Found a different, better reason to worry—my phone shared that it had no bars and no access to any network. Meaning not only could we not call out for help, but we couldn’t call each other.
Sent Buchanan a text. “Really, Missus Chief? I’m right here.” He looked at his phone. “Oh.” We passed along the information that, from now on, all we had a hope for was in-system texting and that might only work if we were in close proximity.
“The generators in here are huge,” Serene said as we walked along and around pipes and such.
“They look large enough to power a city,” Claudia agreed.
“Which explains why there’s no power drain anyone’s noticed because of this facility,” Lorraine added.
Ensuring that our luck remained consistent, when we reached the door at the far side of this room it was locked. Showing why Buchanan didn’t need any of us along, he picked it in less than a minute.
We exited onto a short corridor. There was nothing to our left but wall, so we went right. Within a few feet we had a choice to turn right or zigzag left. Since we could hear voices to the left, but not clearly enough to understand what they were saying, we went right again.
We were in some sort of weird cubicle farm. There were partitions, and desks, but no barriers between workspaces, and no organized rows either. Sadly, no computer terminals, either.
Each workplace also had a locked metal cabinet attached to the floor. Buchanan picked the first one, then, seeing as there was indeed stuff inside, showed Naomi and Abigail how to pick the next ones. Being Dazzlers, they learned quickly. Adriana already knew how to pick locks, of course.
There were at least a hundred locked cabinets. Buchanan had the Gower girls and Adriana start unlocking while Claudia, Lorraine, and Serene handled the heavy lifting in terms of searching, since they were higher-level scientists than the Gower girls, and certainly a lot higher than the rest of us.
Amy and I were the slow learners of the group in terms of lock picking and searching, but before it became an issue, Buchanan put us on guard duty.
So, zigging and zagging, getting turned around, and backtracking, we managed to search every workspace. Because most of the team was using hyperspeed and Buchanan and Adriana were really efficient, this didn’t take as long as it could have. But Buchanan was correct—it took a lot longer than a normal hyperspeed search.
“Most of this stuff has to do with facility maintenance,” Lorraine said as we finished the last cabinet.
“There’s something else down here,” Abigail said. “Beyond what we’ve seen. The blueprints make it look like the ‘outer’ walls we’re hitting are the real outside, but these rooms aren’t coordinating correctly to the blueprints.”
“They’re not even, either,” Serene said. “There isn’t as much space in here as there should be.”
Managed not to ask how they figured this. I was already hopelessly lost and unsure that I could find our return room without help. I wasn’t focused on comparing where each wall sat. Though experience said that I should be.
Adriana nudged me. “I’m back. I found a door I believe we can use to get to the other levels.”
She’d left? I hadn’t noticed. I was really sucking as Commando Leader. Then again, I expected my team to use initiative, so I wasn’t unobservant and unaware so much as a hands-off manager who allowed her personnel to use their own resourcefulness to solve challenges. Yeah, I could still cough up the marketing-speak when I needed to.
“Before we do, where are the people we’ve heard talking?”
Lorraine and Claudia looked at each other, nodded, and zipped off. They were back quickly. Presumed this was because they’d memorized the maze we were in already.
“There’s no one down here but us right now,” Claudia said.
“I didn’t see or hear anyone when I went to recon the elevators,” Adriana added.
“So that means Abby and Serene are right—there are other rooms on this level we haven’t found entrances to yet.”
“How do you figure?” Amy asked, while thumbing through what looked like the Gaultier version of the Briefing Books of Boredom that Lorraine had put down after her last cubicle search.
“We know people are down here. They went into our entry room, and they were in that area because we heard them. And now they’re not here and they didn’t stumble on us rifling through their secret stuff. So, they’re elsewhere, on this level.”
Adriana nodded. “There appears to be only one way to get to the elevator from here and I saw no one in that area, or even close to it.”
“We need to find out what’s hidden within the hidden level.”
“We need to lock everything back up first,” Naomi said.
“We haven’t found what we came for, or anything useful yet,” Amy pointed out. “The information I’ve seen just looked like gibberish.”
Buchanan stiffened. “Show me.”
She handed him the big binder. “The words make sense, and yet they don’t.”
“There was nothing suspicious in any of that,” Lorraine said. “At all.”
“That’s what I mean,” Amy said.
“I agree with Ames. There’s no reason something completely mundane should be locked in a cabinet, let alone in a cabinet in a secret level in the bowels of the earth.”
Buchanan opened it, took one look, and closed the book. “It’s in code. Your father could break this, I’m sure. Are they all the same?”
The A-Cs grabbed two books each and started comparing. Considered helping. Didn’t feel confident enough in the skills to be able to guarantee I wouldn’t rip the pages, so I refrained.
Didn’t matter, they were done quickly. “No,” Lorraine said. “They’re all different.”
“Then there’s no choice,” Buchanan said, voice clipped. “We need to copy all of them.”
Naomi asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Why?”
Buchanan heaved a sigh. It was clear he was, again, asking himself how he’d gotten assigned to the Girl Scout Troop. “They’re very aware of how easy it is to be hacked—they just did it to you, remember? Anything that’s written and coded and down here is of the highest-level importance. And that means we need to copy all this data and get it deciphered, as soon as possible.”
“We don’t have enough time, let alone have a copier machine handy,” Amy pointed out.
“No copying equipment that I saw anywhere,” Adriana said. The others all nodded.
Considered the dilemma. “Actually, I have a better idea.”
CHAPTER 81
EVERYONE LOOKED AT ME EXPECTANTLY, which was nice. “We’re just going to take them.”
Got a lot of the “you so crazy” looks. “Wouldn’t that be, I don’t know, the exact opposite of being a covert team?” Naomi asked, clearly once again speaking for everyone.
Heaved a sigh and forged on. “If we cared that they knew we’d been here, then, yes, we’d need to copy these and leave no trace. But, point of fact, we don’t care. Let them know we’ve retaliated. Let them panic, and, above all, let them freaking recreate the work they don’t have on computer because they’re going Old School for this one to avoid having their data found, stolen, or corrupted.”
“If we didn’t care, why did we bother to pick all these locks?” Buchanan asked, sarcasm knob definitely heading for eleven.
“Ahhh, well, we want to lock them back up. Confuse our enemies a little longer. Sort of thing.”