Element Zero

tell he’d been converted, in more ways than one.

SWAT, have you found anything? I asked.

Not yet. We’ve got the perimeter secured.

I signaled to the two officers to check the examination rooms. They moved down the hall and began opening doors. From one, I heard a woman gasp.

Van Offo’s pupils dilated as he stared at the doctor, who began to speak in a slow, quiet voice.

“The basement,” he said.

“Basement?”

Even while his face remained slack, I could see the intensity in his eyes. The man wrestled with something internally, but as many had before him, he failed. His eyes became sleepy and docile.

It always unnerved me to see it. It was eerie how quickly people could be made to abandon their beliefs. Al was particularly good at it.

“The basement level is flooded,” a woman said, not understanding. “It hasn’t been used in years.”

“What’s down there?” I asked her.

“Look,” she said. “I know it’s out of code, but it’s locked up. We don’t use it. This place serves—”

“How do we access the lower level?” Van Offo asked the doctor. He pointed down the hall robotically toward a wall of metal shelving stacked with boxes.

SWAT, this place has a basement level that wasn’t on the schematic. We’re headed down.

Got it.

“Come on,” I said. Van Offo and the officers followed as I passed the examination rooms and shoved the rack aside. There was a door behind it, secured with a heavy padlock. Several more SWAT members approached from the connecting hallway.

“Open it,” I said. One of them used an arc cutter to slice through the lock, and it trailed smoke as it thumped to the floor. He flipped open the latch.

I opened the door and started down. Flashlight beams swept the stairs in front of me to a landing where a heavy metal door had been mounted in the concrete. I pushed on it, but it didn’t budge. When I scanned the edges, I picked up a magnetic field.

“It’s got a magnetic lock,” I said. There were no hinges and no release mechanism on our side of it. When I tried to peer through the metal, I found it was shielded. Whoever set this up wasn’t anyone from the clinic. The door had been installed from the inside, to keep people out.

SWAT leader, can your guys open this? I asked.

Yeah.

One of his team moved in and pressed a metal tool to the doorjamb. A panel lit up on one side, and the hairs on my arms stood up. The feed from my JZI warped briefly and I heard the bolt release from inside the door. He shoved it open with a metallic creak.

Beyond the door, a concrete corridor extended into the dark. There was an electric switchbox mounted on the wall to the right. I flipped it, and electric light flickered on from above. Wires ran along the floor to noise screens that were mounted crudely along the ceiling.

There’s something down here. We’re moving in.

Understood.

Up ahead, a doorway opened into a large cellar where a dim light flickered. As we neared it, my heel dropped down into a foot of icy water. Laser points swam over the glassy surface as the splash echoed down the tunnel.

“Help us,” a voice called from the cellar. It was a scream, but it was muted, so I barely heard it. I drew my gun and signaled to the others.

Watch for civilians.

“Help,” the faint voice screamed again.

“No one can hear you,” another muffled voice yelled back.

We stepped through the doorway at the end of the hall, SWAT moving in behind me. I passed through the noise screen and the faint screams jumped to full volume.

“—one! Anyone! Help us!”

There were a series of wire metal cages set up on the concrete floor against the far wall. In each one, a person sat shivering in several inches of water. When a flashlight beam moved over them, they squinted and covered their eyes. More noise screens hummed from the ceiling.

A thin man in a wool coat and with acne scars on his face stood outside the cages, holding in each hand a large, insulated alligator clip that trailed thick cables. Many of the wire cages had clips already attached to the frames.

“Hold it!” I shouted, aiming my gun. He turned to look at me, but his expression didn’t change. He connected the clips to the cage nearest him while the woman inside stared.

“I said, ‘freeze’!”

He stepped away from the cage and held up his hands.

“It’s done,” he called out. I looked around but didn’t see anyone else with him. Two SWAT officers sloshed through the water toward him, rifles trained on him. He knelt down with a splash as one officer bound his wrists behind his back with a zip cord.

“Just do it!” he yelled.

“Shut up,” I said.

Alice, we’re at Mother of Mercy. We’ve got human captives here—five men, five women. You getting this?

I see it.

I scanned the pockmarked man’s face and found him in the system. His name was Rafe Pena, arrested in the past for drug and weapons transport, and assault.

“Oh,” a woman whispered. “Oh, it’s the police…. Thank God. Thank God, it’s the police…. ”

Computer equipment hummed on the surfaces of a series of workbenches set up along the right wall. LEDs flashed in the shadows. On the other side of the room, a series of gurneys were set up with IV racks. I could make out blotches of dried blood on the bedding. Surgical tools lay in trays, and behind them, hanging on the concrete wall, were larger blades: bone saws, a machete, and even an ax.

“What is all this?” I asked. Rafe kept his eyes down and didn’t answer.

“Who are you working for, Rafe?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re just a thug. Who set this up? Who’s paying you?”

“Get us out,” another voice said. Someone shook the wall of one of the cages. “Get us out of here!”

“Stay calm,” I said. “You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out.”

The rattle got more intense. It was a shirtless, skinny man with brown skin and a shaved head. Tattoos covered his shoulders and chest. His fingers were bloody as he gripped the wire, and his eyes were wild.

“Sir, calm down.” I looked around for a way to open the cages. Each one was fitted with an electronic lock. I followed the cables from the alligator clips and saw them merge with other bundles of cable that ran under the water.

“Check that out,” I told the officer. I shined a flashlight beam on the metal base of the nearest cage, where a young woman sat, hugging her knees and shivering in the filthy water.

The cables ran up the sides of each cage and into a breaker box on the wall behind them.

“Do it now!” Rafe screamed. He was talking to someone besides us, someone who could throw the electrical switch remotely.

“Kill that breaker!” I said. One of the officers moved toward it and pried it open as I scanned around the edges of the ceiling. There were cameras mounted there behind the foam paneling. Someone was watching us.

The man rattled the cage again and pounded his fist against the side.

“Get me out of here!” he screamed. “Get me the fuck out of here now!”

Van Offo sloshed through the water toward him, and I grabbed his arm.

“If those go live, we’ll all fry,” I told him. “Wait until we get the power—”