Dombrant retrieved his holdall from the front of the van and lobbed it casually over his shoulder. The Board member turned on her heels and led them to a door at the side of the hall, where the rest of the wall was blocked up with concrete.
They followed her through a damp brick passage. Large metal pipes stretched back on one side, interposed with big metal containers. Wires and tubes dangled from the ceiling. Suddenly they were stepping out into a huge atrium.
Ana hid her amazement. The hall was enormous and beautiful. Escalators ran up to the balconies on the first and second floor. The floors were marbled. Giant glass octagons enclosed coffee and salad bars. Above the second balcony, box offices with glass windows protruded and giant metal girders hung across the roof.
Her eyes slid across to the far entrance. High above the arched doors sunlight blasted through the many puzzle pieces of a stained glass window. Reds, blues, greens and purples folded over each other. Her steps almost faltered.
The window from the dream.
The Board member led them past the glass lifts and the escalator. The atrium was so enormous it felt empty, despite the twenty or so people dotted around the cafes or walking through. No one seemed the slightest bit interested in the
volunteers.
Ana gradually slipped to the back of the crocodile where Blaize and Cole were. ‘The Arashan children are here,’ she hissed, trying to make her voice carry backwards, without turning to look at Cole. He didn’t respond. She wondered if he’d heard. But then she sensed him moving up the line to walk beside her, leaving Blaize at the tail. Fingers linked through hers and she felt the rough skin of a palm pressed into her. She jolted with surprise at his daring. He squeezed and she squeezed back.
I love you
, she whispered into his mind, hoping somehow he could hear her.
The next thing she knew he’d let go and was jogging up the crocodile line.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he said. The Board member turned, her face void of emotion – emptier than the sleepwalking Project guards. ‘Have we got far to go? I need the toilet.’
Dombrant’s eyes were everywhere, taking in Ana at the back of the line, watching the hall, scanning the balcony.
‘We’re almost there,’ the Board member said. ‘There’s a toilet beside the holding reception. If you could wait another minute?’
‘Sure, he can wait,’ Dombrant said.
Cole glanced at him, then said, ‘Sure.’
They strode through a sparse, wide walkway with high ceilings and doors on both sides. Occasionally, they crossed paths with other identical passages.
‘Easy to get lost round here,’ Dombrant said. The Board member didn’t even blink. Rachel and another Project guard were showing signs of coming back to life. Cole’s ex had begun glancing around nervously. Now she spotted Ana and her jaw locked.
My face is definitely back then.
Cole swept in, firmly taking Rachel’s elbow. They murmured, back and forth on the verge of arguing. Then he moved away.
The Board member stopped in front of a white door and knocked. The handle turned. One of the Headquarters’ armed security guards stepped aside to let them through. Ana glanced at his rifle, wondering if it shot pellets or bullets.
They were shuffled through a narrow corridor. A second security guard stood at the other end. He opened the door he was guarding and urged them into a dim hangar, closing the door behind him.
High windows lay across the back wall, so thick with dirt and grime only murky daylight filtered through. Two guards with Stingers were stationed a couple of metres from the exit, keeping watch over the eighteen captured Project guards who packed together in the centre of the room, confused and sheepish. Ana couldn’t sense the electromagnetic vibrations, which meant most of them should be compos mentis.
‘This is the last group,’ the Board member told the largest guard who was well over six foot with huge shoulders and biceps popping out of the sleeves of his uniform.
The guard sniffed and beckoned the
volunteers
further into the hangar. He pointed at the first in the line to go and sit with the large group. A couple of them glanced at each other as they filed forwards. Ana caught Rachel’s eye for a split second, then saw Cole signal Dombrant.
‘So this toilet?’ Cole asked. The Board member pointed beyond the closed door back down the narrow corridor where they’d met the first guard.
‘First door on your right.’
Cole nodded. Dombrant stepped closer to the guard on the right hand side of the room. Cole’s hand moved to rest on his Stinger. Simultaneously, each of them drew their weapons. They lunged for the unsuspecting guards. Electricity buzzed and the Board’s guards juddered. As the first fell, Dombrant caught him and lowered him to the ground soundlessly. The second dropped with a light thud. Every head in the hangar turned towards the closed door. The Board member opened her mouth. Ana leapt to her as Dombrant threw her his Stinger. She caught it in mid-air and in an instant had it jammed beneath the Board member’s throat. With her free hand she put a finger to her lips. The woman watched her, blinking.
Tobias slunk from the crowd of captured Project guards, regarding Cole and Dombrant suspiciously. He raised his eyebrows at Blaize.
Dombrant shook his head.
No time for explanations.
He handed Tobias a fallen rifle and a guard’s grey cap. Blaize took the rifle and cap from the other man. Then Dombrant signalled for Tobias and Blaize to stand in the place of the original guards.
Ana edged back with the Board woman behind the door, so that when it opened she wouldn’t be seen. Meanwhile, Dombrant handed Rachel the holdall with all his weapons and with a flick of his head indicated for all the
volunteers
to go and sit down.
Less than a minute had passed since they’d entered the hangar.
Dombrant knocked on the exit door. Ana focused on slowing her breathing, trying not to make any noise.
The door opened. From where she stood, she could see the guard in the crack between the door’s hinges.
‘Toilet,’ Dombrant said, jerking his thumb at Cole.
Cole pushed past him down the corridor.
‘So getting home tonight’s gonna be hard with all those protestors,’ Dombrant said, remaining in the doorway, obscuring the guard’s view of the hangar. ‘They practically ripped up our van coming in here.’
Ana’s pulse leapt against her throat. She felt it in her stomach too. Her eyes were glued to the female Board member, but all her attention was on the corridor, listening to Cole as he strode towards the far end.
The guard with Dombrant narrowed his eyes and craned to see into the hangar. At the same moment, there came a sound of metal splitting flesh. The guard’s head whipped to the far end of the corridor. Dombrant jabbed him in the stomach, then struck up into the throat. The guard fell down moaning.
Still clutching the Board member, Ana sidled around the open door. In the corridor, Cole was dragging the other guard by his feet towards the hangar. She let out a small grunt of relief.
Within seconds, the Headquarters’ four guards were sprawled on the hangar floor being stripped of their clothes.
‘What should I do with her?’ Ana asked, holding the Stinger to the Board member. The woman gazed at them all like it was happening to someone else, somewhere else.
‘Look at her,’ Rachel said, moving to the woman. ‘She thinks this is television.’ She snatched Ana’s Stinger and shoved it against the Board member’s chest. ‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘This is really happening.’ She pressed the release button, the electric current zinged and the woman collapsed.
*
They distributed the weapons from Dombrant’s holdall. Blaize, Nate, Tobias and Dombrant changed into the grey uniforms of the Board’s internal security. Tobias took over plans to get as many of his guards out of the Board’s Headquarters as possible. He hoped to fit fourteen of them undetected in the back of the Psych Watch van.
Armed with a Paralyser resister, a blow pipe and dressed in the uniform of the Board, Ana glided towards the hangar door.
‘Where are we going?’ Cole asked, Blaize and Dombrant following close behind.
‘We’re looking for the labs,’ she answered. But Cole and Blaize hadn’t been with her when she found them. Did this mean it wouldn’t happen now? Would she be making them all take an unnecessary risk?
‘What sort of labs?’ Dombrant asked.
‘The ones where they treat children worse than rats.’
‘Can you be a bit more specific?’
‘Arashan children. Brain tissue samples. Benzidox addicts. Lobotomies. Injecting viruses. Testing resistance to pain.’ She opened the door onto the whitewashed corridor.
‘How do you know this?’
‘Maybe I’ll tell you when we get out of here.’
Dombrant grabbed her wrist and held her in an iron lock. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether you’re not on a suicide mission.’
‘You don’t have to come,’ she said.
But he will.
‘What’s really going on here?’ The Warden’s burning eyes moved from Ana to Cole. Blaize stepped up, hands squeezed around one of the confiscated rifles.
‘Everyone here is free to make their own decisions. Time to make yours.’
*
In her dream, when she’d seen the rainbow mix of colours it felt as though she’d been high up, almost level with the stained glass window. She led them quickly through the atrium to the lifts. Before the lift doors closed, two Board members joined them. Dombrant and Blaize feigned a light-hearted exchange about the weather. Ana and Cole stood side by side, looking straight ahead.
At the third floor, and the last one accessible by lift, everyone got out. Without conferring, the four of them turned in the opposite direction to the Board members. Ana let out a held breath and wiped her hands on her grey skirt.
‘Excuse me,’ someone behind them called. Feet clipped over the marble floor. Closer, closer. They all stopped. Ana watched the Board member’s approaching reflection in a smeary metal wall panel at the edge of the balcony.
‘I’ve got a very heavy table that needs lifting,’ the woman said. ‘Would you two young men be able to help me out?’
Her stomach wrenched. Cole and Blaize would go. She would be alone with Dombrant. Only the two of them. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. Her eyes focused on her own reflection – the grey blazer and white starched shirt; the flat-heeled practical shoes that were too tight. She shuddered at the sight of herself.
‘It’ll only take a minute,’ the woman said.
The smile in Blaize’s voice when he spoke was unmistakable. ‘We’d love to.’
Cole and Blaize followed the woman. She and Dombrant continued in the opposite direction. Neither of them looked back.
Dombrant searched the Board’s internal home-page directory on his interface, while Ana stood guard. She felt disorientated. They’d walked through a dozen whitewashed corridors that all looked the same.
‘Accounts,’ the Warden murmured, scanning the projecting information. ‘Human Resources, Testing, Quality Control, Purchasing, Sales and Marketing. No labs.’
Ana bit her top lip. How sure was she about this? Did she even trust the shaman? ‘What about research?’ she said. ‘They must have a research department.’
Dombrant checked. ‘There’s a small “Development” department on the fourth floor. Only way up is the stairs.’
She tugged at the sleeves of her white starched shirt.
Someone has to stop the Chairman.
‘Fourth floor it is then,’ she said.
Dombrant pulled down his bottom eyelid and popped in the contact lens with the electronic circuits. He blinked several times as it settled into place. ‘Follow me.’
They strode quickly, almost breaking into a jog. At the next turning a fire exit sign hung above a metal door. No further indications of a fourth floor built above the building’s old boiler house seemed to exist.
‘I’ve never seen the face gels dissolve so fast,’ Dombrant said, as they entered the fire exit and stood on a steel grated landing.
‘It’s the Project Minister’s special herbs,’ she answered. She wondered if he still thought she was being manipulated by Cole and the Project. Perhaps he was right and this was a suicide mission. Even Cole, who didn’t believe in the Writings, worried that she was the angel. She glanced up the zigzagging stairwell. A faint pressure formed on the edge of her awareness. She dug out the Paralyser resistor from her blazer pocket, adjusted it on the back of her head and double checked Dombrant was still wearing his.
‘Well,’ he said, a smile on the edge of his lips. ‘I wouldn’t have predicted one thing about my day so far. Certainly not you, Ana.’ He unclipped his Stinger from his belt and passed it to her. Then he verified the rifle he’d taken was loaded.
‘Watch out for the second door,’ she said.
He paused, looking puzzled. ‘After Jasper’s abduction, when your father asked me to keep an eye on you, I knew we were in trouble. You were slippery. And far too astute. But your dad, he couldn’t get past you being his little girl. His need to safeguard you from your mother’s fate.’
‘Except it wasn’t fate,’ she said. ‘It was Evelyn Knight. Dad had an affair with her. He tried to end it but Evelyn had other plans.’ The Warden’s eyebrows gravitated to the centre of his forehead. ‘She was at our house the morning Mum died,’ Ana continued. ‘My mother didn’t kill herself.’
Sorrow seemed to instantly age Dombrant’s face. ‘Yesterday at the farmhouse when we were getting supplies . . .You said something to him and that’s when he pieced it together.’ She nodded. His eyes lowered. After a moment, she slipped past him, moving silently up the stairs.
At the top, when he drew up beside her, she saw him mentally tuck away the shock of her revelation and refocus on what lay ahead.
He edged open the fire exit door and checked around before waving her through.
Four workbenches with microscopes and computers sat in front of an expansive window. Black padded wheelie chairs accompanied each workbench – all of them empty. At the far side of the room stood a single wooden door.