by Tarah Benner
The guard had clearly trained for this, but Lark wasn’t fucking around. Sticking out her arms as far as they would go, she pressed the trigger.
The explosion reverberated in the small space, shattering Lark’s eardrums. A deafening ring replaced normal sound, and Lark shook her head in an effort to restore her hearing.
The guard’s eyes scrunched in agony, and his mouth opened in a silent scream. Lark tried to jerk away from him, but the toilet was pressed against her back, and there was a solid wall on her left.
Straightening up, she brought down an elbow on the back of the guard’s neck and scrambled to get away. Her legs were trapped beneath his flailing body, but she managed to free her hips and slink across the floor toward the nurse.
A pool of blood was oozing across the tile, spilling into the grout and collecting near the drain. The bullet must have clipped his leg.
As the guard writhed in agony, Lark snatched the keys from his belt and crawled toward the door.
She still couldn’t hear a thing, but she knew reinforcements were on their way. Someone must have heard that gunshot, and they would know something was wrong.
Lark fumbled with the keys, trying to find one that would release her handcuffs, but her fingers slipped and slid over the cold metal. The persistent ringing in her ears was driving her insane, and her hands were shaking so badly that it took her several tries to manipulate the tiny silver key.
Finally, she freed herself from her cuffs and tossed them at the guard. “Take these!” she shouted, unable to hear her own voice. “One cuff around your wrist.”
The guard was panting and half-delirious with pain, so Lark gave him a swift kick in his injured leg. “Do it!”
He cried out, his mouth stretching in an ugly scream. Lark wasn’t sure if he could hear her, but he’d gotten the message. He picked up the discarded cuffs and slapped one around his wrist.
“You!” Lark yelled, pointing to the nurse and then to the commode. “Up against the toilet.”
The nurse didn’t need telling twice. Sobbing and cringing, she scooted toward the guard on her side until she was practically kissing the toilet bowl.
“Wrap your arm around the back,” Lark ordered. “Now!”
The nurse obeyed.
“Cuff her other arm,” Lark told the guard, brandishing the gun. The ringing in her ears was starting to subside, but sound was still having a difficult time traveling from her mouth to her ears.
Glaring up at her, the guard brought his arm around to the other side of the toilet until he was almost touching the nurse. He cuffed himself to the girl, and Lark bent down to grab his key card. She still didn’t know exactly where she was, but she guessed that she would need his security clearance to get where she needed to go.
She reached for his belt, hesitated, and then unclipped it. She wrapped the whole thing around her middle, where it sagged under the weight of his accoutrements. It was heavy, but it would keep her hands free.
She turned to go, but then she heard a garbled voice coming from the walkie-talkie on her hip. “Johnson! Johnson! Do you copy?”
Lark and the guard both stared at the device. Then the guard lunged. Lark batted his arm away with the handgun and sprinted out of the bathroom without a backwards look.
Just then, the room began to spin. Lark’s vision became distorted, and for a moment she thought she might be sick. She grabbed on to the door jamb to steady herself against the sudden tide of nausea, swallowing down the surge of bile that was threatening to make an appearance.
Lark swore. It had to be from the spinal tap. She was in no shape to go sprinting around GreenSeed’s compound, but she just took a few deep breaths and reached for the door handle.
Her head was spinning. How long had someone been trying to reach the guard? She had to get out of there, but she still didn’t know exactly where she was.
She yanked off her slippery shoe covers, pulled the door open, and peered out into the hallway. There was an older Hispanic woman sitting on a stool at the nurse’s station, but she was deeply immersed in some trashy magazine.
Moving as quietly as she could, Lark let herself out of the room and crept down the hallway in the opposite direction. But just when she was almost to the corner, the voice from the walkie sounded again, and the nurse looked up.
They stood frozen at opposite ends of the hallway, and then all the color drained from the nurse’s face. She let out a hysterical slur of panic and reached for the phone on the desk.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” called Lark, pointing the gun at the woman.
The nurse’s face crinkled with terror, and Lark felt something dark unfurl inside of her. She swallowed and walked slowly toward the woman, hating the person she had become.
“Put down the phone, and I won’t have to hurt you,” said Lark.
The woman dropped the phone, and the walkie-talkie went off again. She didn’t catch the first part, but she heard the only words that mattered: “Headed your way.”
Lark cursed inwardly but kept walking toward the woman. “Where is the storage room?”
The woman was ashen and shaking all over. As soon as Lark got within ten feet of her, she dropped her magazine and burst into tears.
“Where did they put my things?” Lark yelled.
The woman just shook her head, sobbing uncontrollably. Lark lowered the gun. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I just need you to tell me where they store patient belongings.”
The woman’s mouth moved, but all that came out was an incomprehensible whimper. She lifted a shaky hand and pointed down the hallway, and Lark let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” she said, taking off in the direction the woman had indicated.
She rounded the corner and sprinted down the long hallway, uncomfortably aware that her stupid smock was still open in the back.
But then she came to a T, and a nearby elevator dinged. The doors slid open, and a charge of electricity shot down her spine. Someone was coming.
The elevator was on her left, so she went right. She heard people piling into the hallway, and two seconds later, there was a surprised shout some fifteen yards behind her.
Lark’s heart sank. The hallway she’d chosen was a dead end. The men started after her, and she immediately tried the first door on her right. It was locked.
She tried the next door, but it was locked, too, and it didn’t have a card reader. Lark had the guard’s keys, but there was no time to figure out which one opened the door. Lark was starting to panic, a horrible choking dread rising up inside of her and making her brain go fuzzy.
But then she saw a door on her left with a glowing green exit sign mounted above it. It was a stairwell.
Throwing her weight against the door, she flew onto the landing and sprinted down the stairs. She was a flight and a half down when she heard the door bang open again, but then she lost her footing.
Her legs flew out from under her, and Lark tumbled in midair for half a second before careening into a wall. The gun flew out of her hand as her head hit the surface, but she picked it back up and kept going until she reached a dead end. There was only a door in front of her — no more stairs, and no other hallway.
She wheeled around, sure it had to be a mistake, but it wasn’t. She was standing in the basement, and the men were thundering down the stairs behind her. Without thinking, Lark pushed the door open and gasped as a damp chill wrapped around her.
She was standing in an underground parking garage. A few cars were scattered near the door, but as she peered through the semidarkness, she saw another door on the other side of the pillars.
She jogged across the cold, gum-covered concrete to the door at the opposite end, fighting another pang of dizziness.
The door was locked.
She jiggled the handle desperately before remembering that she still had the guard’s key card swinging from her belt. She jammed it into the reader and groaned in relief when the little light above th
e slot turned green.
Lark slammed the handle down and pushed her way through the door without bothering to check that the coast was clear. It wouldn’t be long before the others caught up with her, but the more twists and turns she took, the more time she could buy herself.
Lark took the second set of stairs up one flight and emerged onto the first floor. From the looks of things, she was in a different building. The floor was covered with scratchy industrial carpet, and the doors were a smooth, polished birch. Her heart soared.
She wasn’t in the medical center anymore. She was in the main administrative building.
Breathing through the rush of excitement, Lark crept down the long hallway in search of the room with all the computers. She didn’t encounter a single living soul, which confirmed her suspicions that it was the middle of the night. During the day, the halls would be crawling with people, but at that moment she had the building to herself.
She slowed her pace as she rounded a corner, trying to catch her breath so that she could think more clearly. She still didn’t know where all the seeds were stored. That was a problem, but she could only deal with one thing at a time. At the moment, she just needed a familiar landmark that might help her find the room with all the computers.
The wing was dark except for a handful of emergency lights, but as she passed under one, she saw something that gave her a kick of triumph. To her right was a wall of dark windows, one of which was covered in plywood. Someone had cleaned up all the glass from the break-in, but they hadn’t gotten around to repairing the window that Axel had broken. She knew where she was.
Shivering with excitement, Lark made her way down the silent hallway until she reached the very end. In front of her stood a set of double doors, and every nerve in her body tingled with anticipation.
Taking a deep breath, Lark pulled the doors open and stepped inside. Several dozen computer monitors blinked back at her, reflecting the sparse light emanating from the hallway.
Heart racing, Lark stopped at the first computer and perched on the rolling chair. She jiggled the mouse expectantly, and she let out a huff of disappointment. A dialogue box appeared on screen, demanding a user name and password.
“Shit,” she muttered, jiggling the mouse that belonged to the neighboring computer and coming up with the same unhelpful message. She tried six more computers, but they were all locked.
Anxiety was beginning to poke through her bubble of excitement. What was she going to do? Her entire deal with Homeland Security was based on the premise that she would be able to break into GreenSeed’s system and steal their test data. If she couldn’t access one of GreenSeed’s computers, she was screwed.
But then her gaze landed on a work station down the row that was more cluttered than all the rest. A fuzzy pen was sticking out of a “Keep Calm and Drink Some Wine” mug, and a rainbow of sticky notes covered most of the available desk space.
Lark got up and walked toward the station, her eyes scanning a cluster of notes penned in the same loopy cursive. Almost immediately, her eyes landed on one that filled her with glee: angelgurl_86, MrsXavierWilkes123!
“Thank you, angelgurl,” Lark murmured, throwing herself into the woman’s swivel chair and pounding in her login credentials.
Instantly, the computer booted up. The operating system was unfamiliar to Lark, but it wasn’t hard to navigate. She scanned the desktop for anything that looked like the files she’d seen before and then opened the documents folder. There had to be thousands of inmate records, but there weren’t that many files in the documents folder or anywhere else.
Just when Lark was starting to think that angelgurl_86 didn’t have access to those important records, an application in the menu bar caught her eye: Dynamic Data 365. Lark clicked on it, and a familiar window opened to reveal a research-management system beyond her wildest dreams.
This was the program Bernie had stumbled on before. It was the one the prison used to record data on how its products affected inmates.
The home screen offered her the choice to search by subject, sort by parameter, compare test groups, create a study, or generate a report. She clicked on the last option and selected “export all data.”
While she waited, she snooped around on angelgurl’s computer. Along with several dozen pictures of cats making funny faces and three different versions of a love letter to Xavier, Lark found a file labeled “2050 Crop Prospectus” and clicked. Instantly her screen was overtaken by a dense-looking corporate packet describing GreenSeed’s most successful seed varieties, their uses, and their advantages (high yield, hardiness, disease resistance, etc.).
She added that to her packet, and a dialogue box opened up. It told her that it would take four more minutes to export all the data she needed.
Her heart sank. She didn’t have that kind of time, but she couldn’t exactly go through the entire program to see which data files she needed.
Feeling desperate, Lark cast around for something she could use to pry off her fake toenail. Nothing on the security guard’s belt seemed appropriate, and all of angelgurl’s pens were pink and fluffy. Lark doubted that the woman had a set of pliers rattling around in her drawer, so she settled on a thick highlighter pen with a wide cap.
She perched her foot on the edge of her chair and positioned the cap underneath the nail. Closing her eyes, she pried it up, and white-hot pain flared through her big toe. Pieces of flesh came away with the glue, and Lark gagged as she peeled the fake nail away from her skin.
When it was done, the top of her big toe looked raw and alien. There were angry red indentations were the nail had been and several tiny abrasions where she’d torn the skin.
Underneath the fake nail, she could see the silicon chip, along with a microscopic glimmer of gold. Lark jammed it into the reader, and a new icon appeared on the desktop.
At that moment, an alarm wailed through the building. Lark had the immediate urge to hit the deck, but she forced herself to stay put and wait for the files to finish exporting.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she murmured, staring at the little file packet blinking on the desktop.
She glanced around the room, locating her exit and checking the pistol to see how many rounds she had left in the magazine. The gun was an asset. It would help her keep the guards at a distance, but it also made them more likely to shoot her.
Finally, the ticking numbers below the file packet zeroed out, and she dragged the packet over to her chip. “Go!” she yelled as the little loading symbol appeared.
Just then, the double doors behind her burst open, and she heard a jumble of voices as the guards’ eyes latched on to her. At the same moment, the file packet finished, and she yanked the chip out of the reader.
“Get down!” yelled the guards. “On the ground!”
Lark looked over her shoulder, and her blood ran cold. At least a dozen armed guards were standing behind her, dressed in riot gear and holding automatic weapons. Pairs of them were sprinting down the aisles on either side of her, and several more had their guns pointed at her head.
She was surrounded.
In that moment, Lark knew what she had to do. Running was pointless, and she couldn’t very well shoot her way out. The only thing she could do was hold on to that data.
Before a plan had fully formed in her mind, Lark threw herself to the ground and arm-crawled under the desk toward the next row of computers. While she was hidden, she jammed the fake toenail into her mouth and forced herself to swallow.
It went down like a dull razor blade, and she gagged several times before she managed to get it down her throat.
By the time she emerged between the next two rows of computers, her face was screwed up in disgust, but the guards didn’t seem to notice. They were too busy shouting at her and brandishing their weapons.
Lark didn’t listen. She got to her feet and sprinted toward the exit. Her legs felt heavy and gelatinous as she thundered down the wide steps, but a second later, a jolt of electr
icity shot through her body.
Everything slowed down as her feet flew out from under her. Her body trembled in a flurry of spasms, and she tasted something metallic on the back of her tongue.
For a brief moment, she was airborne — weightless — before she slammed into the ground.
eighteen
Bernie
Bernie slept for most of the day. She awoke late in the afternoon, forced down a revolting military meal, and bummed around the house for the rest of the day.
Simjay and Portia were quiet and subdued, but Bernie suspected that they, like her, were torn between relief at having reached their destination and anxiety over what they were about to attempt.
Conrad was busy — almost manic — but Bernie didn’t know exactly what he was doing. She was anxious to learn his plan for infiltrating Cheyenne Mountain Complex, but she sensed that things like breaking into a top-secret government facility took time, and she didn’t want to push him.
Almost twenty-four hours after their arrival, Bernie woke up alone in the living room. She was hungry, so she padded into the kitchen to make herself a bowl of oatmeal.
Conrad only had the chewy steel-cut kind, which took forever to cook and contained absolutely zero maple-brown-sugary goodness. He also made them track every scrap they ate on his crazy inventory chart.
The one upside to breakfast at Conrad’s was that he always brewed a pot of coffee in the morning. Bernie hadn’t had coffee since before she’d gone to prison, and she’d missed it. The first delicious sip sent a pleasant jolt through Bernie’s entire body and took her back to another time and place.
Savoring her cup, she walked through the living room and out into the sunroom to peer through a gap in the insulation. The day before, Denali had been stuck to her side like Velcro, but that morning he was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t curled up on the porch, and he wasn’t out doing his business. Simjay and Portia were missing, too, and she got a sudden surge of panic that Conrad had murdered them in their sleep.