He motioned for us to go in. Aside from the blood trail that disappeared a few feet in, there was no sign of whoever — or whatever—had killed the men, but I followed my own advice to stay alert. The murderer could be lurking beyond any of the maze’s twists and turns.
The labyrinth was brightly lit, with steel walls reaching up a good twenty feet to a concrete ceiling. There were jagged spikes of dried cement hanging down — like a popcorn ceiling on steroids. It was probably done to give the illusion of stalactites in a giant cave, but it also gave the unsettling feeling that the stone spikes could drop on us at any moment, crushing our skulls.
“The psychologist who came up with this place has a disturbing mind,” I said, turning back toward Halverson, who’d yet to enter the maze. “What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t say, actually.” A disconcerting smirk flickered across Halverson’s face. “It’s Dr. Goldman.”
“Son of a bitch.” That was the name of the madman who created the cockroach soldiers. “You somehow working for a ghost now?” I said. With the things I’d come up against at the DMS, I didn’t completely rule that out.
Halverson chuckled. “Not quite. But like Gale said earlier, it really is a small world. This”—he indicated the maze—“is the creation of Goldman’s twin brother. Interestingly, this Dr. Goldman also studied bioengineering, psychology just being more of a hobby for him.”
I had a very sick feeling in my stomach, and I had to suppress the urge both to vomit and to shoot Halverson in his smug face. “How much did Goldman pay you to lure us here?” I asked. Clearly, this was about revenge for my killing the scientist’s twin.
Halverson wiped a hand across his forehead, as if trying to remove the red dot my gun’s laser had placed there. “Look,” he said, no longer appearing so smug, “I had no idea he’d lure you here. Really. I just thought he wanted his brother’s research as a memento of sorts. I didn’t know what else to do with the files I smuggled out of the Vault — I’m no traitor, so selling them was never my goal. Although, the doc did insist on rewarding my resourcefulness. Plus, I’d just started here, so I didn’t know the medical wing was equipped for genetic experiments from a previously failed project—”
Halverson clamped his mouth shut, as if realizing he’d said too much.
“I destroyed everything,” I said, though my voice didn’t have much conviction to it. Son of a bitch.
Halverson raised his left hand in a calm down gesture, wisely leaving his right hand with the Glock pointing at the floor. “You did destroy all the cockroach research,” he said. “But that was far from everything.…”
A loud thump from down the corridor almost made me turn away, but I trusted Top or Bunny would alert me if a threat presented itself. Halverson, however, must have expected the sound to distract me, as he immediately sprang into action, swiping his badge across the scanner and pivoting away from the already shrinking doorway.
Shooting him wouldn’t keep the wall from sliding closed; instead, I unslung my equipment bag and hurled it toward the gap. It landed perfectly, half in and half out of the entryway. An instant before the wall hit the obstruction, the bag was yanked away from the other side. I never would’ve expected Halverson to have such quick reflexes, but I guess you didn’t get to be head of security for a top-secret base without having some skills.
In the same motion as I’d thrown my bag, I launched myself toward the entryway. With no propped-open gap to force my way through, I considered putting on the brakes, but instead channeled my anger at Halverson into a bone-rattling shoulder slam. The thick, sliding steel wall didn’t budge.
I let out an impotent growl of frustration, then turned to face the others.
Top was unzipping his own equipment bag, and as he reached into it, a quick procession of confusion, realization, and frustration crossed his features.
“The C4…,” he said.
“Gone,” I responded with a nod.
Normally we’d each have a couple bricks of C4, blasting caps, and det cord in our packs, but I’d been the only one who brought along explosives this time because the Warehouse’s armory had been low on stock. DMS missions often involve blowing shit up, so it’s no surprise that we’d run out. Still, I’d planned on giving the responsible pencil pusher a piece of my mind when I got back to headquarters, but seeing as how I’d literally just thrown away the only explosives we had, I decided it’d be best to just call it even on the fuckups.
We couldn’t blast our way through the wall, but maybe we didn’t need to. We did, after all, have two members of the base’s finest with us. I looked at Gale and Sanders expectantly. “Please tell me you know the way out of here.”
“There aren’t any scanners on the inside of the maze,” Sanders said, waving his personnel badge, “so this thing is useless. We’re just as stuck as you are.”
“How do you normally get out?” Bunny asked.
He pointed at a video camera mounted near the sliding door. “We usually just wave at the camera and the person in the control room lets us out. If for some reason the door doesn’t open right away, we use our radio.” As if just realizing he had a way of communicating, he unclipped his radio from his belt and spoke into it, looking hopefully up at the camera. “Halverson, you piece of shit, let us out of here!”
No response.
Gale lifted up her radio, but took a considerably more conciliatory tone. “Come on, Halverson. Someone killed Johnson. We don’t know what we’re up against. You gotta let us out.”
Surprisingly, Halverson replied. “I’m sorry you and Sanders got caught up in this, Gale. I really am. I’m just following Goldman’s orders. You should’ve followed my orders and stayed put in the prison wing. But, hey, at least you got laid one last time before—”
“You bastard!” She threw her radio at the video camera, shattering the lens. She had a good arm on her. She turned away from the camera to find the rest of us staring at her. “What?”
“You slept with the boss?” Sanders said.
Gale shrugged. “I was bored. But if I get out of here alive, I’m going to shoot him in the balls.”
“Speaking of getting out of here, is there like a back door or something?” I asked.
Both guards shook their heads miserably. “Not that we know of, anyway,” Sanders said.
“I could take Farm Boy and do some recon,” Top offered.
“This place is a maze, literally,” I said. “We should stick together.”
We heard another loud thump from somewhere in the maze. We had bigger problems than just finding a way out.
“We need to find out what we’re up against,” I said. “Move out.”
Top took point and I motioned for the guards to follow him so I could watch their backs, while Bunny brought up the rear. All of us had our necks on a swivel, our gun barrels moving in sync with our eyes. I got the feeling the place was massive, but with my view being contained to one corridor a time, I couldn’t be sure.
I stepped up beside Sanders. “Halverson said the maze is ‘seemingly’ endless. What’d he mean?”
“It’s the walls, they—”
The elevator engine sound returned and Bunny let out a startled cry.
I spun around to see a wall sliding across the corridor behind me as the big staff sergeant dove forward into a roll, just barely squeezing through the diminishing gap.