The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (36 page)

Hoping her voice would not fail her, she swallowed lightly and said, “Clear.” She tried to smile at the absurdity of the moment.

She heard a thump and felt a stab of pain deep in her chest, and knew nothing more.

Gary was relieved to find the same parking spot where he had found the Mustang was still available; in fact, he was relieved to be back in the abandoned neighborhood at all. Moments after leaving Carly’s office, he had plopped down into the driver’s seat, only to realize with a stab of horror that he had no idea how to get back to the warehouse. He had left without an address, without any way to contact his coconspirators; and the unfamiliar city loomed up around him, unfriendly and uncaring. Briefly, the thought that Hammond had planned it this way crossed his mind.

When he had finally turned on the car and the GPS beeped to signal its power had returned, he felt both foolish and giddy. The route he had taken to the newspaper offices was still highlighted on the screen, and although it still didn’t get him to the warehouse’s front door, he felt certain that once he was back in the neighborhood, he could find his way easily enough.

When he arrived back in the neighborhood of the warehouse, the fog had not yet burned off; it had only lifted away from the ground and building tops enough to make it easier to gain his bearings, although the sameness in the light gave him the strange sensation that time was not passing. On his drive back, he had listened intently to the radio, waiting for some indication that his information had worked its way from Carly’s desk to some editor’s eyes, but the stations all continued on with their normal business, only referencing the power outage in Hawaii briefly. The growing consensus seemed to be that some kind of accident at a central station had blacked out the entire grid. One reporter mentioned the lack of information coming off the island, then segued back into reporting on political polls and unemployment numbers.

Just before his freeway exit, he had pulled out his cell phone and dialed each of his kids, getting the same strange, harsh ring that never connected. When he tried the house number, he got two rings before the line simply disconnected. A dull, fearful ache swelled in his chest, and he prayed silently that his family was somewhere safe, that his fears were unfounded, and that somehow this entire thing was some kind of exaggerated misunderstanding. As he pulled back into the parking spot, he realized he was grinding his teeth with stress and frustration.

A short walk later, and he was standing in front of the same door through which he had exited only hours earlier. It looked innocuous enough, which was likely the point, but he still wondered how the group inside would react when he knocked. Were they expecting him to find his way back so quickly? Had they realized that he had gone without a golden thread to lead him back through the maze of the city? He shook his head and scoffed at his own paranoia. Still, he grinned, imagining Hammond dropping into some ridiculous defensive crouch as he banged loudly on the metal with the meat of his fist.

He was just about to knock again when a whirring sound made him look up. A tiny camera he hadn’t noticed repositioned itself from a wide street view to take him in, and he tilted his head up so they could be sure it was him. After a second, the instrument moved again to survey the street in both directions before the whirring sound stopped. Finally, he heard the bolts being thrown, and the door opened just enough for him to slip into the building.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized it was Josie who had opened the door; her face was set in a cool, distant mask—nothing like the concerned expression she had worn when he had walked out the door a few hours earlier.

“You’ve been gone for a while,” she said flatly. She looked tired—exhausted, really. The bruises under her eyes were still a dark purplish-blue, fading to a sickly yellow near the bridge of her nose and cheekbones. She must have just showered; her face shone without makeup, and her damp hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail at the nape of her neck.

He shrugged and said, “I dropped the stuff off with a reporter at the
LA Times
. We spoke briefly, but like you said, all she really needed to see was the video, and she was off on her own.”

Josie nodded, glancing toward the door before her eyes flitted back to his.

“I hope you didn’t tell her too much about yourself,” she said in the same noncommittal tone. He decided to brush the statement off, as if he would never have revealed any kind of incriminating personal information. But briefly, he worried. Reporters had a duty to keep their sources anonymous . . . right?

A significant change in the atmosphere of the warehouse began to dawn on him; there was a new tension in Josie’s body, in her attitude and expression, hiding just beneath the tired eyes and heavy body movements. And the way she kept glancing at the door made him feel as though if he turned to follow her gaze, he’d find a masked assassin waiting to shoot them both.

“What’s going on?” he asked quietly, hoping that some of their previous conspiratorial interaction would return.

Josie just shrugged and turned to head back, deeper into the building.

“Nothing really. We’ve just been discussing ways forward. And starting to wonder if something had happened to you,” she said, moving away from where he stood.

He followed, trying to make sense of the shift in their relationship. Had she been worried? A fight with Hammond maybe, once she had let him leave with such crucial information? But it had only been copies; he was risking nothing but himself by going to a news outlet. Ahead of him, Josie pushed open the door into the kitchen, where Reggie and Hammond sat, picking at the remains of cold pizza.

“Hey! He’s back!’ Reggie’s exclamation did little to warm the frosty room or to convince Gary that something important hadn’t occurred while he was away.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Out. Getting some things we need.” Hammond answered this time, his eyes trained on Gary’s face. “Did you speak to someone at the
Times
?”

Gary was surprised by the question, both by the knowledge it implied and the strange inflection in Hammond’s voice. Was he curious? Hopeful? It felt like something more . . . something different.

“I did, actually. I know I was just supposed to drop the info off, but, well, it was like you said,” Gary said, gesturing at Hammond. “They’re all going about their daily business, like no one knows anything other than the power’s out. And that’s no big deal. Just a minor inconvenience. I mean, they jumped from a tiny little blurb about Oahu to a story about mortgages.”

Hammond raised one graying eyebrow as he wiped his fingers with a napkin and said, “And did you hear anything different after you dropped off the info? After you spoke to the reporter?”

At that moment he knew that Hammond, and probably the rest of the group, knew something about his little foray into whistle-blowing that he didn’t, or couldn’t, know. Surveying each of their faces—Reggie’s tilted down at his mangled pizza, Hammond’s smug and calculating, Josie’s still closed and cool—he grabbed a nearby folding chair and seated himself at the table.

“So, what’s the joke?” he asked, more than a hint of his frustration seeping into his voice. When no one answered, he sat back hard in his chair and folded his arms, trying to convey with his posture that he would wait them out. Hammond stood with a quiet scoff and exited the room. Josie followed him with her eyes until he was out the door and his footsteps could no longer be heard. Then she slumped slightly in her seat.

“Someone explain to me what’s happened since I left,” he pressed. When she looked up at him, the cool mask had fallen, and he could see again that she was tired, worried, irritated . . . and something more.

“We let you go because you insisted,” she spoke up finally, wearily, “but we knew it was, in all likelihood, a pointless venture. And risky to boot. Hammond is sure someone will have followed you back, although I tried to tell him they don’t even know you’re working with us.”

She went on to explain to him that they had, of course, looked into reporting the story to the news outlets days ago, before he had ever arrived. They had even sent in their own “anonymous tips,” and each one was met with cautious enthusiasm upon arrival and never mentioned on the air. Two of the reporters she had spoken to had been reassigned to overseas posts immediately after receiving her packets, covering the ever-escalating tensions in dangerous Middle Eastern locations. She hadn’t followed up with the others. Instead, she had done her own investigation and discovered what she considered to be the reason for the lack of coverage.

“The parent company to Argo also owns controlling shares of one major network. That was as far as I got. I mean, it’s difficult to track corporate accounts, who owns what and things like that. But it was enough to assume that the other networks, even the cable outlets . . . they won’t run the story. Not until the shit hits the fan, because they can’t be wrong. Right now, with the blackout and no info coming off the island, there’s still too much of a risk. I’m sure they’re all at war with themselves, wanting to get the scoop but afraid of making such a potentially spectacular accusation, only to have it be proven false. They won’t break the story until they get something concrete off the island. Think about it: all we’ve given them is data from a study conducted on the mainland on some animals, and a few bits of paperwork to show that they did, in fact, move on to human studies. We don’t have anything linking this to the blackout, we don’t have any information about what’s happened with the trial between the animal studies and now, and we have absolutely no information linking the power outage to Argo. They’ll wait until they can get some kind of confirmation. And by that time . . .”

Gary’s head was swimming. He lowered his forehead to the table and closed his eyes, considering this new information.

“By that time, it will be too late,” he finished for her, wearily.

They sat in silence for a long while, until Gary heard Reggie shift in his chair and Josie spoke up, placing her hand on his back.

“Gary, why don’t you go lie down for a while?” she suggested. “We have a lot of work to do with your samples still, and until we figure something out, it’s probably best if you get some sleep. Try to recover a little.”

As she spoke, he felt every inch of his body begin to ache with exhaustion, the soreness of the accident and his sleepless night on the tiny bed returning full force. He realized there was likely a good deal of jet lag involved as well. Maybe she was right, and it would be best to get some rest. He stood, asking where there might be a more comfortable, private bed where he could be away from their discussions. She pointed him toward a room near the area where he had first awoken, and he had just turned to head in that direction when he heard a pounding on the metal door out front.

Instantly, his heart surged up into his throat. So Hammond was right—he had been followed, and the people who had tried to kill them the night before were only feet away from where they stood now. He looked to Josie and then to Reggie, who had exchanged a glance and then directed their eyes back at him. He waited for one of them to make a move, for Hammond to burst back into the room wielding strange weapons, for something to happen; but they just watched him, waiting, as if the sound had never come.

He made a strange choking sound and gestured toward the sound.

“It’s just the team coming back,” Josie answered, as if she knew what he was trying to ask. “Go get some rest. We’ll probably just be done with setup by the time you wake up.”

Gary frowned. They were waiting for him to leave the room; in fact, he felt certain that Josie’s suggestion that he sleep far away from the group’s working quarters had been timed to herd him out before that knock on the door had come. They were keeping something from him, and he was unsure whether or not he wanted to be let in on the secret.

“Are you going to let them in?” he finally asked, a hard edge to his voice. Josie’s face changed slightly as she realized he had figured out the game, and she seemed to slump even more. A deep sigh built in her chest, and she looked back at him with uncertainty in her eyes. He stared back at her, impassive. Finally, she turned and headed for the door, Reggie close on her heels.

Gary followed behind, and when they walked out into the front room of the warehouse, he heard Grant’s muffled complaints through the heavily reinforced door. Josie rested her palm on the door handle, and Reggie pressed a button on a nearby intercom.

“We good?” he asked simply.

Hammond’s voice responded, “It’s them, with cargo in tow.”

Josie opened the door to reveal three silhouetted figures, the middle one leaning heavily against Grant’s large frame.

“Come on, boyo,” Grant grunted as he stepped inside, half guiding, half carrying the man who staggered next to him. Tab followed to his right, providing what physical support she could. Instantly, the team was moving with purpose; Josie’s exhaustion dissolved as she murmured back and forth with Tab, and Reggie swung in behind to take the smaller woman’s place, supporting their struggling passenger.

They passed Gary quickly, as if he wasn’t standing there watching them regroup. Dazed by yet another sudden shift in the atmosphere, he followed them back into the kitchen area and through the second door into a large portion of the warehouse that had been converted into a makeshift laboratory. Several flat-screen televisions linked to computer terminals displayed numbers, figures, and graphs that appeared to be updating themselves every few seconds. Hammond sat in the center of the smaller area, watching one of the screens carefully, his elbows on the desk in front of him.

To the left, three gurneys had been set up with the corresponding medical equipment that Gary expected to see at a hospital: monitors, IV lines, and a slew of other machines and tubes that ran to boxes about which he could only guess. For a moment, he couldn’t understand why each of the bed setups sat in its own, relatively large plastic container. And then he realized: the team had set up quarantined rooms.