Emily glanced at the other alien pupa; if she had the time (and a ladder) she would take care of that one too, but right now she needed to complete what she had come here to do. The pain in her shoulder was already beginning to filter through the adrenalin high and Emily knew if she didn’t break into the security cabinet soon and get on her way, she’d have problems making it home before dark.
An open box of tissues sat on the desk of whoever had owned the deceased potted palm-tree. She pulled a handful of the tissues from the box and batted at the gore she could feel splattered on her face. When she was done, she balled up the pink stained tissues and tossed them at the remains of the cocoon on the floor before heading towards the back of the office to find the janitor’s closet.
It took just three strikes from the ball-peen hammer Emily found in the janitorial closet to snap the padlock from its receiver, but that was more than enough to set her injured shoulder on fire. Emily was beginning to suspect the fall might have done a bit more damage than she had first suspected.
With the lock dealt with, she dropped the hammer and pulled the metal cabinet doors apart. Inside she found what she was looking for on the top shelf: a canvas carryall about the size of a handbag with the word IRIDIUM stenciled on the sides in large white letters.
She pulled the bag from the cabinet and lowered it to the floor, unzipped it and began pulling out the contents, laying them next to the bag: a sat-phone, charger, operating instructions, a spare battery and a solar charger in its own impact resistant case.
Perfect.
Emily quickly repacked the components back into the bag, and gave the cabinet another once-over for anything else that might be of use. There was nothing left but a cashbox that probably contained a couple of thousand dollars. No use to anyone now.
As Emily closed the door to the cupboard, she spotted the hammer she had used to break the lock lying on the floor where she had dropped it. She grabbed it by the shaft, dropped it into the bag with the phone equipment and zipped it closed again.
Picking up the bag with her uninjured hand, Emily retraced her steps back along the corridor and down the metal staircase. She winced in pain as, unthinking, she used her injured right arm to shoulder through the main door out onto the street. If she had thought about it she should have looked for a first-aid kit, or some painkillers at least, but it was too late now. The adrenalin rush from her little chainsaw-massacre moment had worn off and the throbbing in her shoulder had evolved into a sharp teeth-clenching pain that Emily suspected might be a torn muscle or—and she hoped to God this wasn’t the case—a dislocated shoulder. She was still able to move her arm before the pain really kicked in, so she suspected she could disregard the dislocated shoulder theory, but her first-aid training was minimal and the last class she had taken was back in her high school days.
There was no way she was going to have the time or the ability to do any of the extra-curricular shopping she had planned, not today. What was most important now was to get home without doing any more damage to herself and treat her injured shoulder and arm; the supply run would have to wait until she was feeling better.
She lifted the bergen from its resting place around her bike’s saddle and pulled open one of the pouches, slotting the sat-phone bag into it she secured the pouch and hefted the bergen onto her left shoulder. This next part was going to hurt, she knew, but there was no way she was going to leave the bergen behind on the street.
Her right shoulder screamed at her, the pain bringing tears to her eyes as she gingerly manipulated it through the bergen’s shoulder straps. She had to keep her elbow akimbo and slide it through, while pulling the strap across her chest with her good left hand. Without the injury it would have taken her mere seconds, instead it used up precious minutes of daylight and left her sweating like a horse that had just run a steeplechase.
The buildings threw long shadows across the street as the sun dropped behind them. A row of streetlights had already begun to brighten as she swung her leg over the top bar of the bike, settled herself into the saddle and used her feet to kick some initial momentum into the bike. She had to keep her right arm bent and resting against her chest as though it was in a sling, as she could no longer extend it far enough in front of her to reach the handlebar. That made the bike less stable, so she also had to fight her instinct to pedal at her normal rate. Instead, Emily reduced her speed to a safer, but far slower level to ensure she wouldn’t fall off the damn bike and do even more damage than she already had.
It took her almost three times as long to get home than it had taken her to get to the Tribune’s offices. As twilight slowly edged toward dusk, Emily slowed her speed even more as the pain in her shoulder became a second-by-second distraction to her. She had to avoid any kind of bump or rut in the road, hitting one caused her shoulder to explode in agony, sending spots of blackness across her vision that would in turn send her careening off course. Twice her vision had cleared just in time for her to narrowly avoid slamming into one of the few parked cars still left on the empty streets. The second time she’d almost gone over the handle bars when she pulled the brake lever too hard, forgetting she only had her front brake. The bike had reared up on its front wheel in a reverse wheelie and she had tottered there for a second before the back end had bumped jarringly back to the road.
As Emily rounded the final corner before the apartment complex, she let out a sigh of relief and began to relax, in spite of the pain. When she got home, she was going to risk draining the water she’d collected out of the tub and running another hot bath. She was going to soak in it for as long as she needed.
Purposely overshooting her destination by a half-block, Emily rode the extra distance to a pedestrian crossing where she knew she would find a disabled-ramp she could use to get her bike off the road and onto the pavement, avoiding the guaranteed pain of jumping the bike up the curb. She circled back towards her building and pulled up in front of it: exhausted, bloodied, but alive and still in one piece.
Dismounting as carefully as she could, Emily left the bike lying on the pavement in front of the entrance and headed towards the welcoming warmth of the brightly illuminated apartment block. She pushed through the building’s front door, careful to avoid her damaged shoulder this time, pulled the door to the stairs open and readied herself for the seventeen-floor climb ahead of her.
And that was when all the lights went out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Emily had never been afraid of the dark.
When she was a child she had laughed at the other kids who insisted they sleep with a nightlight on. She had never believed there was a monster hiding in the dark recesses of her closet and she definitely had no problem taking a wander out into one of her parent’s fields after sunset, just to sit in the long grass and stare at the moon and the stars.
But this was a very different kind of darkness. It was so deep and absolute, she might as well have been blind as she cautiously maneuvered her way up each level of stairs towards her apartment, carefully feeling for the landing at each new level so she could make the 180-degree turn needed to continue up the next flight of stairs.
The stairwell was a completely enclosed space with no windows. There was supposed to be an emergency generator down in the basement that should have kicked in and turned on the back-up lights when the power went down, but that, apparently, was not going to happen.
No light meant no floor numbers either, so Emily had to count each level as she climbed and hoped she didn’t make an error in her calculation and end up a floor above or below her apartment’s level. Especially not a floor above.