Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 13

I was nervous the night of the rescue operation. Uncertainty can be contagious, and a lot of people were counting on me, so I tried to not let it show. I assured Deitrik and Carmichael both that we’d accounted for every contingency that we could. I was on my own this time; I wasn’t going to risk Dante or anyone else going in with me when we tried to pull this off. Technically, I was the only one who had been sworn in by the SIS, so I was the only one who had real legal protection for what I was about to do.

I returned to Research Towers, once again wearing the jumpsuit of a building maintenance technician. I had a tiny earpiece in, connected to my handheld, which allowed me to talk to Dante and Lily in real-time.

“I just got confirmation that your ride is in place,” Lily said over comms. “It set down on the Research Towers landing pad twenty minutes ago, broadcasting that it was experiencing engine trouble. It’s been parked in the northwest quadrant of the pad.”

“Roger,” I replied. “How long do I have?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Lily answered. “It was programmed to tell traffic control that it’s waiting for its owners to send a tech to look at it. As long as the fees are paid it can sit there for up to three days.”

“Acknowledged,” I said, quietly. Having the egress aircraft in place ahead of time was good thinking on Deitrik’s part. We intended to set off some emergency alarms for our heist, and once they were activated, traffic control would automatically start waving off any aircraft trying to land on the pad. Carmichael told me that the Ascension Special Response Team would ignore such orders, though, so it wouldn’t keep them off our backs. It would just make getting away that much easier.

I took the elevator to the eighty-fifth floor, doing my best to give the impression that I was supposed to be doing what I was doing. In my hands was a computer tablet and over my shoulder was a small duffel bag. In the bag I had my lockpick kit, cutting tools, a flashlight, a trauma kit, and my revolver. I switched out the upper receiver of the piece to the one with the integral sound suppressor, and it was loaded with subsonic, nonexplosive ammunition. I didn’t normally carry it in this configuration because the suppressor added weight and bulk to an already big gun, but for a job like this? Suppressed was the way to go.

An actual maintenance tech rode the elevator with me part way, and she and I made small talk until she got off on the seventy-ninth floor. I kept my cool during the conversation and she was none the wiser—the knockoff uniforms we’d had made did the trick, as did the fake ID cards Lily printed up.

My first stop on the eighty-fifth floor wasn’t the Ventura Medical Research Center. I was headed for an emergency response staging room on the same level. There were many such rooms scattered throughout the complex, and they could be accessed by most employees. Given the presence of a Bio-Safety Level 5 lab on the floor, this one was stocked with hazmat response gear in addition to the usual first-aid and firefighting equipment. There was just one problem: there was someone already in the room when I entered.

He was a young man, in his late twenties at most, lying down on a bench. He had earbuds in and darkened smart glasses over his eyes. He was either asleep or engrossed in watching something. I had to get rid of him, so I tapped him on the shoulder.

He sat up in a hurry and took off his glasses. “Holy shit,” he said, wide-eyed. “You scared the crap out of me.” He looked up at me, but I just glared at him and didn’t say anything. “I’m on break!” he said, defensively, as he stood up. I could tell from the way he was acting that he wasn’t supposed to be in here goofing off.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Is this where you’re supposed to take your break?”

“N-no,” he answered. “Wait, are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“That’s probably because I don’t hide in emergency response lockers to take naps.”

“I’m on break!” he repeated, even more defensively this time. “Look, I know I’m not supposed to be in here, okay? I just needed some peace and quiet. You’re not going to be a dick about this, are you?”

“Hey, I don’t care what you do on break, but you should get going. I need to do an inspection of this equipment.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Already? We just did one a couple weeks ago, I thought.”

I improvised. “It’s some new requirement from the city. They don’t tell me the details, they just told me to come to the North Tower and inspect all the emergency response lockers.”

The young man nodded, knowingly. “That’s always the way it goes, isn’t it? They never tell us shit. My break’s over anyway, I’m gonna take off.”

“Take it easy,” I said. The young man left the room and closed the door behind him. I exhaled, heavily.

“Nice bluffing, Boss,” Lily said into my ear. “Dante says he’s ready to go when you are.”

“Roger. Let me find what I need. Wait for my signal.” At the back of the room were several sets of hazardous materials handling suits and the self-contained breathing apparatuses that went with them. I found a suit, overboots, gloves, and SCBA mask that would fit me and began to get suited up.

“Tell him to go ahead with Phase One,” I said.

“You got it,” Lily replied. “He’s executing.”

This part of the plan was Arthur Carmichael’s idea, one he came up with after Lily and Dante’s malware gained them access to the VMRC’s intranet. One of the things the utilities network had control over were half a dozen huge freezers. These were used by laboratories to keep biological specimens intact and had to be maintained at -80º centigrade. He suggested that they would start scrambling to respond if the freezers were to shut down, especially since a lot of their specimens came from off-world. Dante did one better: he didn’t just shut them off, he told them to start doing a thaw cycle.

Dante spoke over my earbud next. “Oh man, they just realized something is wrong. They’re starting to send messages asking for help, but our worm is stopping them from going out. Mr. Carmichael says that they’ll be trying to find portable freezers to store their samples in, but won’t have enough on site for everything, so they’ll be trying to save the most valuable first. They aren’t authorized to request outside assistance until they get the go-ahead from corporate.”

“Sooner or later they’ll stop sending messages and start making calls,” I said. We couldn’t do anything about the employees of the Ventura Medical Research Facility making calls over their personal devices. Using a communications jammer would make it obvious that this wasn’t just a system malfunction.

I pulled the suit’s hood up over my head, then donned the mask. I checked the seal and verified that I had positive airflow. The SCBA mask covered my nose and mouth, which would help conceal my identity. “Give them a few minutes and stand by.” I sat on the bench and fidgeted while I waited. Having everything go wrong at once might be suspicious, but we couldn’t wait too long, either. After five minutes ticked by, I said, “Start Phase Two.”

“Executing,” Lily said.

This was the part where we really gave the VMRC a headache. With their scientists and lab technicians rushing to figure out which samples they could stuff into portable freezers and save, the odds of them having an accident went way up. All it would take was for one person to drop or spill the wrong thing, and they’d have a full-blown emergency on their hands. We weren’t leaving it to chance, though. Phase Two meant sending out a biohazard containment failure alert to the rest of Research Towers, triggering an evacuation of the entire eighty-fifth floor and a response from every available emergency service in the complex. This alarm would be allowed through by our malware and we could turn it off whenever we wanted.

A loud, buzzing alarm began to echo throughout the building and red lights in the emergency response locker began to flash. That was my cue. “I’m en route,” I said, taking my data tablet and duffel bag with me. “Stand by to execute Phase Three.” I stepped into the hall and began making my way toward the Ventura Medical Research Center.

The building was huge and it took me a few minutes to reach my target. Each level in the North Tower had a wide central corridor with offices on either side. In several places it opened up to a large common area, like a food court or an indoor park complete with trees and UV lights to sustain them. Scattered groups of people were hurriedly leaving the floor. An automated voice spoke over the public address system, asking everyone to remain calm and evacuate. I wasn’t sure if they were going to clear out just this floor or the entire building.

We weren’t done yet, either. Phase Three was setting off their fire alarms.

See, the kids had discovered something interesting while poking around the VMRC’s intranet: they used an inert-gas fire suppression system. It made sense—a laboratory full of expensive equipment and valuable samples would be a total loss if it used a water deluge system. By sealing rooms and flooding them with an inert gas, this kind of system starved a fire of its oxygen and would put it out with minimal collateral damage.

The problem was, sucking down nitrogen would starve a person of oxygen, too, and could cause rapid asphyxiation. If the fire alarm were activated, everyone in the VMRC who hadn’t already evacuated would be forced to do so unless they had oxygen masks they could wear. There would be emergency oxygen masks available, Carmichael said, but protocol would be to evacuate.

This part was a risk, because I needed to get Cassandra Carmichael out without her choking to death, but I figured the one-two punch of the biohazard and fire alarms would get damn near everybody out of the lab and cause so much confusion that I’d be able to slip away with the girl.

I rounded the sixty-degree corner at the apex of the North Tower and the Ventura Medical Research Center came into view. Groups of people were still making their way into the corridor from different offices, some moving with more urgency than others. I hadn’t seen any other emergency response personnel yet, but they would be coming soon.

“Lily,” I said, “Execute Phase Three.”

“Roger. Stand by . . . done.” Another alarm rang out, a shrill whooping on top of the obnoxiously loud buzz of the biohazard warning. “Pandemonium ensuing,” Lily said into my earpiece. She was enjoying herself.

“I’m making my approach,” I said.

The sliding, transparent doors to the lobby of the Ventura Medical Research Center were locked open, to facilitate quick evacuation, as I got close. A group of about a dozen VMRC employees was milling around in the corridor, not moving with any urgency, and they didn’t seem to be leaving.

“What’s going on here?” I demanded, my voice amplified by a speaker in the mask. “We’ve got fire and biohazard alarms going off! Why aren’t you evacuating?”

“It’s a mistake,” someone said. He was a balding, middle-aged man in a lab coat. “There’s no fire and there hasn’t been any containment breach. We’re having a system malfunction.”

I had to think fast. “Listen up!” I shouted, using the old command voice from my days as an NCO in the Defense Force. “Everyone needs to clear this corridor! Proceed to your designated accountability points immediately!”

“But there’s no fire!” another VMRC employee insisted. She was a stocky woman with her hair done up in a tight bun. “We need to go back in to preserve our samples!”

“Proceed to your designated accountability points immediately!” I repeated. “Fire and hazmat response teams are inbound! Clear this corridor before I get security up here!”

That got them moving. The small crowd, obviously confused, started moving down the corridor.

The balding scientist persisted. “I can’t just leave!” he insisted, shouting to make himself heard over the blaring alarms. “Our freezers are down as well! We have valuable biological samples that we must preserve. I’m not supposed to leave them under any circumstances! As soon as the fire suppression system cycles, I must return to the lab!”

I looked down and glared at him through the visor of my mask. “Sir,” I said firmly, “we have a real emergency happening right now. Multiple alarms are going off in the North Tower, not just yours.” That wasn’t true, but he’d have no way of knowing that. “If you don’t leave right now, the fire department will drag you out, and then you’ll be arrested for obstructing an emergency response. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes,” he stammered.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” I said. “Now please move out.”

“Of course,” he said, and headed down the corridor.

“Another nice bluff, Boss,” Lily said.

“That guy is probably calling corporate right now, if he hasn’t already,” I said. “I’m going to head into the lobby, tell any stragglers to clear out.”

Carmichael chimed in, speaking into my earpiece as well. “Their security personnel won’t be shooed off so easily,” he said.

“Roger,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.” That’s when I saw four people in hazmat suits, riding in a small electric cart, head toward me from up the corridor. I flagged them down. The cart came to a stop near me and the four people disembarked. Their suits were the fully encapsulated kind, all in a blue-and-white color scheme with reflective strips and visibility lights. They weren’t from the fire department.

The one who had been driving the cart, a woman it turned out, approached me. All I could see of her face was her eyes. “We’re from VersaLife Bio-Engineering. You the on-scene response coordinator?”

“I just got here first,” I said.

“I don’t know if anyone else is going to respond because of the fire alarm,” the woman said. “I think everyone is going to leave this one to the fire department.”

“Shouldn’t you be evacuating, too, then?”

She shrugged in her suit. “Our lab is just down the hall and it’s a slow night. How can we help?”

I pointed at two of the VersaLife employees. “You two, take up positions in the corridor and make sure everyone evacuates. When I got here they were trying to say it was a false alarm and that they wanted to go back in. Keep everyone out until the fire department gets here, and let them know we’re inside if we’re not out by the time they get here.” I looked at the woman again. “You two,” I said, nodding toward the man standing next to her, “come inside with me. They said their freezers went down and they’re trying to save samples. We need to make sure everyone evacuates.”

“Got it,” she said. “If we see fire we’re supposed to evacuate ourselves, but we’ll help as much as we can.”

“Alright, then. Let’s go.”

The lobby of the Ventura Medical Research Center was large, and had that same slick, sterile, corporate look as a million other offices. There was a deserted receptionist desk in the center of the room. Off to the side were a couple of couches and a few potted plants. Large screens on the walls were still playing advertising videos, but they had been muted. A pair of uniformed security guards, both wearing masks and oxygen tanks, approached us as we entered. I noted that they were both armed and wearing body armor vests.

“What’s the situation?” I asked.

“You’re from building maintenance?” the taller of the two asked, his voice tinny over his mask’s electronic voice amplifier.

“I am,” I said. “I’m the emergency response coordinator.”

“We’re from VersaLife,” the woman who’d come in with me said. “Emergency Response Team. We were close by and thought you might need help.”

“The situation is under control,” the shorter guard said, tersely. Both of them seemed tense.

“There is no fire and there has been no biohazard containment breach,” the taller security man said. “We’re having a massive system failure.”

“If there’s no hazard, what’s with the oxygen masks?” the woman from VersaLife asked.

“When the fire alarm tripped it automatically engaged the nitrogen/argon fire suppression system. The labs are still filled with it and we can’t get the HVAC system to cycle.”

“Okay, but what are you still doing here?” the VersaLife woman said. “You need to evacuate per emergency response protocols. The fire department will be here any minute.”

“That’s none of your concern,” the short guard snapped. “We have the situation under control and do not require assistance. You need to leave.”

That snippy comment set off my new friend from VersaLife. “Are you serious? We suited up and trudged all the way over here to help you people, and you’re telling us to piss off?” She squared up with the security guard.

Her companion put a hand on her shoulder. “Janice, let’s just go. They’re owned by Ascension now.”

“Unbelievable,” Janice said. She looked up at the security guard. “Is there something in your corporate bylaws that requires you to be pricks?”

I held my hands up and tried to calm things down. “Okay, okay, everybody relax.” I looked at Janice. “I appreciate your help even if they don’t. Head back outside and link up with your teammates. Let the fire department know what’s happening.”

“Fine,” she said, turning to leave. “Believe me, they’re going to hear about this in my after action report.”

With the VersaLife team gone, I was alone with the two VMRC security guards. “She wasn’t wrong, you know. You people need to clear out for the fire department. What are you waiting for? How many people are still in here?” That sounded like something an emergency response coordinator would want to know.

They didn’t answer at first. I pressed them. “Listen, fellas, I’m just trying to do my job and get everybody out safely. I need to know how many people are still inside.”

“Five total,” the shorter guard said, “including us. We have a patient in the lab who is being prepped for transport in an iso pod.”

“Where do you need to get her to?”

“Up to the heliport,” the taller one said. “She’s got some rare condition and needs to be sent to a hospital. An air ambulance is on its way. Look, I’m not trying to be a dick. That’s all I’m at liberty to disclose, and that’s all I know. There’s a lot of proprietary research going on here. Since this all started, they’ve been screaming at us to maintain containment and not let anyone in.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’ll head back outside and let the fire department know when they get here.” It was hotter than hell in the lobby, made all the worse by the suit I was wearing. The heat and all of the walking I’d done were overwhelming my suit’s rudimentary temperature regulator and sweat was starting to pool in my boots.

The two security men thanked me and I turned around as if to leave. Turning off my voice amplifier, so that the guards wouldn’t hear me talk, I spoke into my earpiece. “Dante, button this place up.”

“You got it,” the hacker said. A few seconds later, armored shutters dropped from the ceiling and slammed to the floor. They covered the entrance to the Ventura Medical Research Facility, the glass wall of the lobby, and all of the exterior windows. I stopped, making a big show of looking startled.

I turned back around and switched my voicemitter back on. “What’s going on, fellas?”

“What the hell?” one of the security men said.

“Did you hit the alarm?” the other asked him.

“No! It shouldn’t be able to go into lockdown when there’s an evacuation order anyway!”

“Are we trapped in here?” I asked.

The security guards didn’t answer me. They hustled across the lobby to have a closer look at the metal shutters. “Try the manual override,” one of them said. The other entered a code into a keypad on the wall.

“That won’t work,” Lily said, into my earpiece.

“It’s not accepting my code!” the taller of the two guards said.

“Let me try mine,” the other said, frustrated, breathing hard in his mask. “It’s no good!”

The guards had their backs turned to me now. I quietly opened the duffel bag, placed the data pad in it, and wrapped my gloved hand around the grip of my gun.

“Call corporate and tell them we can’t move the patient until they get us out of here!” the shorter guard said. “The fire department is going to have to cut the doors open.”

“Hold it right there, boys,” I said, my command amplified by the amplifier. The two VMRC security officers turned around to find themselves looking down the barrel of a .44. “Drop the handheld. Do it!”

“Holy shit,” the taller guard said, raising his hands.

The shorter one dropped his handheld to the floor. “It’s a setup!” He put his hands up, too.

“Now you,” I said, pointing the big revolver at the tall one. “Take out your handheld and drop it on the floor. Only use your left hand. Your right hand so much as twitches and I’m going to plug you, you got it?”

“Yeah, I got it!” he said. Did as I asked, slowly taking his handheld out of his pocket with his left hand. He dropped it to the floor and raised it back over his head.

“Now turn around, both of you!” I ordered. “Keep your hands up!”

“Do you know whose lab this is, pal?” one of them asked. “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?”

The other guard looked over his shoulder at me as he turned around to face the door. “If you surrender yourself now, you might actually make it to prison alive.”

“It’s not my life you fellas need to be worrying about right now. Face the wall! Now listen to me. You, on the left. With your right hand only, reach down and draw that pistol. Slowly, goddamn it! Either of you so much as twitches and you’ll be dead before you hit the floor.” He did as I asked, pulling his pistol out of the holster and holding it up in his right hand. “Good. Now clear that weapon.” He hit a release lever with his thumb. The rectangular body of the pistol hinged open and the ammunition cassette ejected, clattering to the floor.

“Good,” I said. “Now toss the gun over to your left, as hard as you can.” He did as he was ordered and threw the gun across the lobby. It hit the floor and slid under a chair. “Now you on the right! Do the exact same thing your partner just did. Keep facing the goddamn wall, I’m not going to tell you again!” Sweat was drizzling down my face and back now, both from the heat and from the stress. The second guard did as he was told and unloaded his pistol. “Toss it over to the right! Throw it hard! Keep facing the wall!” He followed my command and threw the pistol. It hit the floor off to my right and skittered into the hall. “Now turn around! Put your hands on top of your heads.”

“You’re never going to get away with this, asshole,” the tall one said. “You’re a dead man and you know it.”

“That’s my problem, not yours. Now shut your mouths, both of you.” Keeping the gun trained on them, I sidestepped to the right. “Take me to her, now!”

“Who?” the short guard said.

Her!” I snarled. “Your patient.”

“Wait, you’re here for her?” the tall one asked. He shook his head. “Why?”

I put a round into the floor near the guard’s feet, causing both of them to jump back. The big gun was surprisingly quiet with the suppressed upper, but the fat slug still blew a small crater in the marble floor. “I told you to shut your mouth! Now, you can either take me to her or I can kill you and find her myself. Your call.”

“Okay, okay!” the short one pleaded. “Don’t shoot! Holy shit!”

“Good. Get moving. Keep your hands up.”

“Steady, Boss,” Lily said, into my ear. “We don’t want to hurt anyone if we don’t have to.”

I switched off the amplifier again so the two guards couldn’t hear me. “Don’t worry, I’m calm. I’m just putting on a show for these boys. If they don’t think I’m serious they might try something stupid.” They led me past the reception desk to a set of double security doors. A sign read Laboratory Access and Authorized Personnel Only. “Open it,” I commanded.

Doing as I ordered, the security officer on my right reached over and waved his badge near the reader on the door. A red light turned green and the doors slid open. Beyond it was the main corridor of the laboratory complex. “Take me to her,” I said. “Move!”

Keeping their hands up, my two prisoners led me down the hall, toward a bend. The glossy flooring and swank décor of the lobby were replaced with a much more sterile, utilitarian design. Red emergency lights illuminated the corridor. Labs and offices on either side of the hall were sealed, with warning lights indicating a low oxygen environment inside. With the HVAC system shut down, the facility was still flooded with inert gasses. Around the bend, we came to another set of closed security doors.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the taller of the two security guards said.

“Open it. Now!”

The guards looked at each other for a moment, and I was worried that they were about to try something, but instead they did as I commanded. The one on the right once again waved his ID badge near the reader. The doors hissed open, revealing what looked to be an observation room. Through a window on the far wall I could see a medical isolation room, basically an especially clean jail cell. It was separated from the observation room by a small airlock. A man and a woman, each wearing VMRC lab coats and emergency oxygen masks, were awkwardly pushing a mobile medical isolation pod out through the airlock. The stopped when they noticed the two security officers standing there with their hands up.

“What are you two doing back here?” the woman asked, sharply, her voice raised to make herself heard over the persistent alarms.

The security guards looked at each other, then pointed a thumb back at me. The woman stepped around them to see what they were pointing at, only to freeze when she found herself looking down the barrel of a gun. Her eyes went wide and she started to scream.

“Shut up!” I shouted, silencing her. “All of you, get your goddamn hands up. You, too, buddy,” I said to the man who was still standing by the isolation pod.

“What . . . what’s happening?” the female scientist asked.

“What does it look like is happening, Dr. Ankari?” the tall guard said, sarcastically. “We’re being robbed.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Listen to me very carefully. Do exactly as I say and nobody gets hurt, understand?” The frightened scientists nodded. “Good. Push that medical pod this way. Stay back there, push it from that end, toward me. Any of you takes a step in my direction and I’ll shoot you dead.”

“Y-you can’t take her!” the woman named Dr. Ankari protested. “She’ll die without proper medical attention!”

I was running out of time and losing my patience. I pointed my gun directly between the scientist’s eyes. “You’re going to die if you don’t do as I say, Doc. Now push that pod this way. Last warning.”

She relented and nodded at the other scientist, the man who still hadn’t said a word. He carefully pushed the isolation pod in my direction. Keeping the gun trained on my prisoners, I stepped aside to make room for the pod. When it was within reach, I grabbed the handle on the near end and pulled it closer to me.

“Good. Now, empty your pockets. Drop everything on the floor. I want to see your handhelds, your ID badges, every last thing you’ve got in a pile right there. Do it!”

“This is insane,” Dr. Ankari said as she tossed her handheld and access badge onto the floor. “Do you really think you’ll get away with this?” The other scientists followed suit, and the security guards dropped their badges as well.

She was right about one thing: it was insane. “All four of you, get into that isolation room.” I turned off the amplifier and spoke to Lily. “As soon as they’re in there, lock them in.”

“You got it, Boss,” she replied. “Good thinking.”

I kept my weapon pointed at the four VMRC employees until they had all been sealed into the room they’d been keeping Cassandra Carmichael in. I stuck my gun back into the duffel bag and checked the isolation pod. It was like a gurney on wheels, but with a hard composite top, its own air supply, and a touchscreen displaying the occupant’s vital statistics.

Arthur Carmichael spoke into my earpiece this time. “Do you have her? How is she?”

I slid open the cover of one of the pod’s observation windows. “Yeah, it’s her,” I said. “She’s breathing. The readout says she’s sedated and stable.”

“Thank you for this,” he said.

“Thank me later. I still need to get out of here. Dante, are you there?”

“I’m here. What do you need?”

“I’m going to wheel her out now. I want you to lock the door to the observation room behind me. Once I’m back out in the lobby, lock every interior door in the place.”

“I can do you one better. I’ll secure them then scramble the access codes. None of their badges will work, and there is no way to manually open them. They’ll have to cut through the doors to get in.”

“Good. When I’m back out in the lobby, can you open only the front security door, so I can get out, but keep everything else locked down?”

“We can do that,” Lily chimed in.

“Okay. The second I’m clear I want you to drop the front security doors again. Wipe everything you can from their system, then unplug.”

“On it,” Dante said. “Good luck.”

When the heavy security gate covering the lobby entrance lifted, I was immediately met by a bunch of bewildered-looking firefighters in full hazmat gear. The moment I stepped out I told Dante to drop the gate again, before any of the firefighters could get inside the lobby.

“Security gate secured,” Dante said over the radio. “Access codes scrambled.”

“The fire department is here,” I replied. “I’ll have to talk my way past them.”

Carmichael spoke once more. “You must hurry. I just got an alert on the company security network that the Special Response Team has been released. They’re preparing to deploy as we speak. You’ve got fifteen minutes at most.”

“Did the alarm get through?”

“No,” Lily said. “Somebody probably made a call and said this is suspicious. Get moving, you need to get out of there.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” I said, as one of the firefighters approached me. “Stand by.”

“Who are you?” the firefighter asked. “Are you with Ventura? I’m the on-scene commander, Research Towers Fire Department.”

“I’m a lab technician,” I said, betting that the firefighters weren’t familiar with who worked at this particular lab. The responders from VersaLife were gone, and none of the real VMRC employees were around to dispute my story.

“What the hell’s going on in there? Why are we locked out?”

“We’re having a massive systems failure caused by a network attack. We have no control over anything.”

“How did you get out, then?”

“I was waiting in the lobby in case the doors opened. When they did, I took the opportunity.”

“Where are you going?” the fire commander asked me. “Who is this?”

“She’s a patient we’ve been keeping for a long-term study. She needs to be transported to another medical facility immediately.”

“That checks out, Chief,” one of the other firefighters said, showing the commander a tablet screen. “They have an MOU to evac her in the event of an emergency.”

“An air ambulance is coming to collect her. I need to get her to the helipad,” I said.

“Fine. Real quick, what’s the situation in there? Can you confirm a fire or a biohazard containment breach?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t like that answer. “You don’t know? How can you not know?”

“Every alarm is going off at once. Our freezers went down first and we were trying to get samples into emergency coolers. Something may have gotten dropped in the confusion, but I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see a fire or any smoke, either, but the fire suppression system activated. I didn’t check the whole lab. My job is to get her to the heliport. I need to get her up there right away!”

“Is there anyone else in there?”

“I think so. Don’t know how many or who got out. Every door in the place was locked and wouldn’t accept our badges.”

“Can you get her to the heliport by yourself? We’re going to have to cut these doors open.” I told him I could. “Okay. When you’re done, report back here. We’ll get you checked out and debrief you.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’ll come right back as soon as she’s loaded onto the bird. It will be here soon if it’s not already.”

The firefighters stepped aside and let me past. I wheeled the isolation pod down the now-deserted corridor to the nearest elevator. My forged Research Towers access badge would allow me to access the elevator’s emergency override, so it wouldn’t stop at any other floor on my way up to the heliport.

The heliport wasn’t accessed from the top floor of the building, but instead from ten stories below, on the 120th floor. I was still on the north side of the building and needed to make my way to the south side in order to access the pad. Pushing the medical isolation pod ahead of me, I hustled down the wide corridors as quickly as I could. I was soaked with sweat and was sucking oxygen through my mask. My air tank was running low, but I didn’t want to stop to doff the hazmat suit.

Luckily, the 120th floor was mostly deserted. Many of the office spaces hadn’t even been leased out. I did get strange looks from a few people as I rushed down the hall, but nobody got in my way or tried the stop me. At least, not until I got to the heliport terminal on the south side of the building.

“Aw, hell,” I said aloud, into my radio. “Security Forces.”

Lily responded. “Shit. Are you sure?”

“Affirmative,” I acknowledged. There were two Security Forces troopers in the terminal, standing near the exit to the helipad itself. They were wearing gray flight suits and helmets, and each had a pistol slung in a chest holster. “Probably an air unit that responded to the emergency alarms. I’ll see if I can talk my way past.”

“Good luck,” Lily said.

Pushing the isolation pod ahead of me, I approached the exit to the helipad, but the troopers stopped me before I could get to the doors.

“This is a patient from the Ventura Medical Research Center,” I said, breathing hard. “She needs to be medevaced right away!”

“We are aware of the situation,” one of the troopers said. She was a stocky woman with bronze skin and a stern expression. “We are in contact with Ascension. They have an aircraft en route. We were given an ETA of eight minutes.”

“Wait here with us,” the other trooper, a wiry man with a ruddy complexion, said. “It’s cold and windy out there. Do you need that gear on, or can you take it off?”

“Oh, shit,” Lily said, into my earpiece.

“There must be some mistake, guys,” I said. “The air ambulance is already here.”

“I can check,” the female trooper said, “but the word we got was that an aircraft from Ascension is on its way.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s a security team. They’re coming to investigate the incident downstairs. The medevac aircraft is waiting for us and I need to get her on board immediately!”

“Sounds like there was a miscommunication somewhere,” the trooper said. “Don’t worry, when the Ascension team lands, we’ll get this straightened out.”

“Trooper, please,” I pleaded. “I need to get her onto that aircraft!”

“Is she going to die in the next ten minutes?” the male trooper asked. He leaned, glanced through the pod’s viewport at Cassandra Carmichael. “She looks stabilized to me.”

“Why don’t you take that gear off?” the woman said.

“Easy!” Lily said into my ear. “These two are on the take! They’re stalling you! You need to get out of there!”

I looked around the terminal. There was no one else around except for me and the two SecFor troopers. “I didn’t want to do this,” I said into my radio, and reached into my bag.

“Hold it right there!” the woman shouted. She and her partner both had their guns drawn now. “Get your hands where we can see ’em!”

“Show us your hands!” her partner said.

I wasn’t reaching for my gun. From my duffel bag I produced the SIS badge and credentials that Deitrik made for me when he swore me in. I held them up in my left hand so that both troopers could see them. “This woman is a critical witness for an ongoing SIS investigation. She was being held down there under an assumed name against her will. This is a rescue operation.”

“What?” one of the troopers asked, lowering his gun slightly. “Are you serious?”

The woman, scowling, stepped forward to look at my badge. “Let me see that,” she said, holding her gun muzzle-down. She held up a mini-tablet and scanned the badge. “Holy shit,” she said, looking back up at me, eyes wide. “This is real.”

“It is,” I said, once again calling upon my old command voice, “and you two are impeding my investigation. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“We picked up the alarms coming from the Ventura Medical Research Center on our scanner. We told Dispatch we’d land and see if they needed help.”

“Good to hear,” I said, looking down a the female SecFor. “For a minute there, I was worried that you two might be doing a little side job for Ascension.” The pair glanced at each other, but didn’t say anything. “I’m glad I was wrong.”

They stood aside and let me push the isolation pod to the exit doors and out onto the helipad. Cassandra Carmichael and I were aboard Deitrik’s rotorwing and in the air before the Ascension Special Response Team arrived. Somehow, our crazy plan had actually worked.


Back | Next
Framed