doors at the end of the lobby — she realized they hadn’t been coming toward her at all. In fact, they were moving in exactly the opposite direction.
But where?
She studied the control screen again, and discovered a button marked “LL.”
Lower Level? Of course! The “downstairs” Dr. Jameson had mentioned just this morning.
She touched the button. It seemed to produce no effect.
The same floor plan and control buttons showed on the right-hand monitor, and the same image of an empty corridor was displayed on the screen on the left.
Yet she’d been all but certain that both screens had flickered slightly, as if their displays had in fact responded to her touch. Then, as she examined the control screen more closely, she realized that one thing had changed: the “LL” button was now labeled “UL.”
So there was another level beneath this one.
As if to confirm the thought, the two guards reappeared, now moving in the opposite direction, away from the camera. Halfway down the corridor a door opened, and the guards maneuvered the box through it. Once again Katharine had to press two of the rooms depicted on the control monitor before she found the right one, and the image on the camera monitor changed again.
The room was obviously a laboratory of some kind. As Katharine watched, two men wearing orderly uniforms started to unscrew the top of the box. Katharine’s fingers moved to the buttons that gave her control over the camera, and she zoomed in on the box. As the lid was raised, wisps of fog curled from the container.
Dry ice?
The lid came free, and Katharine could see that whatever was in the box was wrapped in plastic.
She watched as four hands, clad in rubber surgical gloves, worked at the plastic, loosening it.
Four hands.
Where were the other four, the hands that belonged to the security guards?
Katharine zoomed the camera to its widest angle.
The two guards were gone.
Touching the control screen again, she found them.
In the corridor, once again walking toward her.
No! Away from her, by the far end, where apparently there was an elevator. How long did she have before they would be back on this level and coming toward the lobby?
A minute?
Two?
Certainly no more.
She touched the screen again, and once more the orderlies appeared. They had finished unwrapping the outer layer of plastic and were taking out what was left of the dry ice the contents of the box had been packed in. Silently urging them to work faster, wanting to reach through the camera and tear the second layer of plastic from whatever lay within, Katharine could barely contain her impatience.
Her nerves screaming, she switched back to the corridor. The security guards were still standing there, waiting for the elevator. Then, just as she was about to click back to the room where the orderlies were working, the guards stepped out of her view.
They were in the elevator, and the elevator would already be moving.
How fast?
She had no idea.
She switched the screen back to the laboratory. At last, the orderlies seemed to have finished with the dry ice. Unconsciously holding her breath, Katharine gazed into the container. One of the orderlies reached for the layers of almost transparent plastic — all that remained to block Katharine’s view of whatever had arrived at the estate in the middle of the night. Then, in a movement that made her want to scream with frustration, the orderly suddenly pulled away.
The zoom!
Her fingers trembling, she touched the adjustment buttons for the camera. It zoomed in and refocused slightly. For just a moment, before one of the orderlies abruptly leaned in and blocked her view completely, she thought she saw something.
A face.
A human face?
The glimpse had been too brief, the distortion of the wrinkled plastic too much.
How much time did she have left? If she could get just one more look—
She touched the UL button, then the hallway.
The guards were on their way back down the hall!
Her heart racing, Katharine rose from the chair and started back toward the double doors leading to the south corridor and Rob’s office.
The display! As soon as the guards came in, they’d see what she’d been doing! Whirling around, nearly stumbling in her haste to get back to the desk, she searched the screen again, finding a button marked “Main.” She hit it, and instantly the menu that had been displayed when she’d come in no more than five minutes earlier reappeared.
The gate!
Where was the button for the gate?
There — down near the bottom, at the right!
She stabbed at it, waited just long enough to see the image on the display monitor change, then fled across the lobby. Pushing her way through the double doors, she paused to make them stop swinging, then dashed down the hall to Rob’s office, slipped inside, and switched the lights back on.
Leaning heavily against the desk, she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal and her breathing to even out, then picked up her purse. Switching the lights out, she left the office for the second time in ten minutes, locked it, and started toward the double doors.
For a moment she had the terrible feeling that the two guards would be waiting for her, knowing what she’d been doing. If they questioned her, what could she say? That she’d been worried when the guard hadn’t been at his post and was looking for him?
Would they believe her?
Pushing the doors open, she stepped into the lobby. To her vast relief, the two guards were not waiting for her. One of them, the one who had been there before the van’s arrival, was seated behind the desk again, thumbing through a magazine. As she entered the lobby, he looked up.
“Dr. Sundquist. I thought you’d left.”
Was there suspicion in his voice? “Just finishing up a few things,” she replied. Then, when she was halfway across the lobby, she suddenly knew exactly what to say to put any suspicions to rest. “What was that van that came in a few minutes ago?” she asked, turning back to face the guard. “Isn’t it awfully late for deliveries?”
The guard smiled. “One of our trucks,” he said. “The driver just stopped to find out where we wanted him to park it.”
“Well, it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones working late,” Katharine said, returning the guard’s smile. “But how come that doesn’t make me feel any less tired?”
The guard chuckled. “Doesn’t ever make me feel less tired, either.”
With a final good night, Katharine left the building and hurried toward her car.
The guard had lied.
Obviously, something was going on she wasn’t supposed to know about. But what was it?
And how could she find out?
Was the corpse that had been delivered tonight — if it truly was a corpse — somehow connected to the alarming video and the skeleton in Rob’s laboratory? That was ridiculous. There was no reason to make such a connection.
But the images of the anomalous skull from the Philippines and the film of the slaughtered creature were also still fresh in her mind. An image and a film that were stored in files locked away behind a password, just as whatever had arrived in the van was now hidden away in a lower level she hadn’t known existed until tonight.
