She stared at her watch and counted down the seconds.
GUNTHER JONES GAVE up trying to reach Brady. The man wasn’t going to answer. The hangar fire made the exterior infrared cameras useless. The hallway monitors were still looping, but he had good coverage in all the rooms, and the normal exterior cameras worked fine.
At that moment, all of his monitors simultaneously filled with static. His computer terminal beeped a pointless alarm:
CAMERA SYSTEM FAILURE
“No fucking shit,” Gunther said as he reached under the counter for the system manuals.
ERIKA POSITIONED THE axe under one arm and looked at her watch. Her program would have just launched and shut down the cameras. She had to go. Now or never. She peeked in the rear airlock’s small window—no one there. She punched 6969 into the keypad, then walked inside and shut the door behind her. The airlock pressure cycle took only five seconds, but it felt like five minutes—Gunther, Andy, Brady or Colding could be anywhere inside, or even following her from the outside. And they had guns.
The five-second cycle finished, the interior airlock door beeped and opened. Erika ran silently into the facility and headed for the bioinformatics lab. If her program had worked, it was over. If Jian had countered it, Erika would have to destroy the petabyte drive by hand.
COLDING OPENED THE front airlock to see flames billowing up from the shattered hangar. Thick smoke twisted in the night wind, blocking out the stars. Even fifty yards away, the heat was damn near blistering. He crouched behind a boulder off to the left, both to take cover in case Tim was out there and to shield himself from the fire’s radiating rage.
He still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that Tim had waited for two years, worked away on the project, really contributed to it, pushed for its success, only to suddenly do this. Colding had thought he knew the man.
“Gunther, where the fuck is Tim?” His earpiece let out a burst of static, followed by Gunther’s voice.
“All the cameras are out. I can’t see a thing. And Brady was in the hangar when that thing went off.”
Shit. “Brady, come in,” Colding said.
No one responded.
“Brady, if you can hear this, tap your earpiece twice. Anything to let us know you’re there.”
Colding waited for three slow breaths, but still no response. If Brady had entered the hangar, he was already dead.
And that made Tim Feely a murderer.
Colding had to protect the scientists. That meant neutralizing Tim first, searching for Brady second. A fucked-up prioritization, because if Brady was bleeding out somewhere, unable to respond, delaying a search might cause his death. But Brady Giovanni was paid to put his life at risk if need be—Rhumkorrf, Jian and Erika were not.
Colding scanned the area as calmly and as patiently as he could. He saw nothing.
The front airlock door opened. Colding turned, instantly leveling his Beretta, ready to fire at Tim if the man made one wrong move. Only he wasn’t pointing his gun at Tim… he was pointing it at Andy Crosthwaite.
Andy Crosthwaite, who was supposed to be guarding the back door.
“Motherfucker,” Colding said to himself as he took his aim off Andy and once again knelt behind the boulder.
Andy ran in a half-crouch, reached the boulder and knelt at Colding’s left. The smaller man swept his vision from straight out to his left, automatically counting on Colding to sweep from straight out to the right. Andy wasn’t panicking; he was calm and patient, doing everything right… except, of course, staying by the back door that he’d been ordered to guard.
“Andy, you keep your ass right here,” Colding said. “I’m going inside to round up the staff, and I’ll bring them back to the front airlock where you watch them. You don’t move until I call you. Do you understand?”
“Back off, dick-face,” Andy said. “I know what the fuck I’m doing.”
A rage grew inside Colding, but there was a time and place for every battle. “Just stay here,” Colding said, then scooted to the front airlock and slipped inside. Unless Gunther fixed the cameras, he’d have to check each room one by one.
ERIKA SLIPPED SILENTLY into the bioinformatics lab and saw the one thing she did not want to see—Liu Jian Dan, sitting at her multi-screened computer station, fat fingers click-clacking away.
Jian turned in her chair, heavy black hair falling over her face like a mask. Erika’s eyes automatically flicked to the upper-row monitor above Jian’s head.
GENOME A17 SEQUENCING: COMPLETE
PROOFREADING ALGORITHM: COMPLETE
VIABILITY PROBABILITY: 95.0567%
“You did it,” Erika said. “I don’t believe it.”
“You…” Jian’s voice was a chilling whisper. “You put that down.”
Erika looked at her hands. She’d forgotten she was holding the fire axe. So close to pulling it off and getting back to her room undetected. But now Jian had seen her. Erika’s word against Tim’s was one thing, but Colding would automatically believe anything Jian said.
So now they would know it was her. So what? What were they going to do, fire her? There was nowhere for anyone to go, and Fischer’s men would be here soon.
All that mattered was the data.
Jian stood, reached under her desk, and in one smooth motion pulled out the foot-long petabyte backup cartridge.
The two women stood there, facing off, Jian holding the project’s future, Erika holding a fire axe.
“Jian, just give that to me.”
Jian stood, shook her head no, then stepped back.
Erika stepped forward.
GUNTHER’S FINGERS TRACED the printed pages of a three-ring binder. He had to figure out how to reboot the system. The support docs said that would clear out Fuck-You Feely’s damn loops and hacks.
Colding’s voice hissed in his earpiece. “Gun, come on, where is that bastard?”
“I’m trying.” Wait. There it was. Just call up the prompt window, enter that bit of code…
“Gun! Fix the friggin’ camera!”
“Hold on!” Fingers typed the code, then hit enter.
The monitors flickered, then all popped back to life. “Got it, hold on!” Once again he had a complete view of the facility’s security system. He flipped through the cameras, scanning for motion. Empty hall, Rhumkorrf crouched at the foot of his bed, empty hall, empty genetics lab, Erika’s room… the blankets thrown back but that wasn’t Erika… then the bioinformatics lab, that was Erika, holding an axe and moving toward Jian.
“Holy fuck, Colding! It’s not Tim, it’s Erika!”
“What?”
“Tim’s sacked out in Erika’s room. Get to bioinformatics, fast, Erika is going to kill Jian.”