Transparency: Bio-Tech Cavern Secrets Untold (27 page)

The third floor contained no tubular walkways. The same honeycombed walls reached some forty feet to the ceiling. Halliday imagined a futuristic sports event that would occur above. The floor appeared to be laid out in a grid. A wide hallway crisscrossed it at the center. Small aisles crossed the hallways in a linear manner. Various rooms appeared to be equally distributed on the grid. Except one large room, taller than the others. The upper floor of the room housed a dome, with a circular glass top.

A huge square rig in the ceiling consisted of polished steel girders supporting a network of flat mobile trolleys. A display that resembled a basketball scoreboard above center court apparently controlled them.

The miniature monorails slid across the ceiling. The trolleys dangled scores of clear wires that descended into the rooms that had no ceilings.

“Wow,” Laurel said, clearly intimidated.

“
Star Wars
stuff,” Halliday muttered. He spit on the floor. No bluish light attacked it.

He feared a resolution neared. It might not necessarily end up in their favor. It surprised him that they hadn’t been detected yet. Two things were in their favor. All C14 personnel were attending Palmier’s crisis meeting. The bio-extremists must be stirring up trouble by now.

“John, whatever happens, thank you for helping me.”

“We’ll make it through this,” he said, aware that his voice lacked conviction.

Halliday could imagine the elation of a second floor scientist when told he or she had been promoted to the third floor: “Hooray, I get to experiment on human bodies instead of these filthy rats.”

“This reminds me of the theatre with all the wires descending from the ceiling,” Laurel said.

“This show’s never played on Broadway,” he replied. “
Genevive’s Little Shop of Horrors
.”

“Detective Halliday, your sense of humor surprises me… I mean for a policeman.”

Her lighthearted reply encouraged him. “I bet you know some good spelunker jokes.”

When he heard no response, he said, “Let’s go.”

They followed the main corridor toward DANGER—FLAMMABLE. The red letters were painted vertically on the huge silo that had extended through each floor.

Halliday’s intuition told him to proceed through the NO ENTRY door. He swiped Palmier’s badge.

They entered a medical supply room. Eight foot steel and glass locked cabinets spanned the walls. The shelves were better stocked than any major emergency room.

Another bad feeling overcame him. Why would a research lab be stocked with enough hospital supplies to support an entire city?

“What’s this?” he said. A stainless steel square box twice the size of a standard microwave hung in the air, supported by wires from the trolley above. The front panel had an array of lights. LED readout declared CRYOGENTIC UPDATE IN PROCESS.

“They transport stuff between the rooms with those trolley cars on the ceiling,” Laurel said. “This must be Pandora’s box.”

Halliday’s swiped Palmier’s I.D. across what looked like a reader on the box. The digital panel displayed WARNING. A recorded voice said, “You have violated security procedures badge number five-two-eight-five-two-two. Please report this incident to the main security building within thirty minutes. Failure to comply will result in termination.”

Halliday grunted.

“Detective, you just got my ex-husband in big trouble.”

Her smooth voice calmed him. “Any time,” he replied.

He still hadn’t figured out Genevive Labs’ definition of
termination
. He should have asked Altman.

He took a swipe with the crow bar. The wounded box scurried up toward the ceiling. “Whatever’s in that box must be important.”

Laurel borrowed his crowbar. It hung in the air before it began whacking cabinets. The doors swung open. “I’ll just be a moment,” she said.

A plethora of various medicines floated in front of him before they disappeared.

“You’re going to need some meds for your face,” she said.

The force behind the crowbar convinced Halliday that Laurel had reconciled her fears with the huge task they had. “Thanks for your concern.”

“They must perform medical procedures up here,” Laurel said. “They’re more equipped for surgery than bio experiments.”

“That’s odd,” he said. “What’s that
meaty
odor?”

“I don’t know, but if it gets any worse I’ll be sick to my stomach,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Outside, he said, “Follow me.” The sign REFUSE stood in five foot tall red letters at the far end of the hallway.

They continued down the main corridor to the center intersection. In the middle of the floor a small amphitheater no doubt staged Palmier’s eloquent voice.

“This is where the
uppity ups
hang out,” Laurel said as Halliday headed toward the REFUSE sign.

The front
depository
at the refuse area reminded Halliday of a high tech version of the recently bulldozed Santa Reina Fox Theater ticket booth. The sci-fi feature now playing at building C14 would instill more horror than any flick that had ever bloodied the old theater screen.

The refuse station was constructed of glass and steel. A large stainless steel tray fed through a thick glass window. It reminded him of the theater booth at the Santa Reina PD duty station. He surmised that the scientists would place their “bag of bones” in the tray then stand back, pinching their noses, while the attendant inside pushed a button. The garbage would disappear inside the refuse room via a sealed conveyor belt.

Halliday saw a white smock hanging in refuse station. The scientists on this floor didn’t wear the space suits. An elevator on the other end of the building would enable top-level scientists to bypass the first two floors. Halliday figured on using it to escape.

“Should we go inside?” Laurel said.

“Just a quick peek,” Halliday said. He followed a walkway around to the entrance in the rear. “Hold your nose,” he said.

Another card swipe caused the refuse door to buzz open.

They hesitated when a loud gust of wind rushed across the floor.

“What is that, John?” Laurel called out. “Do they know we’re here?”

He wondered, too. “Look, the air is coming out of jets inside the honeycombs. I think it’s an air purifying system, to alleviate the ‘dead meat’ odor.”

Seconds later the honeycombs closed, causing the air flow to subside. They entered the refuse room. Halliday heard Laurel’s footsteps close behind.

The door slammed behind him. “Laurel?”

“I’m here.”

The chicken farm odor got worse inside. A large stainless steel cylinder sat in the middle of the room. About eight feet in diameter, a couple dozen large stainless steel bolts secured it to the floor. The top of the refuse unit rose to eye level. An alarm panel on the wall displayed, AIR PURIFICATION MALFUNCTION. The result of Altman’s lock down? Or had Halliday disabled the alarm system?

“This feeds the well,” Laurel said.

Halliday heard the clicking sound of her camera shutter.

“I’m taking loads of photos,” she said, groaning at the foul odor.

“Please activate RPS reset mode immediately,” a recorded voice warned. “Room purification system contamination levels have exceeded minimum guidelines.”

“Phew,” Laurel said.

Halliday pushed the ACTIVATE button. A large stainless steel tray about four foot square and one foot deep slid out of the cylinder. Antiseptic robotic lights similar to what they had seen in the white room attacked the receptacle. Halliday grabbed a Teddy Bear from the desk and tossed it into the receptacle. He pressed another large red button aptly labeled FLUSH.

“Bye, bye, Teddy.”

The receptacle retracted inside the cylinder. It performed a one hundred and eighty degree flip. After a few seconds he heard the gush of running water.

“A century or two from now the discovery of the Teddy Bear will be significant,” Laurel said.

Halliday looked at the clock. “We’d better leave,” They had been inside the building a long sixteen minutes. “Palmier and company are sure to find out that I escaped the Annex, that Altman is missing.”

“You were in the Annex?”

“I’ll explain later. Let’s hope your egomaniac ex-husband is conducting a long-winded meeting.” It surprised him that he had heard nothing more on the two-way radio about the bio-extremists. It had several channels, though. He suspected that they were using separate radio nets for different purposes.

The putrid smell renewed his headache.

Laurel said, “Whoosh, let’s get out of here.”

He agreed with a sharp grunt although he was disappointed. He still didn’t have the crucial evidence, the miracle that they had risked their lives coming in here for.

Halliday hustled down the corridor. Laurel’s squeaky sneakers lagged behind. He imagined the angry claws of Genevive’s latest experimental rat-cat-marmoset creature pursuing him. He stopped to catch his breath.

“Now what?” she said.

“Time’s running out. Our best bet is to use the executive elevator.”

“Let’s go.”

It didn’t surprise him that she didn’t argue against further investigation. He wondered, though. Even if he did escape the building how would he avoid Genevive security?

“We’re no good to anyone if Brad finds us in here,” she said. “The photos I’ve taken coupled with the other evidence should open some eyes.”

“What other evidence?”

“Jillian left some documents from a lawyer in the cave. It appears Genevieve, in cahoots with the federal government doctored the original deed.”

That explained it. “The documents are in the cave?”

“No, I removed them from the cave. They’re in the bottom drawer, in your apartment bedroom.”

They should be safe. Palmier’s men would have already checked his place. “Thank you, Laurel. I’ll take care of them.”

Halliday felt better now. They were prepared to leave until he stopped when he saw the large room with the observatory structure. A short hallway led to a door labeled, OPERATING THEATRE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

He said, “I’m betting the ‘unholy grail’ is behind that door. Let’s hurry.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Palmier’s ID card once again performed magic. A reception area held a wall of electronic files on small disks. “Patient records?” Halliday grabbed a handful of small disks out of a cabinet. He handed them to Laurel.

“Look over there,” she said.

The sign on the door off to the right read, OPERATING ROOM PERSONNEL ONLY.

Halliday opened the door to a circular hallway. Each direction led to a separate spiral stairway. VIEWER MEZZANINE signs pointed the way. The door in front of them, RESTRICTED ENTRY, caught his attention.

The door opened into a futuristic operating suite that held a new odor, more subtle than the refuse room.

Halliday smelled human flesh.

“I’ve always hated hospitals,” Laurel said, “This place...”

She must have recognized the odor, too. “Let’s find out what we can then get the hell out of here,” he said.

The room formed a circle about the length of three hospital beds across. It featured an operating station in the center on a platform that could be raised or lowered.

Halliday called out, “What does this operating theatre have to do with transparency?” Large hypodermic needles were laid out on a small table next to the operating table.

“It must involve radical treatment of the skin,” she said. “They inject chemicals into their subject’s skin. What they’ve done here is lethal, caused by drastic transformations of the subject’s exoskeleton.”

Laurel pointed at a photo next to a row of hypodermic needles.

The grotesque animal they had hung in the bedroom doorway of Jillian’s guesthouse.

She continued, “But they didn’t know. The experiment was never completed until they flushed their refuse of tissue and bones down into my pool. The chemical reaction between the refuse and the contents of the pool created my transparency.”

Up in the mezzanine, cameras with bulky lenses hung on small pedestals. They could zoom in on a patient. Halliday estimated a dozen participants could view the operation. A mobile video screen hung in front of each station.

“Brad never mentioned this,” Laurel said, her voice tinged with betrayal.

Halliday had been in an operating theatre twice. He suspected that this one rivaled any hospital in the world. He felt as if he had wandered onto a movie set at Universal Studios.

“They film the operations,” Laurel said.

He gazed up at the sophisticated camera while he heard Laurel’s camera shutter click away.

“The disks I handed you from the front office may be useful,” he said.

“Let’s hope so.”

Hope normally didn’t have a place in a cop’s vocabulary.

“The medical equipment looks beyond state of the art,” Laurel said. “I suspect the scientists in the mezzanine are in control. I imagine the audience activity above causes a nerve racking experience for the operating physician.”

He saw it first. “The surgeon is a remote controlled robot. Observe the finger-like appendages.” Halliday thought of the vagrant who complained to Gladstone that aliens had abducted him. This must have been his operating room in the spaceship.

Four long, thin arms with soft tubular digits reached out from a round assembly that could be maneuvered anywhere above the body.

“I bet some poor soul laid on one of those beds while the scientists up there instructed Dr. Robot which finger to cut off first,” he said.

“I hope they aren’t as barbaric as that,” she said in a sad voice. “They must have believed in what they were doing.”

Her voice lacked conviction.

Palmier’s meeting must be lasting longer than expected because of the loss of Dr. Krabbi. Had the Morning Glory extremists breached the castle walls?

“Why an operating room at a biotech research center?” Laurel said.

The sickening odor began to annoy him. “They weren’t just experimenting on the missing persons. They were performing operations on them.” Curiosity led him closer to the operating station. “Look at this.”

“It’s a human shaped clear mold,” she said, her voice coming from over his shoulder.

“Dr. Krabbi said they were planning on genetically engineering a group of stealth spies. I think that’s what they’re trying to do here. He said attaining the ‘invisible part’ would be several years down the road.”

“They would speed the process by using human specimens.”

The Jell-O mold formed around his finger. He quickly removed it. “Oh, no.”

“You’re okay,” she said. “It’s probably not toxic until they add the chemicals.”

The end of the mold flattened out past the feet. It connected to two high tech machines, one called ASCENT, the other RTU or Recombinant Tissue Unit. Both of the units had several tubes connected to them.

“John, I’m scared.”

He hadn’t seen any surveillance cameras on any of the floors. Odd given the ruling party’s paranoia here. They could be using a state of the art surveillance system invisible to the eye inside the building.

“This is a nightmare,” she said. “Didn’t mom or dad ever paddle their behinds when they were young?”

“Someone should have beaten the living daylights out of them. Let’s take a quick look in the back room.” He understood now why Laurel didn’t have much patience for the Genevive Labs management team.

A door labeled PATIENT STAGING AREA stood opposite them

He touched Palmier’s badge to the reader. The door swooshed open. The stench of decaying human bodies hit them.

“Oh my god.”

Halliday held a hand over his nose. The room reminded him of a hospital emergency room. Several beds were separated by turquoise privacy curtains stretched across the openings. He walked up to the first bed and ripped the curtain open. A sheet covered the body on a gurney. Only the feet were exposed.

He continued, as a pall bearer continues. “Get your camera ready Laurel. This isn’t going to be pretty.”

A bank of sophisticated electronic gear, similar to that in the operating room, surrounded the body. An array of small green tubes snaked under the sheets. The tubes curled to the ceiling. The electronic displays showed all zeros or straight lines. A dull hum sounded from the speakers.

The familiar tag hung from the deceased’s toe, nothing new for Halliday. But in this “house of horrors” he felt queasy.

The camera shutter clicked like chattering teeth.

He leaned in, read the tag, and said, “Male Caucasian, sixty-six years old.”

“That’s odd,” Laurel said.

Everything here appeared beyond odd. He pulled back the sheet, exposing the man’s body.

Laurel gasped.

Doctor Krabbi’s words, “Our poster boy,” rang in his ears. Lamar Festus, or what used to be Festus, was stretched out on the gurney. He touched the skin. The texture felt rubbery. It held the same green hue as Laurel’s when he had first encountered her in Jillian’s basement.

Her heavy breathing stopped. “Laurel?”

“Laurel, say something.”

“How could anyone…? These scientists must be insane.”

“We’re almost done here.”

Halliday strode around the staging room, ripping curtains apart. Seven gurneys held the remains of seven geriatric vagrants. He winced at missing limbs and ghoulish faces. One man had missing both eyes. No doubt the vagrants would match up to Rich Gladstone’s missing person list.

“Laurel, I’m sorry, we need face shots of all of them.”

The camera shutter clicked away amid her sobs.