Brain Storm (US Edition) (19 page)

Sara went along with Carla letting the younger woman pull her into the elevator in the middle of the room. It seemed to have escaped with little more than cosmetic damage from the fire. The doors opened automatically for them when they got close enough and closed behind them

"Where are we going?"

Carla shrugged. "There's another way out up here." The elevator arrived and the doors opened letting them out on top of the central support column.

Sara narrowed her eyes as she regarded Carla. "You said you didn't know anything about this place. How do you know we can get out from up here?"

Carla opened her mouth closed it again and then opened it again. In the end she just shrugged again and looked at Sara earnestly. "I just know."

Carla released her grip and they looked around from their new vantage point. "See? I was right." Carla was almost jumping up and down.

Sara turned to where she was pointing. There was another door leading out of the chamber back above the door on the lower level. There was no way Carla could have seen that until they got up here. Sara was immediately on guard. How had Carla known about that way out? Suspicion crowded all other thoughts out of her mind. Was this all a set up? She knew that Carla was involved somehow but was she an innocent party or a part of the conspiracy?

Carla wanted to get across to that door right away. She kept heading in that direction and then stopping herself and moving back to Sara waiting for her to make the first move. Sara watched her moving back and forth eager to escape but also not wanting to leave the protection of being around Sara.

Sara gave herself a mental slap. She had to keep from being swept away by her paranoia. Yes something was going on. Yes it involved Carla somehow. But it was rather farfetched to think that this entire escape was a set-up. It wouldn't achieve anything for whoever their captors were. And if they wanted to lead her this way they would have given Carla a cover story to explain how she knew where to go. They were too switched on have her bumbling around like this. Paranoia had
its place in her line of work. It had kept her alive on a few occasions. But if she let paranoia take her over she would become a nervous wreck.

"Come on then, clairvoyant girl. Can you tell me what to expect on the other side of that door?"

Carla didn't seem to know what to make of Sara's jest.

"Okay it was a poor joke," Sara said giving Carla yet another of her reassuring smiles. She wondered whether Carla would start seeing through them soon. That was a problem for a later date they seemed to be working well enough for now.

They crossed the walkway. Sara walked steadily the walkway was a meter wide with rails running along the sides at waist height so there was no chance of them falling off. Carla followed after her and gripped the rails with her left hand. She kept looking at the walkway as though it would vanish from under them if she didn't keep an eye on it.

The walkway rails turned to run along the edge of the balcony second level and the down the sides of the next walkway so that all raised areas had a barrier to stop people falling off. Up here there were more signs that equipment that had been up here had been removed. There were no pipe holes this time but there were just as many power points, cables and wires. There were recessed alcoves where rectangular banks of equipment had been stored and were now removed.

"It looks like this place has been half abandoned. Maybe our cells are the only part that is still being used." Sara was more than half talking to herself. She hoped that was true. If the place was barely in use there was less chance of it having a large security detail still in place.

"I think it's spooky," Carla said from close up behind her. Now that they were on a slightly wider space she had caught her back up.

"We'll be out of here soon enough," Sara said. They had reached the door and Sara tried her card twice in the lock. There was no response. Sara dropped her hand to the handle and pulled the door open. She exchanged more genuine smiles with Carla and they moved back into another dimly lit, featureless corridor. There were more doors leading off the main corridor. The fire had only reached the first few meters into the corridor and the rest was totally undamaged.

Sara was considering whether it would be worth investigating any of the rooms when the darkness was suddenly lifted. The lights became active and filled the corridor with a bright white glare. A klaxon sounded from somewhere in the distance and was suddenly drowned out by the alarm blaring all around them.

Sara reacted by drawing the pistol from the front of her jeans. It was up and aiming when she went into a crouch to make herself a smaller target. She swept the corridor on both sides of them and kept alert as one eye checked for Carla. The other was alert for signs of attack.

Carla reacted by dropping to the floor and curling herself up into a ball. The stun-stick she had been holding was on the floor beside her. She would have been better standing her ground keeping hold of the weapon so that she could at least try to defend herself. Sara wanted to yell at her to stop messing around and get the hell up. Either that or just to go on alone and leave her cowering where she was. But she took her time and chose a more compassionate option. Either of the others was her natural preference but she wanted Carla with her so that she could make sense of what was going on and explain it. And the only way she knew to help Carla was with a softly softly approach. Being firm and harsh could snap her out of it or it could just snap her, better to play it safe.

"Come on. Get up." Sara spoke softly from her position crouched beside Carla. She reached down with her left hand to gently squeeze her shoulder. Her right hand was still up in a position ready to fire.

"They're coming for me. They've found me." Carla didn't even seem to acknowledge Sara.

I don't have time for this shit.
"Look they haven't found you. If they had they'd be all over us not blasting out these alarms." Sara used her left hand to turn Carla around so that she was speaking to her face. She gave her a sharp shake to get her to look at her. " They probably just found the guards so we still have time to escape. But only if you get the hell up and come with me. If you stay there then they will get you."

Carla blinked twice blankly then intelligence flooded back behind her eyes. She nodded and started to get back to her feet. She looked at Sara for instructions and she pointed to the stun-stick on the floor.

"Get that and don't drop it again. If there comes a time when you have to use it then you need it in your hands. My life could depend on you so get a grip and don't screw up."

It could go either of two ways.
Either Carla would be motivated by the responsibility and the danger and would get her act together, or she would crumble under the pressure into a useless lump and would have to be left behind. The steel glint that forged behind her gaze indicated that the gamble had paid off and that she would pull through.

              Carla hefted the stun-stick starting it up to create a charge. "Okay, let's get the hell out of here."

Sara led Carla through a number of other rooms and corridors. Whenever she had to make a choice she chose the corridor that headed more or less upwards. With the place on alert exploration was no longer a real option. Sara kept her weapon in her hand constantly now sweeping each new area when she entered. Eventually they came to a short set of wide steps with double doors at the top. Sara tried the key card in the lock that was attached to both doors in the middle. With power back to the area, if it had ever been cut off here, she ran the card through three times. Obviously the guards weren't supposed to be wandering around this area so their key card didn't have the correct access code for the lock. She put the card back into her pocket in case it became useful again later on. Before she attacked the lock in her own way she tried Carla's earlier recommendation and tried the door in case it was unlocked. It wasn't.

She had to put the gun back down the front of her jeans so that she could work on the cover of the reader with both hands. Carla was stood beside her looking down the stairs covering their backs while Sara got to work, she really was taking her responsibilities seriously.

Sara eventually managed to get the cover off the reader exposing the mass of circuits and wires underneath. She set the cover down on the top step next to her knees and stared at the inside of the lock. She had learned how to defeat all sort of locks and access devices during her training and now she had to work out exactly how to go about bypassing this particular one. She hadn't learned how to defeat specific types of locks it was the principals behind them that she knew how to get past. And it was those principals that told her that this was going to be easier than she had expected. The lock was of a very old type where the proper key card would trigger a switch that would allow an electrical current to pass through the mechanism and retract the internal bolts keeping the doors in place. The current could not be induced through any manipulation of the lock itself but if Sara could supply power from an external source the end result would be the same.

"Dial the power on that thing to minimum and put it in here." Sara directed Carla to the lock. "Stand off to the side and be ready to duck if there's trouble when the doors open."

She gave Carla time to position herself and the stun-stick where she had shown her. Sara herself moved off to the other side and held her gun ready.
She would move through the doors as soon as they were wide enough to accommodate her. If there was anybody waiting for them on the other side they would expect her to be moving slowly and carefully not charging headlong at them.

Carla held the weapon in the lock. Her arms were trembling but the prongs remained in contact with the mechanism. Carla's eyes were on Sara waiting for her instructions.

"Do it."

Carla initiated a charge and the mechanism keeping the doors locked retracted. Sara watched the doors opening and dived through sideways. She soared inside and it seemed to take an eternity for her to hit the ground sliding. She twisted in mid-air scanning the dark room with her eyes and her weapon. She hit the ground on her back and slid to a stop. The tiled floor rubbed against her back where it was exposed between the bottom of her jacket and the top of her jeans. She came up in a crouch and continued to scan the room. It was another abandoned office space with desks and cabinets still in place along with a number of chairs but all the electronic equipment had been removed leaving vacant spaces where they had once been. Sara was willing to bet that any paper records that had once been located inside the cabinets would also have been taken.

Having discovered nothing threatening in the room Sara went back to fetch Carla. "Come on in it's all clear."

Carla's head appeared around the edge of the door, she took a quick look around the room and followed Sara inside.

There was a metallic noise like an empty can being kicked down a cobbled street.

"Shit! Down!" There wasn't time for anything more of an explanation. Sara charged at Carla and knocked her off her feet. They slammed in an awkward pile up against the back wall. Sara scrambled free for an instant to pull a desk down on top of them. Carla was struggling against her lashing out and complaining. Sara let her get on with it as she closed her eyes tightly any got her hands pressed up to cover her ears.

Then the flash-bang grenade she had heard on the floor exploded.

Even with her eyes tightly closed the brilliant flash was enough to sting her eyes. Even with her hands over her ears the thunderous explosion tore deeply into her skull.  That wasn't all that the stun grenade had to offer, following hot on the heels of the first two assaults on their senses came a burning rain. White hot sparkles that burned her exposed skin. Sara knocked the worst of the sparks away from her flesh and her clothes ignoring the pain. Shaking her head to clear it from the confusion that stun grenades were designed to engender she looked down at Carla.

The other woman was protected from the worst of the sparkles by her prisoner’s outfit which covered most of her body. Sara helped her to knock the few sparkles free that had landed in her hair. What had affected the other woman most was the shock of the light and the noise. She wasn't trained to deal with these situations, Sara had endured countless drills locked in small rooms when stun munitions were set off, Carla was fighting her way through the full impact of confusion and panic.

"Stay down." Sara didn't know if Carla heard or understood the instructions, but even if she hadn't she would not be in any state to do anything much for the next few minutes. Sara's own head still wasn't fully cleared but she couldn't wait for whoever had thrown that grenade into the room to follow up. If she did so they would be surrounded and worse off than before. They would expect them both to be on the floor curled up and incapable of action as Carla was.

Sara rushed around the desk she had tipped over to protect herself and Carla from the worst of the sparkles. She drew the second pistol from her left hand jacket pocket and brought it up to aim alongside the pistol in her right hand. The room was filled with a fine haze, smoke from the sparkles. Sara stumbled as she struggled to maintain her equilibrium against the confusion in her head. Her vision was doubled as she scanned the room for threats she forced it back to single vision just in time to see the fully armored bodies pouring into the room with weapons tracking towards her.