“She’s clean.”
The leader activated a walkie-talkie hanging from his hip.
“Base, Markham,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“Target has been acquired. Adult Caucasian female. Found her in the nanotech lab.”
Nanotech?
“Kill her.”
The one who had searched her clipped the back of her legs with his gun and Rachel buckled to the ground.
“Roger that. Markham out.”
“No, wait!”
The open line of the walkie-talkie hissed.
“Will await confirmation of subject’s termination.”
The hissing clicked off.
The gunman hooked the communicator back to his belt.
“We’ll do this outside,” the leader said. “Less mess to clean up.”
They took each of her arms and began escorting her back up the corridor whence she had come. Rachel’s heart was a frightened horse that had gotten spooked. Her legs were jelly, her brain frozen. She could not form a single thought in her head.
Think, think, think.
Her feet began to drag behind her, slowing their progress. The bright lights buzzing down from above gave her a headache.
A way out, there had to be a way out.
But she said nothing. She would not beg for her life.
They went back through the access door she’d been so proud of bypassing less than an hour ago, back into the entry foyer, and then outside. It was drizzling again, the rain her clothing, the water seeping through the fabric, chilling her. A pair of pickup trucks idled in front of the building.
“Down on your knees.”
“No.”
The gunman struck her in the face with the butt of his weapon, staggering her. Her cheek had split open and blood trickled along the jawbone to her mouth.
Will’s face, bright and hopeful and naïve, filled her field of vision.
Will.
Will.
Will.
“Get your boss back on the line.”
“Get her up on her knees.”
Rough hands grabbed at her arms and torso, pulling her up on her knees.
“Listen to me.”
“I don’t have to listen to anyone except the man on the other end of this line,” he said, tapping the walkie-talkie’s plastic housing,
“Yeah?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you get him on the line and tell him my name is Rachel Fisher.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
He looked at her with a puzzled look on her face, the way a dog might look at you when you sing to it. It had been a weird thing for her to say, and that by itself made it stand out. It was the green M&M in a universe of brown ones. The others stood idly by, shifting their weight from one to another, engaging in nervous tics, adjusting vests, shifting strap placement.
If it didn’t work, she’d have to show them the tattoo, but then they would know she was at the Citadel, and that was a card she wanted to keep close to the vest for now. “It can’t hurt to call it in, right?” she asked.
Silence.
“If you kill me, and you’re wrong, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Silence.
The man nervously clicked his tongue against his teeth. The sound writ large in the stillness of the Colorado afternoon. She could see him working it out in his head. He didn’t want to call the boss back and incur his wrath if it turned out she was lying; she could only hope he wanted to find out she’d been telling the truth after he killed her even less.
His hand dropped to his hip, inches away from the walkie-talkie.
It hung there for what seemed like an eternity.
“God help you if you’re wrong.”
He unhooked it and pushed the Talk button.
“Base, Markham.”
They waited in the shadow of the open line’s hiss.
“Is she dead?”
“Negative.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Sir, this woman says her name is Rachel Fisher. Does that mean anything to you?”
The line hung open.
Then a mutter, barely audible, but enough for her to make it out.
“My God.”
A crackle of static.
“Bring her back.”
Relief flooded through her veins and she let out a shaky breath.
They boarded the vehicles, Rachel sitting shotgun in the lead truck. Before she’d had a chance to process what was happening, they were off. They followed the same access road back out to the highway, where Priya had dropped her off. She looked anxiously for them as they turned north, but they were gone.
33
They drove west-northwest for an hour, up into the foothills of the Rockies. The sun had begun to set, its weak rays gilding the snow-capped mountaintops like dull gold paint. Rachel sat enveloped in darkness, wearing a ski mask over her head, the eyeholes stitched closed.
As they climbed the switchbacks, carving their way up the mountain, she became uncomfortably aware of the growing distance between herself and Will. This was the farthest she had ever been away from him, and the chance of a successful reunion grew more remote as the gap between them widened. Priya’s three-day clock loomed large over her head. As the moon rose, they turned onto an old logging road, narrow and rutted. Their headlights carved twin cylinders through the darkness.
She thought they would pepper her with questions, but no one said a word.
“How did you find me so quickly?” she asked.
No one replied.
She gave up and leaned back against the headrest. She dozed. Her eyes were heavy and she felt sleep pulling her down into its embrace. Sleep would be good now. She needed to rest when she could. The vehicle’s big shock absorbers kept the jarring to a minimum, the bouncing soft and lulling her into dreamland.
She slept.
Thirty minutes later, the vehicle lumbered to a stop.
“We’re here,” said the leader, shaking her by the shoulder and peeling off her mask.
Rachel yawned. Her neck was kinked from an awkward sleeping position, but her head was clear, her body relaxed.
The driver spoke into an intercom mounted on a brick pillar attached to an iron gate. A moment later, the gate whirred open, and they drove through. The well-maintained road curled around a copse of pine and sequoia before straightening out. A huge structure loomed ahead, the glow of electric lights burning in the distance. The road broke to the north, climbing a bit more into the mountain before tapering to a narrow sliver of asphalt. They passed the edge of a huge building that reminded her of a ski chalet.
The caravan came to a stop at the main entrance of the complex. Someone opened her door for her and she climbed out, careful to maintain her balance, a tricky prospect with her hands bound together. She stretched her back and took in the scene. The gigantic chalet stood before her, all gray stone and sloped roofs. Lights burned in the windows, and the chilly air was redolent with good cooking smells. Garlic, maybe, or onion, she couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Around her, patches of snow shimmered in the yellow light of the moon. An ornate fountain adorned the large entrance plaza.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Welcome to Olympus.”
She rolled her eyes so hard she was thankful it was dark; if they had seen her do it, they probably would have shot her. Olympus. Of course it had to have some fancy nickname, maybe something that made it easier for these psychopaths to swallow what they had done.
They passed underneath a suspended covered walkway connecting two wings of the chalet. The leader used a keycard to access a door on the building’s western wing, which brought them inside a large foyer. It was toasty warm inside, the kind of warmth she hadn’t felt in many years. It felt so good, so natural, the memories of thousands of dark and cold nights slipping away in the blink of an eye. They made their way toward a stairwell catty-corner from the entrance.
As she mounted the first step, she heard something that froze her in place. A sweet, tinny sound she hadn’t heard in a long time. It had come from this floor, a bit farther down the corridor. She was hearing things. She had to be. A weird whistle of the wind, an unseen door squealing closed. Then she heard it again.
There was no question now.
She broke free of her captor’s grip and sprinted down the corridor toward the sound.
“Hey!”
Laughter now, it was laughter she was hearing. There was no doubt in her mind.
Footfalls of the men chasing her down. They needn’t have worried; she wasn’t planning to go anywhere. She had to see.
More laughter and shouting and giggling.
But not just any laughter, not just any giggling.
She found the room that was the source of the commotion. There was a small porthole in the door; she cupped her hands around her face and peered through the glass. It was a large activity room, about thirty-by-thirty square, populated with arcade games and foosball tables and old-school pinball machines.
She got only a few seconds to see what was inside the room before they pulled her away, back to the staircase. She went quietly, her mind a blank notebook. Her whole world had been reset. The last dozen years blown away in the blink of an eye.
The room had been full of children.
34
Even as they pulled her away, the sounds of the children echoing in her ears, she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing. There were no other children. It was a fairy tale, a myth, maybe like the one people had told about Will. That was the world they lived in, after all, one trafficking in rumor and conjecture and speculation, hope’s distant cousins.
“This way,” the leader said, leading Rachel down the hallway as the faces of the children loomed large in her mind. She kept glancing over her shoulder, back toward the room, that beautiful, magical, unbelievable room. More, she wanted more time to look at their faces, to hear their voices, to smell them, to hug them and love on them, not for them, but for herself. Her greedy little self.
They climbed four flights of stairs, the ascent leaving her winded in the thinner air of the Rockies. The stairwell opened on a small foyer, all wood paneling and thick carpet. It was warm and cozy and made her sleepy. Her escort knocked on the heavy oak door across from the stairwell. As they waited, she considered the ramifications of what she had seen. Children. Born after the plague. The human race wasn’t going extinct after all. The answer lay here.
A moment later, the door swung open; a tall, thin silhouette stood before her. When he stepped into the light, her breath caught in her throat, the memories of the children going dark like someone had pulled a plug in her mind.
She had never seen this man before, not in person, but she knew exactly who he was. Many years ago, at the Citadel, she had seen his portrait hanging on a wall, right before Sarah Wells had blown the place to hell. The same lifeless eyes. The beak nose. The narrow face. The wild springy hair. It was as if the portrait had come to life and this man had stepped out from it. Today he wore the most pedestrian of outfits – a pair of khaki pants and a blue oxford shirt. The ordinariness of his clothing only seemed to amplify his terrifying nature.
Leon Gruber.
He took another step toward her, folding his arms, rubbing his chin, like he was inspecting a piece in an antique store, trying to figure out if it was worth what they were asking for it.
“You wait out here,” he said gently. “Ms. Fisher and I have some things to discuss.”
Her stomach muscles clenched tightly at the sound of her name.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked. Her voice sounded small, felt small, like she was a little girl who’d peed on the carpet.
“Yes, I do,” he said, his face bright and terrible and happy.
“How?”
“My dear,” the man said. “You look just like him.”
“Who?”
“Your grandfather.”
#
Rachel followed Gruber inside his office on a pair of wobbly legs, staggered by his revelation. She crumpled into a wingback chair by a fireplace, not bothering to wait for an invitation. Gruber went to the bar near the window.
“You look like you could use a drink,” he said, plinking ice cubes into a pair of glass tumblers. She turned toward him but was unable to formulate a response. Her mouth was dry, her lips stuck together. It was as if she had forgotten how to speak.
“Hearing no objection,” he said, continuing his preparations of the cocktails.
As he fixed their drinks, she took in the room around her. It was a study, wood-paneled like everything else she’d seen so far. Sporting a lot of wood here, the joke broke free out of subconscious, and she giggled, clapping a hand over her mouth because laughing didn’t seem to fit here, not now, not tonight, maybe not ever again. Everything around her felt different. Like the world had been wearing a mask all along and it had now been ripped off. And underneath, it was the same but not the same.
“Something funny?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and that was the literal truth.
He joined her by the fireplace, handing her the drink before taking his seat next to her. They sat quietly, watching the fire crackle and ripple. It felt good. As Rachel sat there, stealing glances at this man who had ruined so much, who had found the loose thread in the fabric of humanity and pulled it until it had unraveled, until it had all come undone.
“My name is Leon Gruber,” he said. “I’m the director of this facility.”
She took a sip of her drink; it burned going down, but not in an unpleasant way. It had been years since she’d had a drink and immediately it made her head swim. From the corner of her eye, she could see him staring at her. There seemed to be a real sense of surprise there.
“My goodness,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, a bit flinty. It was devoid of any accent she could identify. “You look just like Jack.”
Her skin crawled at the familiarity of it all. Old buds, Gruber and her dear old Gramps. She had no recollection of Jack Fisher; she had never even met him. There weren’t many branches on her father’s family tree, and after her mother had taken her to San Diego, she’d had very little contact with that side of the family. Jack Fisher had died when she was fifteen, lost at sea when an unexpected squall had overturned his sailboat during a fishing trip.
She had flown back to Virginia for the funeral, the first time she had traveled alone. She’d felt so grownup, walking down the jetway by herself, tucking her bag in the overhead compartment, ordering a lemonade from the flight attendant on her Delta flight from San Diego to Richmond, perhaps flying right over this very mountain as she crisscrossed the country. They had the funeral at an old church in Culpeper, Virginia, a rural stretch of horse country near the foothills of the Shenandoah. They had both been uncomfortable negotiating the small service, the reception following at the home of the minister, held there because there had been no other relatives. She sat in a hard, uncomfortable chair next to the buffet spread, near the cold cuts and cheeses and the stale cookies and the punch, watching as people loaded their plates and not care about her grandfather one whit or whittle.
She was finding it hard to breathe, the rage crashing through her like a flash flood. A strange unpleasant scraping sound filled her ear canal; it was her teeth grinding together.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Gruber said.
She didn’t reply.
The metallic nature of his voice ate away at her, eroding her ability to think rationally. She looked for her own voice, but the words would not come. How did you speak to the Devil himself, to evil in human form? Once she had considered Miles Chadwick to be an evil man, but he had been nothing. He had been a tool, a piece of equipment wielded by this man, by this monster standing before her.
It took every bit of willpower for her not to tackle the man and choke the life out of him and there was n
o doubt in her mind she would succeed, that she would kill him before they could pull her off him.
But that was reckless thinking, simple fantasy. She had work to do, and a lot of it.
“I wondered if I would ever meet you,” he said.
“There are children here,” she said, her voice small and cracking. “How?”
“I’ll explain everything. But first, I have to know something. How on earth did you find us?”
She had been preparing for this moment since they had captured her, considering her answer carefully. If she told the truth, he would know she had been at the Citadel. Was that a piece of intelligence worth concealing? She sorted through the permutations and decided it was in her best interest to keep that close to the vest for now.
“On my eighteenth birthday,” she lied, “I received a call from a lawyer in San Diego. Said he had something for me. I went down there, and they gave me this letter. It was very short.”
“What did it say?”
“It said someday I might have very strange questions about my family, and if that day ever came, I was to find Penumbra Labs in Denver.”
And now for the kicker.
She laughed softly, more of a snicker than anything.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Gruber. I really thought it was a prank. I didn’t know who the letter was from. The lawyer said he wasn’t authorized to disclose the identity of the person who wrote it.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I may have shown it to my roommate,” she said. “Before I threw it away.”
“You never asked your father?”
She shrugged. The rank perspiration of deception slicked her body.
“I didn’t think about the letter for years,” she said. “Even after the plague. I was living in this community…”
She almost said Nebraska, where the Citadel had been, but that would be asking for trouble.
“Anyway, one night, this guy got really drunk and was hassling me and my father – you know he survived too, right?”
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 84