I hit pay dirt on the last door, the one on the same side as Lab A. Head Honcho’s office, I diagnosed, even in the dark. Big shiny desk, lots of plaques and certificates—and a big old two-way mirror overlooking the well-lit lab.
Well, looka there, would you? I mentally imitated John Wayne, even though the Duke would never have come close to a setup like this one.
No explosive chemical tanks, but through the mirror I could see lab tables of unidentifiable equipment and an array of computer monitors. In between the tables, they’d hastily erected a row of cots—six that I could see. Instead of nurses or physicians walking among the patients, people in lab coats monitored machinery attached to each comatose body. They whispered among themselves as they recorded heartbeats and blood pressure. All the patients lay still as death, even when one of the coats prodded and pricked them, testing for reflexes.
Then I noticed a particularly luscious tech lady patting Bill’s springy ginger hair. He might not mind waking up to that.
I couldn’t immediately find Sarah, until I noted a curtain erected in a far corner. Outside the curtain was what might have been a portable blood-testing table, with more lab coats huddling around it. Gotcha! Maybe I couldn’t save the world from Acme, but I intended to save it from Sarah. The world wasn’t prepared to see whatever was in her DNA.
I rummaged through Honcho’s desk, hunting for anything that screamed “official.” I collected a tablet computer, a remote-control device, and a name badge with a purple frame. I slid my visitor’s badge into the fancy frame. Then I returned to the supply closet in the hall for a lab coat and a surgical mask. I clipped the remote device to the coat pocket to complete my appearance of authority.
And then, as a last-minute thought, I grabbed a handful of rubber gloves and paper slippers and shoved them in one of the coat’s pockets. Sarah couldn’t thank me, but they might make our escape easier.
As I emerged from the closet, Schwartz strode down the corridor in my direction, narrowing his eyes at my getup. In his spiffy blue uniform and shiny badge, dangling his gas mask, he was my final piece of armor.
I gestured at a folded gurney in the supply closet. “We’re getting Sarah out now.”
It hurt like hell choosing psycho Sarah over my good friend Bill, but we could only move one patient, and Sarah was the loose cannon. Sometimes I’m rational, even if I resent it.
Before Leo could give me any male guff, I struggled with the gurney hinges, giving the good detective something more useful to do than question or complain. He finished unlatching it while I played with the tablet.
I couldn’t afford fancy tech, not even a smart phone, but I grasped the basics. I played with the keyboard until I hit the right button, and Head Honcho’s preprogrammed password fed itself in. Voilà. I was sooo keeping this.
Not if Schwartz could help it. He was still eyeing me suspiciously. Hiding my fear and my larcenous distraction, I straightened my lab coat, made certain my fancy badge was visible, placed the tablet in the crook of my arm, and marched into the lab across the green hall, a uniformed policeman pushing a gurney trailing behind me.
The coats inside the lab glanced up in surprise. I rudely ignored them and gestured at the curtained area. “Hurry,” I ordered brusquely. “We don’t have time to waste.”
Bless Schwartz’s pea-pickin’ heart, he followed orders as if he were made for them. Ex-military, I surmised. One of these days, I’d have to get to know him better instead of just lusting after his bod. I handed him the rubber gloves and gestured for him to steal Sarah while I stepped between him and the huddle of coats.
“What are you doing?” one of the female lab coats demanded. “Who are you?”
She had a long syringe in her hand. I remembered those needles with a shudder. What did she have in this one?
“Just following orders,” I said in my most officious voice. “Senator Vanderventer said this was a matter of national security.”
Max would probably kill me, but the coats stepped back, out of my way, to consult with each other. Someone pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. Not good.
“I’ll need your names,” I commanded, forcing cell phone guy to stop what he was doing and look at me. “The senator is grateful for your promptness in an emergency situation. He will see that you receive appropriate recognition for your help with this very dangerous matter.”
I might have been shaking in my shoes, but I didn’t get to be a lawyer by being stupid. Their ears perked right up. The syringe disappeared back into the pocket. I scribbled names in the tablet with a stylus, nodded curtly, and gave them another officious speech.
After taking one wistful look at poor Bill, I deposited the tablet in my lab coat pocket and marched off after Schwartz. All I could see of Sarah was a sheet covering most of her body, thank goodness. We didn’t need to attract any more attention than necessary. If Schwartz had pulled the gloves and slippers over her chimp appendages, she would be less conspicuous.
I couldn’t damn innocent scientists so I could save Bill. Wouldn’t it be convenient if I could wield constructive instead of destructive justice? Experimentally, I whispered as we hurried down the hall, “Bless Sarah and Bill and let them wake up.”
Nothing happened.
“Pretty please, Saturn? Just let them wake up?”
Nada.
Maybe I needed red rage to reach Saturn, but at the moment, I was too terrified to be angry. I never wanted to enter these bowels of hell again. Scientists with needles and hidden cellars were a Frankensteinian death trap if I ever saw one.
Leo had the gurney halfway down the hall and was hitting buttons to summon a hidden elevator he must have discovered in his search, when we heard a shout.
“Wait a minute!” We heard footsteps pounding from the other end of the corridor—just as the elevator door opened.
This was the reason I hadn’t dared rescue Bill, too. He was too heavy for running like hell.
I glanced at Schwartz. He nodded and, clenching his jaw, shoved the gurney into the elevator. Remembering his request that I not get him fired, I hit the up button and prayed to escape from the antiseptic depths of hell. Not that I expected prayers to be answered.
7
“Gas mask.” I pointed at Schwartz’s, reminding him to cover his face. “Security clearance.” I held up my purple badge.
I could tell he got my message because he scowled as he adjusted his mask, and I whipped out my phone. Did cell reception even reach through this bloody building? Better yet, would the Zone let me call out?
I hit Andre’s number. I got voice mail for a cheese shop in Wisconsin. Worried that I was about to blow this, I tried to think of some way to carry Sarah out of there without better transportation than Leo’s cop car.
She seemed pretty pale, and my gut knotted. What had they done to her? She was the only person remotely like me that I knew, and I felt more than a little protective. Schwartz had managed to pull the gloves over her paws, because one dangled outside the sheet. I had just carefully tucked it under when my phone played “Here Comes the Judge.”
Unhappy with the inappropriate interruption, I seriously considered getting the hell out of the Zone if this electronic comedy routine continued. Wondering how Acme operated computers if I couldn’t even use a phone, and realizing that I could not not answer the Judge’s call if I wanted to still remain a lawyer, I punched the button just as the elevator doors opened on the main floor. No welcoming committee. Yet.
My employer’s secretary spoke in clipped tones in my ear. “Clancy, Judge Snodgrass needs you to research a case this afternoon. Can you be here by two?”