“You thinking about that room?” John asked softly. Karen nodded, but didn’t say anything. John seemed to sense her unspoken desire not to talk about it, for which she was thankful. The weight of her good luck charm was the only other comfort she felt at the moment, and she longed to take it out, to feel reassured by memories of her father and successful missions gone by. Anything to take her mind off the lab room.... The outer door to 101 was clearly marked with a biohazard symbol and they’d briefly
discussed not going in at all, John arguing against entering a possibly contaminated environment. Karen had pointed out that neither of them had any cuts or abrasions, and that they might find something about the T-Virus to take with them. The truth was, she couldn’t stand to let such an opportunity pass; she wanted to see what was behind the closed door, because it was there. Because leaving it unopened would get under her skin.
John had finally agreed and they’d gone in, stepping into a small entryway that was draped with sheets of heavy plastic. There were shower nozzles overhead and a drain set into the floor; a decon area. A smaller second door had opened up into the room itself, leading them into a mad scientist’s dream. Glass, crunching underfoot. A tired smell of anxious sweat beneath the acrid odor of bleach. ... John found the lights and even before the large room snapped into view, Karen felt her heart start to pound. There was a dark tension that filled the air, a sense of foreboding that radiated from the very walls. It looked like a dozen other lab facilities she’d worked in; counters and shelves, a couple of metal sinks, a large, stainless steel refrigeration unit in one corner with a lock on the handle. And somehow, that was the worst—that the environment was so familiar, a place she’d always felt at home.
The few differences were dramatic ones. The room was dominated by a stainless autopsy table, fitted with velcro restraints—and there were two additional hos-pital gurneys next to it, likewise fitted. As she walked over to look at one of them, she saw the dark, dried stains at either end; the thin pad was soaked with blood from where a man’s ankles and wrists would be. In the back of the room was a cage the size of a large walk-in closet, heavy bars surrounding an unpadded bench. Next to the cage, several slender poles leaned against the wall, each a meter or so in length—and tipped with hypodermic needles. They were the kinds of instruments used to drug wild animals, allowing the person operating them not to get within reach. Karen looked down at the gurney, lightly touching the long-dried stain, wondering what kind of person could have willingly participated in such an experi-ment. The crust of blood was old, powdery, and filled her with thoughts of what the victims must have endured, waiting in the cage, perhaps watching as some gloved madman injected a toxic, mutating virus into a helpless human being....
It was a bad place, a place of evil deeds. They’d both felt it, both been affected by the realization of what had gone on there—
Karen’s right eye itched, distracting her from the terrible remembrance, drawing her back to the pres-ent. She rubbed at it, then looked at her watch again. It had been only twenty minutes since the team had split, though it felt longer—
There was a sound of a door opening, followed by David’s excited shout through the corridor. He’d come in through the west entrance.
“Karen, John!”
John grinned at her, and she felt a wave of relief;
David was okay.
“Here! Keep walking!” John called back. “Take a right at the tee!”
His footsteps pounded through the hall. In a few seconds, he appeared at the comer and jogged toward them, his face tight with concern.
“Is everything—“ Karen started to ask, but David cut her off.
“Did you find the laboratory room? Room 101?” John frowned, his smile fading. “Yeah, it’s back the way you came—“ “Did either of you touch anything? Do you have any cuts, any small wounds that might have come in contact with anything?”
Their confusion must have shown. David spoke quickly, looking back and forth between them. “We found a journal, naming it as the room where they were infecting the Trisquads.”
John smiled again. “Well, no shit. We figured that much out in about two seconds.”
Karen held out her hands, turning them over for David to see. “Not a scratch.”
David exhaled sharply, his shoulders sagging. “Oh, thank God. I had the worst feeling all the way over that something had happened. We found the researchers in block A; Ammon was right, he killed them—and our ‘he’ has a name now. Rebecca seems certain that it’s Nicolas Griffith. He was the one she recognized from Trent’s list, and he has a rather sordid history, she can fill you in when we regroup. .
. ” He shook his head, a wavering smile on his lips. “I just—I suppose I let my imagination run wild for a moment.”
John smiled wider. “Jeez, David, I had no idea you cared. Or that you thought we’d be stupid enough to stick ourselves with dirty needles in a place like this.”
David laughed, a soft, shaky sound. “Please accept my sincerest apologies.”
“Where are Steve and Rebecca?” Karen asked. “Probably in the next test area by now. I saw them safely off to block B before I came here ... did you find test seven?”
“This way,” John said, and as they started down the hall, he began to recount their run-in with the Tri-squads.
Karen followed, rubbing at the maddening, elusive itch in her right eye. She must have irritated it with all of the rubbing, it seemed to be getting worse. And to top things off, she felt a headache coming on. She wiped at her eye, sighing inwardly at the timing. She never got headaches unless she was coming down with something. The swim in the ocean must have set her up nicely for a cold—and from the building throb in her head, it was going to be a nasty one.
ELEVEH
AFTER HE’D INSTRUCTED ATHENS AND SENT him on his way, he’d prepared the syringes and decided on a place to hide. There was nothing left for him to do but wait. In spite of his earlier feelings of confidence, he was nervous now, pacing through the lab restlessly. What if Athens had forgotten how to load a rifle? What if the enclosure release didn’t work, or the intruders had the firepower to stop the Ma7s? He’d tried to prepare for every possibility, each plan unfolding into a backup—but what if everything failed, if all of them fell through?
/’// kill them myself, I’ll strangle them with my bare hands! They will not stop me from doing what must be done. They can’t—not after all I’ve accomplished, not after everything I’ve been through to get to where I am. . . .
For the second time that day, he flashed back to the takeover of the compound ... the strange, vivid im-ages of that bright and sunny day less than a month ago. Instead of blocking the thoughts as he’d done before, he let them come, inviting them in—to re-mind him of what he was capable of doing when the
need arose. He abruptly stopped pacing and moved to a chair, collapsing into it and closing his eyes. A bright and sunny day...
Once he’d realized what had to be done, he’d planned it for over two weeks, working over each detail tirelessly until he’d been satisfied that every variable had been addressed. He’d spent time reading about the Trisquads and going through the master logs, memorizing the routine of the facility. He’d watched the habits of his colleagues, learned their schedules until he could have recited them backward. He’d stared for hours at the sketches he’d made of each building, walking through them in his mind a thousand times. After careful consideration, he chose a date—and several days before, he’d slipped into the Trisquad processing room and stolen several small vials of extremely powerful medication. Kylosynthesine, Mamesidine, Tralphenide—animal tranquilizers and a synthesized narcotic, some of Um-brella’s finest work....