“Straight ahead a couple feet, then we go to the left,” his human crutch said.
As they eased forward, Ash asked, “Why are all the lights off?”
“Quiet.”
Once they’d made the turn, they picked up speed again, moving quickly down the new corridor and through another door.
“Can you stand on your own?” the man whispered to Ash.
“What? Uh, yeah. I think so.”
“Okay. Stay here.” The man let go of Ash and stepped away.
“Wait. Where are you going?” the captain asked.
“Don’t move, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you—”
A torrent of thick liquid engulfed him from every side, the flow so strong he could hardly breathe. There was also an overwhelming disinfectant smell, which didn’t help. He coughed several times and tried to step away.
“Don’t,” the first voice ordered. “You’re covered with the bug. It’s either this way or we will be forced to terminate you.”
Terminate? Ash stayed where he was.
Soon the spray stopped.
“Remove your clothes and throw them behind you.”
Ash hesitated for only a second, then stripped.
Once more the flow commenced, followed by a strong stream of odorless water.
As soon as it shut off, the first voice said, “There’s a wall three feet to your left. Follow that toward my voice about ten feet. There you’ll find a towel and some clean clothes. Please hurry.”
Ash did as instructed. As he was toweling off, he heard the sprays come on again. Judging by the sound, though, it wasn’t flowing over flesh.
Decontamination suits, he realized. Like the ones the people who’d come into his house — so long ago, it seemed — wore. That’s why the guy’s shirt had felt so strange.
The clothes waiting for him were not the flimsy garments he’d been given while in his cell. There was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a pullover sweater, socks, and a pair of sturdy but flexible ankle-high boots.
“Ready?” the first voice asked a minute later, no longer muffled by what must have been the hood and mask of the suit.
“Yes,” Ash said. He finished tying his last shoelace and stood up. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”
“Not until we get out of here,” the other voice said.
A door opened, but the lack of light remained unchanged.
The two men led Ash away from the room, one always keeping a hand on the captain’s arm.
They’d been fast-walking for nearly three minutes when the guy in the lead let out a very low “shhhh.”
They stopped in the middle of the hall.
“Over here,” the lead guy whispered.
Ash was ushered through a doorway, into a space that was barely big enough for the three of them. The door then clicked shut.
A moment later, the sound of a single pair of running footsteps rushed by outside without stopping.
“They’re going to find out he’s gone,” one of the men whispered.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of it,” the other one replied. “You get him out of here. You remember the way, right?”
“Are you kidding? This place is a maze.”
There was silence for a moment, then, “Okay. I’ll show you, but then it’ll be up to you.”
They headed back into the hallway, picking up their pace to a near run. They passed through two more corridors and made a hard turn to the left.
After another few moments, the one in the lead said, “It’s just up—”
Without warning, the emergency lights kicked on.
The guy who’d been holding Ash’s arm let go, then ripped something off his head. Night vision goggles. Both of the men had been wearing them. With the lights on, they had become useless.
“Come on,” the lead guy said. “We’re almost there.”
He had a short military haircut and was wearing an officer’s uniform with no insignia. The man next to Ash was dressed in clothes more like the blue jeans and sweater he was now wearing, and while this guy’s hair was also short, it had a distinct civilian look to it.
They ran down the hallway, took a quick bend to the right, then the lead man skidded to a stop in front of a heavy-looking metal door. As Ash and the other man ran up, he pulled it open.
Chilled air seeped into the hallway.
“Quick, quick!” he said, then pointed at an angle out the door. “Head in that direction. It’ll get you to where we were earlier.”
“Maybe you should come with us,” his partner said.
The first guy shook his head. “I can do more here.”
“They’re going to know someone on the inside helped.”
The lead man’s face grew hard. “Go. Now. You don’t have time.”
He shoved Ash and the other man outside then shut the door.
Ash’s escort seemed disoriented for a moment, then he took a deep breath and said, “Keep low, and follow right behind me.”
He took off across a wide space of leveled dirt, not waiting for Ash to respond. Though he was tired of not knowing what was going on, Ash was smart enough to realize now wasn’t the time to push, so he headed after his rescuer.
The man led him into a narrow ravine that had been carved into the desert. It was deep enough so that they could stand up without being seen by anyone at ground level.
They followed it for thirty minutes, finally stopping when they reached a rocky overhang. There, the man fell to his knees, reached underneath, and pulled out a cloth bag. He unzipped it and removed something.
“Here,” he said, tossing it to Ash.
It was a worn-looking leather jacket with a padded lining inside, and a stocking cap and gloves in the pocket. While it was definitely a cool desert night, it wasn’t that cold.
“Put it on,” the man said. “You’ll need it later.”
“For what?”
“To stay warm. What do you think?”
Next he pulled out a messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. He then shoved the empty cloth bag back under the overhang. “All right. Let’s go.”
Ash didn’t move.
The man took a few steps down the riverbed before he realized this. “Look, we don’t have much time. If you miss the connection, you’re out of luck. So let’s move it.”
“No,” Ash said.
The man stared at him. “All right, fine. Then you can stay here and let them find you.”
“Why are you doing this?”
The man looked away, obviously not happy. When he turned back, he took a couple steps toward Ash. “If we’d left you in your cell, you wouldn’t have woken up tomorrow morning. You were no longer any use to them alive.”
“You saved me because they were going to kill me?”
“We saved you because…” He paused, then took a deep breath. “Yeah. That’s as good a reason as any. You can either trust me or not, but I can guarantee you one thing. Those people back there…” He pointed in the direction they’d come. “They don’t care a thing about you. It’s what’s inside you that’s most important to them. And they can’t get to that while you’re still breathing. Get it?”
He turned around and started walking, this time without looking back.
Ash stood where he was a moment longer, then followed.
6
Major Littlefield was in the cafeteria when the power went out.
“What the hell?”
He’d made himself a late-night sandwich as he waited for Ash’s final cycle to complete. It was already obvious that, once more, the bug would fail to take hold. The captain was as immune to KV-27a as a person could be.
From Littlefield’s understanding, the testing of the Ash children was proceeding slowly. But now Dr. Karp would have samples from an actual body he could take a closer look at and hopefully speed up the process.
The plan for that evening was simple. Once the cycle finished at two a.m. and the captain’s vital signs remained unchanged, the air to his cell would be slowly cut off and within an hour, he would take his last breath. This method would eliminate any chance of contaminating the body with whatever poison they would have had to use otherwise.