Fast (29 page)

            Cairns stopped before Gould.

            His voice sounded loaded with understated menace. ‘Now,
that’s
a very good question, Dr Gould. I was just wondering that myself. But let me ask
you
a question first.’

            Cairns raised one eyebrow as though waiting for permission to ask his question.

            ‘Sure.’ Gould’s voice quavered like a pubescent teenager. He felt everything below his neck go weak.

            ‘Dr Gould, why didn’t you mention the underlab earlier?’

            ‘Umm…it didn’t seem possible that anyone could use it.’ Gould added quickly, ‘Plus it would have been flooded and completely useless to you.’

            ‘Really?’ Cairns went from flat enquiry to screaming in Gould’s face in a heartbeat. ‘Well it wasn’t so useless to the Marines who just stole the genetic material right out from under us!’

            Cairns grabbed Gould’s hair and dragged him to the nearest workstation. He shoved Gould into the chair.

            ‘Get Sharp’s data.’

            Gould lifted his hands as though the computer was hot. ‘I can’t. We’re totally locked out of the system now.’

            Cairns drew his pistol. He pressed the barrel to Gould’s temple. ‘Then
find
a way to get in.’

            Gould’s eyes watered. His features wanted to crawl across his face away from the gun. ‘Nobody can get in. It’s tamper-resistant. I told you that. No one knows where the data is even stored! It could be buried one hundred feet down in solid steel. Some very paranoid people were paid to make sure the data could never be stolen.’

            Cairns’s voice was a deadly hiss. ‘You said there would be a way.’

            ‘I said there
might
be a way,’ whimpered Gould. ‘Every time I was in Sharp’s lab, she was always here and the security system just inexplicably locked me out. That’s why I had to steal the first batch of genetic material. That’s how they caught me!’

            Cairns closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a tense second, he exhaled and addressed the nearest gunman. ‘Hold him.’

            Gould’s chair was on wheels. Two gunmen twisted Gould’s arms behind the chair and then spun him around to face Cairns.

            Cairns signaled for the blowtorch.

            ‘Wait-wait-wait…,’ begged Gould.

            With a
POP
of igniting gas, the blowtorch was in Cairns’s hand.

            ‘Jesus, wait – just listen, please just wait!’

            ‘Let me tell you what I think,’ offered Cairns, adjusting the blowtorch setting to a tight flame.

            ‘I think you know how to access Sharp’s data. I think you don’t want to, because that makes you more valuable.’

            Gould stared in terror at the blowtorch. He felt the heat raising sweat on his forehead. ‘That’s not true. No one knows how the security system works. It does strange things all the time. I think your time would be better spent retrieving the templates than hurting the one person who knows how to use them.’

            ‘You’re not the only person. Vanessa Sharp is still alive, remember.’

            Gould could see he was talking himself into a corner. ‘There’s no point catching her alive. The system wouldn’t work if she was forced.’

            The flashlight stopped halfway to Gould’s face. ‘Explain.’

            ‘If the operator is stressed or anxious, it just doesn’t respond.’

            Cairns held the blowtorch on Gould’s face.

            Screaming, Gould thrashed around in the chair. Once as a child Gould had been stung by a stone fish. This felt like a school of stonefish were taking turns on his face until Cairns stopped.

            ‘It’s true!’ screamed Gould. ‘Look around you! Can you see the security system? There’s nothing here. No one knows how it works!’

            Cairns snapped off the blowtorch. ‘I believe you. That was for not telling me about the underlab. I’ll expect better next time.’

            Cairns tossed the blowtorch to one of the men restraining Gould. ‘Take him back to the administration hub and make him useful.’

#

Coleman sprinted up the east stairwell two steel steps at a time.

            They others ran right behind him.

            He was rounding the first landing when gunmen burst into the stairwell above and below their position.

            ‘In here,’ shouted Coleman, shouldering through the security antechamber door.

            Gunfire erupted in the stairwell. Third Unit and Vanessa barreled straight into the antechamber.

            Marlin and Forest spun in the doorway to return fire.

            ‘This looks familiar,’ puffed King, seeing they were back in an antechamber like the one where they’d met Vanessa. Instead of the large containment door, this antechamber had two doors that led to the research level’s peripheral laboratories.

            Coleman called the elevator. ‘The lift’s our only option.’

            Vanessa shook her head. ‘The controls can be overridden from the admin hub. They’ll lock us in there.’

            Coleman checked the carriage was on its way. ‘We have no choice. The peripheral labs are all dead ends. There’s no other exit from this room.’

           
DING

            The elevator doors opened.

            ‘Marlin, Forest, let’s go!’

            Coleman hit the button for the habitation level, David’s level, as Marlin and Forest fired a last burst into the stairwell and then charged into the elevator.

            The doors closed, but the elevator didn’t move.

            ‘They’ve halted the lifts,’ warned Vanessa. ‘They know what we’re doing.’

            ‘Everyone up. Quick, into the shaft and climb.’

Bora charged up the stairwell after the Marines.

            He crashed through the antechamber door. The chamber was empty. Wet boot prints led to the lift.

            ‘Halt all the lifts,’ Bora radioed to the admin hub. ‘Open the elevator doors in the east antechamber.’

            Bora hit the lift controls, but the doors refused to open. Someone inside was keeping them shut.

            ‘Pry them open,’ he barked, stepping back to let his men work. Two men drew heavy combat knives and started working at the doors.

            Three more gunmen knelt before the door like a firing squad.

            ‘Wait - stop.’ Bora raised his hand for silence. He could feel the Complex shutting down around him. The creatures were disabling more and more systems. The Complex was getting quieter and quieter to his senses.

            He touched his palm lightly to the elevator doors.

            Empty. The lift’s empty.

            The elevator carriage was quiet. A moment ago he’d sensed activity, but not now. Something was happening, but it didn’t seem to be in the carriage any longer. Bora pointed to the controls. ‘Try again.’

            A gunman poked the button then snapped his hand back to his submachine gun.

           
DING

            The doors opened.

            Bora’s firing squad blitzed the carriage. Their bullets perforated the back wall. The carriage was empty.

‘They’re in the shaft!’ one man yelled.

            Five gunmen rushed into the carriage. The first fired up though the ceiling. The next two shouldered their weapons and turned to be boosted up through the hole.

            Too late, Bora realized their mistake.

            The Marines had been allowed too much time in the elevator shaft.

            ‘Stop - everyone out!’ Bora yelled. ‘It’s a tr -’

            Before he finished, Bora heard the explosion that severed the elevator’s cables and brakes.

            In a split second, the elevator plummeted. One gunman leapt towards the antechamber, trying to escape the giant falling coffin.

            He
almost
made it.

            His right leg, left arm, and his head escaped the carriage. The rest of his body didn’t. The carriage ceiling smashed down onto his shoulders. It crumpled his body straight down. For a second the man’s right knee, left elbow, and his screaming head were all lined up beside each other, protruding through the shrinking gap between the elevator ceiling and the antechamber floor, and then with a wet crunch the plummeting carriage sheared everything away like the world’s largest guillotine.

            Bora stepped back as the decapitated head and severed limbs rolled towards him.

           
KA-BOOM!!!

            The carriage landed hard.

            The floor shook under Bora’s feet as the shock waves rose up through the Complex. He kicked the pieces of his gunman down the shaft. ‘Idiots!’

            Grasping the elevator door and leaning into the shaft, he fired his submachine gun up the shaft with one hand, letting the weapon’s recoil spread his bullets. When he ran out of ammunition, he swung back into the antechamber. After loading another magazine, he clipped on the under barrel flashlight. He swung himself back into the shaft and searched the walls with his light beam.

            At least I’m on my own now. Those fools were only slowing me down.

            There was no sign of the Marines.

            Above him, the shaft doors were open on every level. Bora trained the light beam just above eye level and found the remains of the brakes. They were sliced cleanly in half.

            Cutting charge.

            He shone his flashlight down the shaft. The powerful beam easily reached the bottom of the shaft. His men looked like rotten fruit squashed under a concrete block. As he pulled himself back into the antechamber, Cairns came over the radio.

            ‘What the hell was that, Bora? Are you using explosives?’

            Bora contemplated not answering. He was growing weary of Cairns’s barking tirade. Cairns seemed to forget who was doing all the hard work. Bora replied, ‘No. That was the east elevator dropping into the basement.’

            ‘Very good, Lieutenant Bora. I assume the Marines were in the lift? Are the templates intact?’

            ‘No, sir. No templates. It was our people in the elevator. The Marines severed the brakes from inside the shaft. Five of our people were still inside.’