“Sorry about that, man.”
“No problem,” I grinned. “Good thing we didn’t bump into each other. I didn’t bring a spare shirt today.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to mess with the dress code,” he chuckled.
I laughed and headed for the door, sipping my coffee on the way. Once in the hall, I pulled out the badge and looked it over. He was a higher level researcher, if I was reading his badge correctly.
“Did you get it?” Blake asked, joining me further down the hall.
“Got it.”
“Is it for the right lab?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
“If those alarms go off, we’re going to be screwed.”
“Cross your fingers,” I said, turning down the hall for the lab we needed to get to. I counted off the office numbers, then the lab numbers as we walked down the long hallway. We were almost there when a larger man that reeked of authority came toward us. I hesitated in swiping the card, but Blake nudged me. I couldn’t just stand out in the hallway. That would definitely be suspicious. Blake moved on down the hall, so it didn’t look like she was there for no reason. I swiped the card, relieved when a green light flashed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on lunch?” the man asked.
“Just forgot my wallet in there,” I gestured to the lab.
He glanced inside and then looked back at me questioningly. “You know you’re not supposed to bring anything inside.”
“It won’t happen again, sir. Simple mistake.”
He watched me closely and then nodded. “Don’t let me catch you again…”
“Johnson,” I supplied, hoping there were enough people with the last name Johnson to make him believe me.
He nodded and moved on down the hall, turning around the corner. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. I hoped that Blake had found someplace to go.
“Knight, I’m in,” I said, hoping he was still picking me up on coms.
“I’ve got you on camera.”
Glancing around the space, it was all very clinical. Beyond the main office, there was an entry into the lab, but there were all these procedures you had to take to enter. I had no fucking clue what I had to do to get in there.
“What the fuck am I looking for?”
“Notebooks, files that match our code,” he responded.
“If I could get in the lab, I might be able to grab samples.”
“That’ll take too long. We need data first.”
Taking my chances out here first, I started rifling through the paperwork, hoping to find anything that would give me what I needed. I about jumped out of my skin when there was a knock at the door. Blake was standing out there. I quickly let her in and got back to work.
“Any luck?”
“No. I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for.”
I was shuffling through papers, but it was all foreign to me. I had no fucking clue what would be useful.
“You’ve got about two minutes,” Knight said. “Looks like someone reported suspicious activity.”
“Shit,” I hissed, working faster. There was no goddamn way I was going to find anything in here. I had no fucking clue what to look for.
“Over here,” Blake hissed. I ran over to her, peering over her shoulder as she flipped through a notebook.
“What is it?”
“It looks like a medical journal or something. Look, there are….hell, I don’t know what it is, but it looks important.”
It reminded me of being in science class in high school, seeing the DNA strands that the teacher would post on the board, only this was a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Look at this. Testing on patients show ninety-eight percent success rate. Still running tests on the two percent that survived.”
“Survived? Wait, that can’t be right. Why would they be calling it a success rate if only two percent lived?”
“Why do I get the feeling that this is a really bad X-Files episode?”
Commotion outside the door gave me only one option. I shoved Blake against the wall and snatched the journal out of her hands, shoving it into the back of my pants.
“One minute,” Knight confirmed. “You need to get your asses out of there.”
“You can’t take that,” she hissed. “If they notice it’s missing, they’ll know that we’re on to them.”
“Blake, if they’re killing people, I think it’s more important that we find out how and why.”
“They probably have our faces on camera,” she hissed. “If they catch us on the way out, they’ll find that notebook. We won’t be able to pass along any information to Knight.”
“Then we’d better not get caught.”
A loud buzz sounded and a red light kicked on in the room.
“Too late.”
I turned the handle just as the lock was starting to engage. I was faster though and yanked it open before the lock was in place. I grabbed her hand and flung the door open, racing out into the hall. Men and women stopped and stared at us, not wanting to intervene. Security raced around the corner at the end of the hall, spotting us almost immediately.
“Parker, I’ve lost the camera feed,” Knight shouted. “You’re on your own. Get the fuck out of there.”
I took a hard right and ran down the hall, hearing Blake running almost right beside me. I knew she could take care of herself, so I focused on finding us a way out of here. I was mentally mapping out the facility, trying to remember my way around the building.
I took another right and found myself at a dead end. We had nowhere to go and there wasn’t time to turn around and fight our way back through the crowd that would have gathered, along with all the security that would have been called.
“Stand back,” Blake shouted, pulling out her
