Instantly, light flooded in, bathing a thin angle of the conduit a brilliant white. Lash turned away and shut the panel. A brightly lit office — or worse, a corridor — lay beyond. No good: he’d have to try elsewhere.
He moved forward again, passing another panel, then another. At the fourth panel, he stopped. Once again, he pressed his fingers to the latch; once again, he eased it open. This time, the light beyond was dimmer. Perhaps it was a storage area, or the office of someone who’d left for the day. Either way, he wouldn’t get a better opportunity.
As stealthily as he could, Lash pushed the panel wider. The space beyond was silent.
He pulled himself forward on his elbows, peered out. In the dim light he could make out a darkened terminal, a shadowy desk. A deserted office: he was in luck.
Quietly, but as quickly as possible, he pulled himself out the accessway and into the office. As he rose to his feet, his shoulders, hunched so long in the cramped conduits, protested vigorously. He glanced around, hoping to find some memorandum or fire exit diagram that would give the floor — but except for the ubiquitous desk and monitor the office appeared unused, empty.
He cursed into the silence.
Wait. Every door he’d passed inside Eden had always had a label fixed to its outside. There was no reason to think this door was any different. Doors were locked from the outside: if he was careful to keep his identity bracelet away from the scanner, he could simply open this one and peek at its label.
He moved to the door, put a hand on its knob. Putting an ear to the doorjamb, he paused. Silence beyond: no footsteps, no murmur of conversation.
Holding his breath again, he cracked the door and peered out. Light streamed in: there was the usual pale-violet hallway, apparently deserted. Keeping his identity bracelet carefully behind his back, he opened the door a little wider. Now, it was just a question of reading the label on the…
Shit. There was no label on the door.
Lash closed the door again and let himself sink against the wall. Of all the offices to emerge into, he’d chosen one that was vacant.
He took a deep, steadying breath. Then, more quickly, he turned back to the door and cracked it open a second time.
There: across the hall was another door, this one with a label. A title beneath, a number above.
But Lash’s eyes, not yet accustomed to the light, couldn’t quite make out the number. He squinted, blinked, squinted again into the brilliance.
Come on.
Lash grasped the door frame and leaned into the corridor. Now he could make out the words: 2614. THORSSEN, J. POST-SELECTION PROCESSING.
Twenty six? He thought in disbelief. I’m only at the twenty-sixth floor?
“Hey, you!” a voice barked into the stillness. “Stop there!”
Lash turned. Perhaps fifty feet away, at an intersection, a guard in a jumpsuit stood, pointing at him.
“Don’t move!” the guard said, beginning to trot toward him.
For a moment, Lash remained frozen, a deer caught in headlights. As he watched, the guard’s hand slipped into his jumpsuit.
Lash ducked back into the office. As he did so, a sharp report sounded down the hall. Something whined past the door.
Jesus! They’re shooting at me!
He stumbled backward, almost falling in his haste. Then he sprinted for the rear of the office and almost dove into the data conduit portal, barking his shins cruelly as he scrambled inside. He did not bother closing the access panel — all his previous care had been rendered pointless — and moved forward as quickly as he could, taking forks at random, heedless now of the meticulous tapestry of cabling torn away by the passage of his elbows and feet, burrowing his way back into the mazelike safety of the digital river.
FORTY-SEVEN
Tara Stapleton sat in her office, swiveling behind her desk, staring at the battered surfboard. The entire floor seemed deserted, the hallway beyond her door cloaked in a watchful silence. Although Tara was a key component of Eden’s security, she knew she should be gone, as well; Mauchly had said as much, outside the Rio coffee shop. “Go home,” he’d said, giving her shoulder an uncharacteristic squeeze. “You’ve had a rough afternoon, but it’s over now. Go on home, relax.”
She rose and began to pace. Going home, she knew, wouldn’t make her feel any better.
She’d been in shock ever since Mauchly called her up to Silver’s office just after noon. It had seemed impossible, what they told her: that Christopher Lash himself, the man they’d brought in to investigate the mysterious deaths, was himself the killer. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, couldn’t believe it. But Mauchly’s measured tones, the pain in Richard Silver’s face, left no room for disbelief. She herself had assisted Mauchly in polling the vast network of databases at their fingertips, collecting the information on Lash that damned him beyond any possibility of refutation.
And then, when Lash had called her — when she’d gone to meet with him, after first consulting Mauchly — her shock had deepened. He’d talked urgently, almost desperately. But she had barely heard. Instead, she’d been wondering how her instincts could have been so wrong. Here was a man who had murdered four people in cold blood, who’d been placed at the crime scenes in half a dozen ways. Here was a man who — according to all their data — had grown up in a highly dysfunctional family, spent most of his childhood in and out of institutions, successfully had his record as a sex offender suppressed. And yet she had grown to trust him, even like him, during the short time they had spent together. She had never been a trusting person. One of the reasons she’d had limited success in relationships, why she’d jumped at Eden’s pilot program, was because she didn’t allow herself to get close to anybody. So just what part of her elaborate self-defense mechanism had betrayed her so badly?
There was something else. Some of the things that Lash had said in the coffee shop were coming back. Talk about overdoses; about a brain chemical called Substance P; about the two of them being in danger because they knew too much. He was crazy, so the talk was crazy.
Right?
A sound: footsteps in the hall, approaching quickly. The knob to her office door squealed as it turned. Someone walked into her office, like some dread specter summoned by her own thoughts.
It was Christopher Lash.
Only it wasn’t Lash as she’d ever seen him before. Now, he truly looked like an escaped lunatic. His hair was matted and askew. An ugly bruise was coming up on his forehead. His suit, normally neat to a fault, was caked with dust, shredded at the elbows and knees. His hands were bleeding from countless nicks and cuts.
He closed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
“Tara,” he gasped in a hoarse voice. “Thank God you’re still here.”
She stared at him, frozen with surprise. Then she grabbed for the phone.
“No!” he said, stepping forward.
Hand still on the phone, she dug into her purse, pulled out a can of pepper spray, pointed it at his face.
Lash stopped. “Please. Just do one thing for me. One thing. Then I’ll go.”
Tara tried to think. The guards would have tracked Lash to her office by his identity bracelet. It was only a matter of moments until they arrived. Should she try to humor him?