside. A moment later he had retrieved her cane from the recess and was already replacing the floor tiles to mask their escape.