Jack held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay,” he told her. “The guy pissed me off, but it’s not like I hold a grudge. I just still can’t believe all this, Renee. I don’t want to believe it. I mean...” He paused, looking around the command center, imagining all that lay beyond it, buried deep underground. “I know it’s real. I know what happened to Sheldon was real, and everything that’s happened since. But I still feel like I’m just imagining it all.”
“I know, kid,” she said, patting his knee as if he were a child. To some people such a gesture would have come across as patronizing, but from Renee it seemed genuine and reassuring. “It’s like being fired down the rabbit hole, strapped to one of the old Titan missiles that used to be here. Alice didn’t have anything on us!”
“I just wish Sheldon would have told me,” he said quietly. “I know I probably wouldn’t have believed him, but I wish he would have, anyway. And how he died...Jesus.”
“He was a good man,” Renee said. “He talked a lot about you, you know. Especially to Naomi. The two of them got to be pretty close, and his death hit her damn hard.”
“Oh,” Jack said, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. “Naomi didn’t mention that they were, ah, involved.” That figures, he thought. Sheldon, you always did have a way with women. But it made Jack’s situation with Naomi a bit more complicated in his mind.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Involved?” she asked. “Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Well, yeah,” Jack said, confused at her response. He was even more confused when she started laughing. Tan looked up from his console, his face as stony as ever.
“Oh, no, kid,” Renee said after she’d regained her composure. “He was gay as the day is long. He and Naomi got to be close, but not like that.”
Jack’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“I guess he had another little secret that he didn’t bother to tell you.”
Shaking his head, Jack said, “Come on, that’s not possible. He had a ton of girlfriends!”
“Of course he did, Jack,” she explained, “but they were friends who happened to be women. He cultivated the appearance that they were lovers, but they weren’t. He kept that part of his life well-hidden.”
“But why?” Jack asked, knowing instinctively that what she was saying was true, but feeling hurt nonetheless by another secret that his dead friend had kept from him.
“He didn’t want to screw up his career, and he also didn’t want to risk losing your friendship. Those two things were incredibly important to him, Jack, and he made a lot of personal sacrifices to keep things that way.” She leaned forward and took hold of his hand. “He was a good man, Jack. And a good friend.”
“Yes, he was,” Jack said, a small grin breaking through his glowering expression, “but if he was here right now I’d still kick his ass for not telling me this stuff.” He looked down at his coffee for a moment before he asked, “So...what’s the story with Naomi?”
“What do you mean?” Renee asked, but Jack could tell from the smile on her face that she knew exactly what he meant, but was intent on torturing him over every scrap of information.
“Come on,” he said, amazed at how comfortable he felt talking to this woman, “you know what I mean. She seems to almost...know me, I guess, and she has me a bit off-balance.” Renee cocked her head at him. “Okay,” Jack admitted, “I feel like I’ve been knocked on my ass and run over by a semi. Happy now?”
Renee chuckled. “Yeah, that’s our Naomi,” she told him. Then, more seriously, she went on, “She does know a lot about you, Jack. Sheldon talked about you a lot, about how he wished we could get you on the team, but Gregg didn’t see the need for another hired gun.” She nodded toward Tan. “We’ve got a fair number of those, probably some of the best in the world, although personally I think Gregg’s wrong: we could always use another good one, or a hundred.” She paused. “I think Sheldon sort of hooked her on you. I monitor all in- and outbound computer traffic to make sure nobody’s doing anything they shouldn’t – it satisfies the gossip in me! – and I saw her doing a lot of personal research on one Jack Dawson.”
“She was checking up on me, huh?” Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about that. In a way it was flattering, but in another way it seemed a little creepy.
Knowing what he was thinking, Renee shook her head and told him, “She wasn’t prying, Jack. I think you were sort of an escape for her. Not in a little girl fantasy way, but as a young, brilliant woman having to live like a hunted animal way. A lot of us, me included, even Gregg, believe it or not, still have homes topside. We work down here in shifts under cover of the local front companies Gregg set up, then go home to mow our lawns and bitch about our neighbors. We can pursue semi-normal lives while we try to save the world. We’re still under the radar with New Horizons, and our faces aren’t on the most wanted lists. You just joined that august group, Jack, and I know you’re having a hard time accepting it, especially having come from the FBI yourself.
“But Naomi’s been at the top of the bad guys’ hit list since she found out what Kempf was doing at LRU, and they’ve been hunting her ever since. You have no idea of the risk she took in rescuing you. That’s only the fourth time she’s been topside since Gregg brought her in a year ago. They would give anything to get her, because she’s the only one still alive who was directly involved in the final phase gene research.” She frowned. “We have our own eyes and ears in the enemy’s camp, plus the digging that I and some of the others do through cyberspace, and we know that there’s nothing that the powers-that-be at New Horizons would like more than to kill her, except maybe wiping this place off the map.” She looked over toward where Tan was working. “Most of the men here are either totally focused on the job, like your best buddy Tan over there, or only have an interest in getting into her pants. That’s one reason why she was really close to Sheldon: he was a nice guy who didn’t have any ulterior motives. He was a safety valve for her, one that I think she badly needed after being cooped up down here so long. That’s what I think she sees in you, Jack: a good guy who’s not going to try and take advantage, if you know what I mean.” She looked at him, but this time there wasn’t any humor in her expression. “I hope she’s not wrong.”
Leaning back, Jack tried to imagine how horrible it must have been for Naomi to have been down here, cooped up in this place for a year. Then he realized that his own plight was now the same: the FBI would never stop until they found him. At last, he said, “Like you said earlier, I feel like I’m riding a rocket down the rabbit hole. I owe Naomi my life, and sure, I find her very attractive. But if Sheldon told you, or her, anything, it’s that I don’t exactly rush into relationships.” He shrugged. “She may have to wait a while for a proposal.”
Renee laughed, satisfied. “Typical male,” she chided. “Never willing to commit. Hey, speaking of typical males, there’s Alexander and his new best friend.”
Jack looked down to find Alexander and Naomi’s cat, Koshka, milling around his chair. While Jack didn’t consider himself a cat fancier, he figured that she must be a Turkish Angora, and he had to admit that her white coat and regal appearance were a beautiful complement to his own feline companion. With his leg bandaged up, Alexander couldn’t jump up on his lap, and stared up at Jack while giving a plaintive meow. Jack reached down and picked him up, and the big cat instantly curled up in his lap and began to purr. Koshka flicked her tail in disdain, then jumped up on Renee’s desk.
“Jesus,” Jack whispered as Koshka turned around, preening as Renee petted her, and he got a look at her right flank. There was a terrible scar, only partly concealed by her white fur, that went from above her right shoulder blade, curved down across her ribs, and disappeared under her right hip. “What the hell happened to her?”
“It was a stupid accident,” Renee said darkly. “One of our...former prisoners escaped and almost got Naomi. Koshka and some of the other cats attacked and distracted it...him...long enou
gh for Naomi to get away. But four of the cats and two of our people were killed, and Koshka almost died. That was really hard for Naomi. She felt terrible about the people we lost, but that cat is all she has left of her former life.” She turned sober, frightened eyes on Jack. “Like I said, having more gunslingers is never a bad thing for us. Not in my book, anyway.”
“How did ‘it’ escape?” he asked, setting down his coffee so he could pet both cats. He’d caught her slip with the pronouns. “And what the hell was it?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you, Jack,” she said apologetically. “You’ll find out soon. I know Naomi said she’d tell you everything, and she will. But only she and Gregg are authorized to take you the whole way down that path. Trust me: you don’t want to go there any sooner than you have to. There’s no pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Tan suddenly stiffen. He peered intently at his workstation, then picked up his phone and after a short pause spoke urgently to whomever was on the other end of the line.
“We’ve got incoming,” Tan said, hanging up the phone. He hit a button on his console, and a bright yellow bar flashed across the bottom of the big screens at the front of the command center, with an audio warning that went off through the complex saying the same thing: Portal Access In Progress.
“I’ll get Naomi,” Jack said as he gently set down Alexander and then stood up.
Tan shook his head. “She’s already on her way.” Turning to Renee, he said, “He needs a badge.”
“I’ve already got it,” she said. Digging through a pile of clutter on her desk, she pulled out a photo badge and handed it to Jack. “Here. I was going to give you this when we finished our little chat, but you need it now. You can’t get through the portal safely without it.”
Jack took the thin plastic badge, which had a lanyard to go around his neck. It had a magnetic strip on the back, and on the front was a picture he recognized as one Sheldon had taken of him the year before. Renee must have taken it from the photo frame Sheldon had given him.
“I thought that was a good one,” Renee said. “A lot better than the one in the database for your driver’s license, Jack. Good heavens.”
He looked up as he heard Tan’s voice over an intercom that must have echoed through the entire complex. “Security team, to the portal.”
“Do you guys always go through this drill when you open up this portal thing?”
“Yes,” Tan said brusquely as he held out a Heckler and Koch G36C carbine. It fired the same 5.56mm ammunition as the venerable M-16 assault rifle, but at twenty inches with the stock folded, was far more compact and would be easier to handle in tight quarters like the tunnels. “It helps keep us alive. Here, take this. You know how to use it?”
Jack took the stubby rifle. He’d fired other H&K weapons, and this one operated much the same way. “Yeah, I can probably figure it out,” he said, unfolding the stock to its open position. He preferred to aim at whatever, or whomever, he was shooting at, rather than spraying ammunition while firing from the hip.
Tan only grunted before turning away, moving quickly to the stairs to the first level of the command center with one of the compact rifles in one hand.
Turning back to Renee, Jack was surprised to see that she was strapping on a shoulder holster with an automatic pistol.
“I told you, Jack,” she said, as she moved over to Tan’s console, which Jack saw was a security monitoring station, “we’re in a war and we don’t screw around with stuff like this. Everyone in the base is given weapons training. We do this for every portal opening, but this one’s unusual: it’s not one of our scheduled deliveries or changeovers that we normally do at night. It’s broad daylight, which means that it’s a bit of an emergency. Hurry up. Tan won’t wait for you.”
Doing as she said, he hurried after Tan, just getting through the command center’s blast door as it was cycling closed behind him. Changeovers that we normally do at night, Renee had said. God, I don’t even know what time it is, he thought absently as he ran down the tunnel toward the main junction. He saw a dozen men and women, all heavily armed, standing around the huge blast door to the portal that Naomi had pointed out to him on their tour earlier.
As he came to a stop outside the ring formed by the grim-faced security team around the portal entrance, Jack noticed that there were at least ten cats, including Koshka and Alexander, who had darted out of the command center right behind Jack to join the assembly. After seeing Alexander’s reaction to Sansone, he understood why they’d use cats this way as part of their security process. He just didn’t know what triggered their violent reaction to someone like Sansone, and he was afraid to find out.
Not sure what else to do, he followed the lead of the security team and pointed his rifle at the portal entrance, wondering what to expect.
“Renee, are we secure topside?” a woman’s voice asked from behind them.
He turned to see Naomi striding into the junction. Jack knew that she must have sprinted to get here so fast, but she wasn’t even breathing hard. She was also heavily armed, with her own G36C slung over her shoulder and a pump-action shotgun in her hands. She flashed him a quick smile as she made her way to the front of the group.
“Confirmed, Naomi,” Renee’s voice said from overhead speakers. “Outer personnel door is closed and locked. The revolving blast door is secure. No alarms for airborne contaminants. Topside activity appears to be normal. I show one individual standing outside the junction blast door. Her badge ID matches her facial profile, and the thermal scanner shows a normal body profile.”
“Open the door,” Naomi ordered tensely, and everyone brought up their weapons.
“Portal door opening,” Renee’s voice echoed in the junction. Jack heard dull thunks as the huge locking bolts slid back and the double-sided door, controlled by two massive hydraulic rams on each side, began to cycle open. This door, Jack saw, was the full height of the vestibule that connected the portal to the junction, a good eight feet high and as many wide, and fully two feet thick.
As the doors parted, Jack saw a woman who looked to be in her late twenties standing on the far side, staring wide-eyed at the rifles pointed at her and holding her hands high. Behind her, he could see a latticework of girders and metal stairs that circled around the inside of the portal structure, which itself was a huge concrete cylinder that was nearly thirty feet across and rose over seventy feet to the surface. In the center was a massive freight elevator that dwarfed the woman standing before them.
Under the watchful eyes of the humans, the cats wandered forward in their own good time, which in itself caused the security team to relax. Slightly.
Tan slung his rifle and approached her with a device that he held up to her right eye. Jack could see the blue luminescence of a laser that scanned her retina. A green light winked on the back of the device.
“Confirmed,” Renee said, relieved.
“Welcome back, Ellen,” Naomi said, walking up to the woman and giving her a hug. “We’re so glad you made it back safely.”
“I’m sorry I took so long,” the woman told her shakily.
Naomi turned to Jack. “This is Ellen Bienkowski,” she said. “She helped Sheldon get into the lab at LRU.”
She’s the one Richards was looking for, Jack suddenly remembered. Ellen was on the university’s security staff, and had mysteriously disappeared the night of Sheldon’s murder.
“Yes,” Ellen said in a quivering voice as tears welled up in her eyes, “and I know how he died.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Everything was going according to plan,” Ellen was saying. She was sitting at the head of the table in the command center’s packed conference room, clutching a cup of hot tea. Everyone around her was tense with anticipation.
Jack sat next to Naomi at the table, across from Ellen. He was shocked when Tan had reached out to take Ellen’s hand in a subtle but tender display of affection, and realized t
hat they were probably a little more than friends. Jack’s own hands were balled into fists that were pressed hard into his thighs as he waited to hear what had happened to Sheldon.
Thornton couldn’t be there in person without risking his cover, for he had several important corporate meetings scheduled for the day. He had insisted that Naomi debrief Ellen as soon as possible, and he would watch the recording of the session when he returned to the base.
“I was able to deactivate and spoof the security systems, and got Sheldon into the lab undetected,” Ellen went on. “I was monitoring him to make sure he was okay; I could see him through the lab’s security cameras, and had voice contact through his radio link.
“He accessed the standalone machine that we knew was there. That’s where he found the location of the prototypes in the freezers and the gene map files, just as we expected.” She paused, looking around the room before her eyes settled on Naomi. “But there was another machine there, a laptop that I didn’t remember seeing before. I...I told Sheldon not to bother with it, that it wasn’t part of the plan, but he insisted on taking a look at it.”
Jack nodded to himself. That was Sheldon, he thought sadly. He had to mess with every computer and gadget he saw.
“Was he able to get into it?” Naomi asked.
Ellen nodded her head in a quick, jerky move. “Yes,” she said. “It took him a while, probably ten minutes. That put him behind schedule, but he was able to break into the file system.” She paused. “It was Kempf’s personal laptop.”
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