The guard was only able to get a single wild shot off before he was caught in the barrage and tumbled back onto the floor.
Ash rushed forward, his gun ready if the man even twitched. But it was unnecessary. The man wasn’t going to move, not now, and not ever again.
Ash allowed himself to look at the wound on his left arm. The bullet had grooved his skin a couple inches below his shoulder. It was painful, but not debilitating. He turned back to the others.
Chloe was helping Winger off the floor. There was blood on the man’s shirt, concentrated mainly on the right side of his abdomen. A gut shot.
“I’m okay,” the man said once he was on his feet. But he clearly wasn’t. His breathing was labored, and he was doing a lousy job of keeping the pain off his face. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Maybe you should stay here,” Chloe suggested.
He shook his head, then locked eyes with Ash. “We need to get to your children. Now.”
Ash moved up next to him, draped Winger’s arm over his shoulder, then put his own carefully around the guy’s waist.
“That hall?” he asked.
“Yes.”
A series of airtight rooms led into the biosafe level-four lab. Each had a greater and greater negative airflow from the room before it, meaning air would always move toward the lab, not away from it. This would ensure that any accidentally released airborne pathogen would be unable to escape the lab.
It also meant that each door not only sealed the atmosphere in, but it also greatly reduced any noise from the other side. Dr. Karp and his technicians were already two rooms in out of the three. Though there was no need to take the extra precautions they would have had to take if a level-four pathogen had been present in the lab, they still had to close each door before the system would allow them to open the next. So when the gunfight near the elevator took place, they heard nothing.
As they finally entered the lab, Dr. Karp said, “Put them in number three.”
Chamber three was in the corner, and the most logical one to turn unusable.
Ramos wheeled the gurney carrying the Ash girl into the lab first, then Learner tried to follow with the boy. Unfortunately, doing so pretty much clogged up most of the usable space.
“Roll those back into the airlock,” the doctor said impatiently. “Just carry them in.”
As they did this, the doctor set the supplies he’d picked up earlier on the counter. There were two sealed and empty hypodermics, and two small glass bottles, each with more than enough Beta-Somnol to put a grown adult into a final sleep. The children would pass peacefully. Given what would happen in the world soon enough, the doctor couldn’t help but feel he was doing the humane thing, something most would be denied.
He opened one of the hypo kits, stuck the needle into the bottle, then started drawing the drug out.
“That door there,” Winger said, his voice weakening. “Those are the subject rooms. They’re in there.”
“I think it’s best if we leave you here,” Ash said. “Do you want to lean on the wall? Or sit on the ground?”
“I…don’t know if I can…stand on my own.”
“Okay, no problem.”
Ash tried to ease the man to the floor as gently as possible, but the orderly still sucked in his breath and winced.
“I’m sorry,” Ash said once the man was down.
“It’s okay.” Winger tried to smile. “Go get your kids.”
Ash gave him a pat on the shoulder, then he and Chloe moved down the hall to the door Winger had pointed out.
“What’s the plan?” she whispered.
“Play it by ear.”
“Oh, okay. So the same plan as before.”
Ash didn’t bother to respond.
He turned the knob until the latch was all the way out, then he inched the door open just enough so that he could see inside. The space appeared to be set up similarly to the wards back at the Palmer Psychiatric Hospital- central corridor and doors off to the sides.
He eased the door open some more. No shouts, no sounds of movement, nothing.
With a quick warning glance at Chloe, he pulled out the door wide enough to get through, then rushed inside. No one was there.
“Check the doors,” he whispered.
They worked from opposite sides, opening each door and looking in. Every room Ash checked had beds, but all the mattresses were bare and appeared unused.
“Ash!” Chloe called out.
She was standing in the doorway of a room near the back wall. He rushed over and looked in.
There were two beds inside. Both had blankets and sheets but were unmade. He moved in quickly, put a hand on one mattress, then the other. The bed on the left still had the warmth of a body.
He ran past Chloe out of the room, through the outer area and back into the hallway.
Winger’s eyes were closed as Ash reached him.
“They’re not there!”
“Wha…what?” Winger said, his eyelids barely peeling apart.
“They’re not there. No one is. Where are they?”
“Not there?” The orderly looked confused. “I don’t…” He stopped, then his eyes opened wider. “No. Oh, God, no.”
“What?”
• • •
“Okay,” Ramos said as he stepped out of chamber three, where he’d just laid Brandon Ash next to the girl on the floor.
At that very moment, the indicator for the door to the first airlock switched from closed to open on the lab’s computer screen.
Dr. Karp almost missed it. He had just finished activating the controls for chamber three, and had turned away to retrieve the hypos of Beta-Somnol when one of his oldest habits, his need to double-check everything, caused him to look back.
Not for one second did he think whoever had entered was one of the project members there to help him.
This was it. The end. Unless there was some kind of miracle-something he didn’t believe in-his own life would soon be sacrificed.
Before it had been just a possibility. Now, the harsh reality was numbing.
Five seconds passed without him moving at all. Then he remembered his oath, his promise to the project. The job he still had to do.
He grabbed the needles, and was halfway to chamber three before he realized there wouldn’t be enough time. He’d have to start the sequence without administering the drug. Hopefully, the children would remain asleep and feel no pain as the intense heat quickly took their lives. Not quite as humane as he’d hoped, but still better than nothing.
When he got back to the monitor, the indicator for the door between the second and third airlocks was already in the open position. As soon as it closed, the door to the lab would open.
He started punching in the code.
49
