“I know,” he said, his eyes turning back to Morgan.
“Where is the lab?” I asked, pulling back into the present.
I had to take this one step at a time.
“Down the hall, a right and then a left. West is with him, so call for him and he’ll lead you there.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for Avian’s hand. I gave it a quick squeeze and then turned down the hall.
The walls reached out to my muscle memory. There was something about this hall, these turns, the doors I passed, that seemed familiar.
I couldn’t deny that I had been here before.
I heard Dr. Evans and West talking before I reached the door, alerting me to the lab I was looking for. I stepped into the room and held my hands behind my back.
“You found it then,” I said.
West jumped violently, dropping a file on the floor.
“Yes,” Dr. Evans said, turning to face me. He grabbed a paper from the counter he had been standing at and held it up. “It is a very lucky thing I was as old fashioned as I am. Most of NovaTor and its workers had switched to an all-digital system of keeping records. I always thought it safest to make a backup hard copy. We wouldn’t be able to save the world if I hadn’t.”
I crossed the room and took the page he held. It was a sequence of numbers and letters, and for some reason, it seemed like a language I had forgotten how to speak. It was the same feeling I got whenever I observed the crazy sequences that flashed across Dr. Beeson’s monitors for the Wireless Transmission System.
“Memorize it,” he said. “Should anything happen to our copies, I want at least one person to know what it is.”
I read through it three times, all fifty-six letters and numbers, and knew it would be branded into my memory. I handed it back to him.
“Your sister would have had it memorized just by glancing at it,” Dr. Evans said as he took the paper and turned back to the counter.
I wasn’t sure if I should be offended by that or not. He’d said it offhandedly, like it was a statement, as if the sky was blue, and grass was green. But still.
“She had an amazing memory,” West muttered as he finished straightening the papers he’d knocked off the counter.
“She’s not here,” I said quietly. I shifted from one foot to the other. The situation had become uncertain from here on out.
“Yeah,” was all West said.
“These are the formulas for your generation of TorBane,” Dr. Evans said, ignoring the situation he didn’t want to deal with. He indicated another file. “There are four doses that you and Eve One received. The first dosage was the weakest, most diluted, and they got increasingly stronger.”
“How long will it take you to remake it?” I asked, feeling anxious again. This was another uncertainty in our plan. We could try to help the baby, but it was unknown if it would work.
“I have yet to check the freezers to see if the cybernetic base elements are still any good. And then it will take me a bit to gather all the chemicals and stem cells needed.”
“How long?” I repeated.
“I may have it ready by tomorrow evening,” Dr. Evans said, his voice sounding annoyed once again. “It would be wise to let it sit for a day and study it, to make sure it does behave like the first generation. If all goes as planned, we could give it to the baby in forty-eight hours.”
“And we just pray that Morgan and the baby don’t die before then,” I said with a nod.
“Yes,” Dr. Evans said as he flipped through some pages. “TorBane can heal just about anything, but I do not believe it can bring someone back from the dead.”
“How long before the entire course of treatment is finished?” West asked.
Dr. Evans didn’t even hesitate in responding. I had little doubt the process of the beginnings of TorBane was etched in his brain. “The first two doses are given twelve hours apart. And then two more once every twenty-four hours after that. I would like to space it out a bit more than that, but we don’t have that kind of time.”
West looked at me, and I could see the conflict on his face. There were so many timelines going on right now and so much riding on us moving as quickly as possible.
“That’s all we can do then,” I said, making it easy.
I left them to their work, and walked back down the hall.
SIXTEEN
Avian continued to attend to Morgan, so I decided to make myself useful. We were going to be here for five days, so I headed back up the stairs to bring in our things. When I walked back outside, the sun was high in the sky and the snow had started to melt into slushy puddles.
I paused and pulled my assault rifle out when I saw that the side door of the solar tank was sitting wide open.
Sweeping the immediate area, stepping over the bodies of the Bane, I found no one. Visually searching the mountains and desert around us, I found them to be empty as well.
“Bill?” I called, my rifle ready, my finger hovering over the trigger.
But Bill didn’t respond.
Taking quick, silent steps, I crossed the rest of the way to the tank and pointed the rifle inside.
The space was empty, it didn’t take more than two seconds to determine that.
But someone had gone through our things.
The bedding was spread everywhere. A tent was unraveled and hanging over the back seat. The tubs of food were open, though it didn’t look like any of it had been taken. The medical supplies we’d brought were strewn over the floor. A box of bullets had been spilled over a seat.
I swore and backed out of the tank to scan my surroundings again. There was no one in sight, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone out there watching us.
Locking the vehicle, I darted back toward the massive building. I sprinted across the lobby and threw open the door that led down below.
“Bill! I need you up here!” I faintly heard a reply. I turned and crept forward with my rifle trained ahead of me. I’d alerted anyone who might hear me, but now it was my turn to listen.
Bill burst from the stairwell less than sixty seconds later, his own rifle at the ready.
“What’s going on?” he said, as he swept the area, finger on the trigger.
“Someone snooped through the tank,” I said, creeping forward toward the front door. “Doors were wide open. They’ve gone through everything.”
“They take anything?” he asked.
I shook my head, pausing in the doorway, my rifle poking through. We had a good vantage point from here. The desert spread out in front of us for miles. And there wasn’t a soul out there.
“No,” I shook my head, taking a step outside. Bill followed suit.
“Let’s get the vehicle brought inside,” I said, nodding towards it. “They didn’t take anything this time, but I’d rather not risk them coming back for something later. You got the keys?”
Bill reached into his pocket and produced them.
I nodded. “There’s a large door around the south side of the building,” I said. “I’ll go around and find a way to get it open. You drive around and meet me there.”
Bill nodded and jogged out to the tank. I darted along the side of the building, all the while scanning my surroundings. I tucked around the south side of the building. This was the longest side, one of the sides that eventually disappeared into the side of the mountain. Finally, I reached the tall, wide metal door just as Bill pulled around.
There was a simple keypad that kept the door locked. I was debating shooting it out and hoping that would override it when Bill hopped out and joined at my side.
He pried the faceplate off, exposing an assortment of wires underneath.
“Here,” he said, handing off his rifle. “Hold this for a second.”