by David Archer
“What about the lab staff? Do you have anything to do where they are concerned?”
“Oh, well, just keeping track of their pay and such. Hours, overtime, things like that.”
“Right, right. But you don’t do the hiring, is that right?”
“Oh, no. Dr. Cheng handles most of that, then he tells me where to put them in the system, their pay, all that kinda stuff.”
“How long have you been here, Robin?”
“Oh, I’ve worked here for about three years now. I was hired for this job because I had done the same thing at my last job. That was at a pharmaceutical company in Los Angeles. I was looking for a chance to get out of LA and saw this job posted, so I applied and got it.”
“Tell me what you think of your boss, Dr. Cheng. Good man to work for, is he?”
She gave him a wry grin. “I guess so,” she said, “as long as you don’t mind his flirting, and I let it go in one ear and out the other. Some of the other girls find it annoying, but I just laugh it off.”
“Really? A bit of sexual innuendo? Harassment?”
“Not what I’d call harassment, no. He just makes comments about how nice I look, or how he wishes he was younger so he could sweep me off my feet, that kinda stuff. He’s harmless, but some girls think that’s just terrible, and he’s had some complaints filed on him. When that happens, he stops and never bothers that girl again, but he never gets vengeful, either. Nobody has ever been fired or hassled over it, and that tells me he’s not as bad as they let on, you know?”
“All right. Now, what can you tell me about the surgery?”
“Surgery? I know they do some now and then, but I’m not part of that. I don’t think I’ve ever even been in that room. I’ve seen inside through the door once or twice, is all.”
Denny picked up his phone and held it out, showing her a photo of Li Chang. “Have you ever seen this man here?”
She glanced at the picture and smiled. “Sure, yeah,” she said. “That’s Mr. Chang. He works over at Cerebro, but he and Angie hang out sometimes.”
Denny smiled as he put the phone down again. “Angie?”
“Yeah, Angie Davidson. She’s one of the engineers in the brain lab here, and Chang works on some of the same stuff over at Cerebro. I think they may be dating, but they claim they’re just comparing notes on their research.”
“You say ‘dating’ like it’s something shameful, why is that?”
“Well, it’s not shameful, but I know they’re not supposed to be dating or hanging out with people who work for competitors. I mean, that’s in the employee handbook, even. Because everything we do is supposed to be secret, you know? I don’t know why nobody has done anything about it, but Dr. Cheng just says it’s no big deal.”
Denny’s eyebrows went up. “Does seem a bit odd, that no one would worry about the possibility they’d be sharing secrets. Has anyone complained about it?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Only like a gazillion times. Dan Redfern, he runs the optometrics lab, he said he’d fire anyone on his team that he caught with a Cerebro employee. He said even if it’s all innocent, there’s too much chance of letting something slip that could help the competition. He’s gone to Cheng about it several times, but nothing ever happens.”
Denny smiled at her. “See? You’re a great help after all.”
*
Angela Davidson was scared. She’d been called at just after five in the morning and told that the police had raided the company, looking for the stolen chip from CerebroLink, and had taken all of the computers and everything else they could carry from the brain interface labs.
That would include, she knew, all of the data she had been given on the chip, and they might have even found the original prototype. It was in the secret place under the floor in Mrs. Ping’s office, and while it would be hard to find, it wouldn’t be impossible. She was screwed, and she knew it; the company would make sure their own people were protected, and that she would be the one to take the fall.
The worst part was that there was nothing she could do to prove that she had protested against using the stolen research. She was on the right track, she knew she was, and while the LED trick worked, she was certain that she had come up with a better way to write data to the brain. All they needed to do was give her another six months, and the BCI system she was working on would blow C-Link out of the water.
The company didn’t want to wait, however. All that talk about how the Chinese would wait as long as necessary to show a profit didn’t mean squat when it came to something worth potentially trillions of dollars on the market, and the temptation of miraculous healings and perceived immortality was more than they could resist.
They’d made a deal with that whiz kid from C-Link, Chang, and ordered her to work with him. Sure, he was a genius, but so was she; why should she have to do things his way, when her own would be so much better?
They didn’t listen, though, and the longer she dealt with Chang, the more she knew it was a mistake. She wasn’t sure just who he was, but he seemed to be a lot more powerful than just an engineer should ever be. Even old Cheng bowed to him, and that old bastard didn’t respect anyone.
She sat at her kitchen table and tried to think of what to do, but no ideas came to mind. The company had kept her isolated from whoever actually handled the deal to get the chip and the research, so she couldn’t even point a finger at anyone else. She might as well go to work and get it over with, let them dump it all on her and see just how many years she would get.
She’d talked to her husband, Jack, about it briefly before he went to work, but she’d only told him she might be in some kind of trouble. He didn’t have a clue just how bad it was going to be, though, and she hadn’t had the heart to tell him.
She didn’t tell the girls anything, though. They were only nine and eleven, they wouldn’t understand that Mommy might be going to prison for many, many years. She couldn’t burden them with that just yet, so she’d smiled and waved as they got on the bus to school.
She got up from the table and started toward her bedroom to get dressed, but then the knock came on the door. She went to answer it nervously, wondering if the police had just come to arrest her, but there was only a young man standing there wearing a heavy-looking backpack. He was Asian and reminded her briefly of Chang, but it wasn’t him.
“Yes?” she asked as she opened the door. “Can I help you?”
The young man held out a cell phone and nodded his head, indicating that she should take it. She did so nervously, putting it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Mommy?” she heard, and her heart sank.
“Jana? Honey, is that you? Why are you calling me, where’s your...”
“They are both safe,” said a voice she knew well. “And they will stay that way if you do what I tell you.”
“Chang? What is this? You’ve got my daughters? Why?”
“Because I need you to do something for me, and I need you to understand just how important it is. I cannot have the police interfering with my plans, and so I must eliminate every clue they could find. Do you see the boy standing in front of you?”
Angela looked at the young man again, and it dawned on her that he looked frightened. “Yes,” she said.
“Take the backpack from him and put it on. Then, you will drive to your office and walk inside the front door. As soon as you step inside, pull the blue cord that is attached to the strap. Do you see the cord?”
She stared at the simple blue rope that was hooked to the strap. “I see it,” she said. “Chang, what...”
“When you pull the cord, you will ensure that your daughters will return home safely to their father tonight. If you do not, they will both die, and you will find parts of them appearing all around you. Is it not better that they live without a mother than die because you would not save them?”
“Oh, dear God,” Angela said. “Oh, God, it’s a bomb, isn’t it?”
“Do what you must
do. You will wish to leave a letter to your family, and I do not object to this. In the letter, which you will leave in your car, you will say only that you were ordered to do this by Yue Fei. If you say anything else, I will know, and your husband will die with your daughters.”
“Wait!” she cried, sobbing. “Wait. Let me say goodbye to them, please?”
“Say goodbye in the letter.”
The line went dead, and she collapsed against the door frame. The young man who had given her the phone looked at her with tears of his own, and then slowly took off the backpack and held it out to her. She stared at it for several seconds, and then reached out to take it from him.
She left the house a half hour later, driving around for a while before finally going to Fa Ling. She pulled into the employee parking lot like she always did, but this time she parked at the back of the lot, rather than in her assigned space.
She sat there for several minutes, writing a letter to her husband and daughters. She told them how much she loved them all, and begged them to understand that she was doing what she had to do to protect them. She couldn’t tell them about Chang, she knew that would get them killed, but she was able to say that she was only doing what she did because it was the only way to save her beloved daughters.
At just before nine-thirty, only minutes after two police officers had checked her house and found nothing amiss, Angela Davidson got out of her car and walked toward the front door of the building. The tears were flowing again as she drew closer to her own death one step at a time, but the lives of her daughters were too high a price to pay for her own survival.
33
Merkle came back to the room a few minutes after he’d left with Proctor, and took up his original position at the wall. Summer was still speaking to Ding Chuanfu, but he didn’t seem to know much of anything. He didn’t react in any way that she could see when she showed him Chang’s photo, and she let him go a few minutes later.
Proctor led another man in after a few seconds, and it was then that Merkle’s radio squawked to life.
“Delta sixteen, Dispatch.”
He took the radio off his belt and held it up. “Delta sixteen, go ahead.”
“Delta sixteen, be advised officer found no one at the residence you reported. No evidence of any problems, neighbors reported seeing the occupant drive away this morning like usual.”
“Delta sixteen, ten-four.” He replaced the walkie-talkie on his belt and shrugged at Summer. “Nobody home,” he said.
“Well, hopefully that’s a good thing,” Summer said. She turned to the man across the table from her and smiled. “Sorry, we were checking on one of your co-workers who didn’t make it in today. And you are?”
“I’m Chuck Thompson,” the man said. “I manage the audio lab. Is this gonna take long? I need to...”
A sudden scream from outside the room caught all of their attention, and Merkle stepped quickly to the door and went through it. He got outside and Summer heard him say, “What’s going on out here?”
“I’m sorry,” said a woman’s voice, and Summer could tell she was sobbing. “I’m so sorry.”
Summer started to get to her feet to go and see what was happening, but then the world erupted into fire and noise around her as an explosion went off near the reception desk.
The blast rocked the entire building, and she fell backwards onto the floor. Thompson was thrown across the room and hit the wall at the same moment, and Summer saw flames through the open doorway. She struggled to get herself turned over and made it to her hands and knees, then crawled over to where Thompson lay.
His face was covered in blood, and she saw that a piece of wood had lodged in his right eye. She tried to speak to him, but all that came out was a cough, so she felt his throat for a pulse and found none. She stared at him for a couple of seconds, then turned and began crawling under the smoke that was filling the room toward the doorway.
Alarms were going off somewhere, but she could barely hear them. A moment later, the sprinkler system came to life and it began to rain on her, but she ignored it and kept crawling. There were still flames visible outside the room, but only in spots, so she assumed that was burning debris that had been thrown toward her during the explosion.
When she got to the door, she crouched even lower and peeked into the hallway, but saw no one moving. Denny had been in the room just across from hers, and she saw that its door had been blown off its hinges and was hanging askew. She crawled across the hall and looked in, just in time to see Officer Jamison getting to her feet.
“No, get down,” Summer yelled, but she could barely hear her own voice. Jamison didn’t seem to hear her at all, as she started tugging at the table, which had collapsed on one end. Summer crawled inside the room and pulled on Jamison’s pants leg to get her attention, motioning for the officer to get down and crawl.
“Get low,” she shouted again, “under the smoke.” Jamison nodded and got down on all fours, then pulled again at the table. Summer helped and they managed to flip it over.
Denny was there, covering a young woman with his own body. Summer yelled, “Denny!” and yanked on his arm, and he slowly turned over to look at her while the girl under him screamed. Between the three of them, they got the girl onto her knees and all four began crawling toward the hallway.
When they got there, Summer pointed toward the reception area, where a wall of flame was advancing slowly but inexorably toward them. “No way out that way,” she yelled.
Denny nodded and pointed toward the fire. “Follow me,” he shouted as he pushed past her, and then all three women followed him to the stairwell door. He reached up and grabbed the knob, felt it for a moment, and then yanked it open. He held it open and hurried the three women inside, then followed them and shut it behind himself.
“Second floor,” he said. “There’s a window we can get out of, go!”
Summer’s ears were ringing, but she made out what he was saying. Since the smoke was much thinner, she got to her feet and started up, but a sharp pain in her lower leg made her look down. A four-inch sliver of wood was sticking out of her left calf, but she shook her head and forced herself to walk up the stairs anyway. She glanced back, wincing, and saw that the girl who had been under Denny was right behind her, and Jamison was next. Denny was at the bottom, watching to make sure the three of them were getting up the stairs.
She came to a door and put her hand against it, checking for heat in case the fire had gotten to the second floor already. It was cool to the touch, so she opened it carefully and sniffed, then threw it open wide when the air was clear. She held it open and gasped in clean air, then waved at the others to hurry.
Toward the front of the building, she could see gouts of flame and swirling smoke, but it all seemed to be going away from her, and she realized that the front wall had fallen away. A number of other people were staggering out of doors along the hallway, most of them crying and seemingly in shock. Summer called out to them and they began moving toward her.
When Denny, at the rear of the line in the stairwell, reached her, they went through together. Jamison and the other girl were leaning against the wall, breathing deeply, as the other people milled about them, but Denny pushed them ahead. “Back room,” he shouted over their damaged hearing. “There’s a window that’s only a dozen feet off the ground, it’s our only way out!”
He hustled them all to the door he wanted, but it was locked. He didn’t waste time trying to pick the lock, but kicked it four times in rapid succession until the latch finally gave way, then dragged the girl from his interview room in while Summer, Jamison, and the rest followed. They went to the one window and Denny threw it open, then lifted the girl and put her out feet first, letting her legs drop until he was only holding her by the hands. “Ready?” he yelled, and Summer thought she must have nodded because he let her go and turned to her.
“Come on, luv, you’re next!” Denny yelled, but Summer pointed at Jamison. Denny didn’t argue, but picked
up the cop and put her out the window the same way. He dropped her to the ground, and then turned around and tried to grab Summer.
“No, we get the rest out first,” she shouted. She started pushing people toward him, and he scowled as he kept helping them out the window. At one point, he shouted for Jamison to get them all away from the building, and saw her leading them toward the fence.
Finally, there was no one left, but the room was starting to fill with smoke. “Okay, it’s you this time,” Denny said. “Out you go!”
Summer nodded and limped to the window, let Denny help her climb out and a moment later she was dropping the last six feet to the ground. The sliver in her leg twisted, and she screamed as she fell down and rolled. Denny landed beside her a few seconds later, and picked her up again as he ran haltingly, almost stumbling as he carried Summer to the chain-link fence, and then he set her down as gently as he could before slumping to the ground himself. People around them were talking on cell phones, and Denny figured he could rest for a moment.
“Let’s see that leg,” he said, and leaned forward. The chunk of wood was sticking out at an angle, but it wasn’t in the thickest part of her calf. He could actually see its outline under her skin.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said, speaking loudly. “If I yank it out, I might make it worse.”
Summer nodded. “Leave it,” she said. “Now, turn around.”
Denny looked at her strangely, but did as she asked. Summer saw a dozen similar wooden slivers sticking out of his back, but just as Denny had said about hers, none of them were life-threatening.
“We’d better just let the paramedics take care of us,” Summer said. “I’m not sure I won’t make you bleed to death if I take any out.”
“Wot? Y’mean, I’ve more than one? I can’t bloody feel anything.”
She glared at him. “Aren’t you the lucky bastard?” she asked. “Don’t worry, you will.”
Sirens were filling the air, and some of the people were running toward the front, where fire engines and ambulances were coming into the parking lot. Denny got up and helped Summer to her feet, and they hobbled together toward rescue.