He slid it down in the proper direction and the two doors slip open to reveal a guard seated at a desk ten feet away.
“Hey!” the guard yelled, bounding to his feet.
Turcotte dropped the box and reached for the stun gun.
It got caught in his pocket and he abandoned the effort, sprinting forward. The guard’s gun had just cleared his holster when Turcotte jumped into the air, feet leading, and flew over the desk. The bottom of his boots caught the guard in the chest, knocking him back against the wall.
Turcotte was back on his feet first and he slammed a turn kick into the side of the guard’s skull, knocking him out.
He turned to the desktop and looked at the computer screen that was built into it. It showed a schematic, with rooms labeled and green lights in each little box. The others quickly gathered around.
“Archives,” Turcotte said, resting a finger on a room. He looked up at Nabinger and Von Seeckt. “That’s yours.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stun gun. “You meet anyone, use this. Just aim and pull the trigger, the gun does the rest. You’ve got five minutes. Then be back here whether you found what you’re looking for or not.”
Nabinger oriented himself with the diagram and looked down the corridor. “Right. Let’s go.” He headed off with Von Seeckt.
Turcotte pointed. “I’d say your friend is in one of these two places.” One was labeled HOLDING AREA and the other BIOLAB.
“Biolab,” Kelly said.
They sprinted in the opposite direction from the one Von Seeckt and Nabinger had taken. The hall was quiet and they passed several doors with nameplates on the outside — obviously offices for the people who worked here in the daytime. “Left,” Kelly said. A set of swinging double doors waited at the end of a short corridor. They halted and Kelly arched her eyebrows at Turcotte in question as they heard someone cough on the other side.
“We charge,” Turcotte whispered.
“You don’t have much of a tactical repertoire,” Kelly replied quietly. Turcotte pushed the doors open and stepped in. A middle-aged woman in a white coat was bent over a large chest-high rectangular black object. Her hair was pulled back tight in a bun and she peered up over a pair of glasses.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Johnny Simmons?” Turcotte asked.
“What?” the woman replied, but Turcotte caught the shift of her eyes to the black object.
He walked past her and looked down. It reminded him of an oversized coffin. There was a panel on the top — what the woman had been looking at. “What is this?” he asked.
“Who are you people?” The woman looked past them at the door. “What are you doing here?”
There were a number of cables coming out of the ceiling, going into the black top. Some of the cables were clear and there was fluid in them. He turned on the woman. “Get him out of there.”
“Johnny’s in there?” Kelly stared at the casing. She walked over and picked up a clipboard hanging on a hook.
She checked the papers on it.
“Someone’s in there,” Turcotte said. “Those are IV tubes. I don’t know what they’re carrying, but someone’s in there on the receiving end.”
“It’s Johnny,” Kelly said, holding up the clipboard.
“Get him out of there,” Turcotte repeated.
“I don’t know who you are,” the woman began, “but—”
Turcotte slid his Browning High Power out of its holster.
He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. “You got five seconds or I put a round through your left thigh.”
The woman glared at him. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“He would,” Kelly said. “And if he didn’t, I would. Open it!”
“One. Two. Three.” Turcotte dropped the barrel and aimed at the woman’s leg. “All right. All right!” The woman held up her hands. “But I can’t just open it. The shock will kill the obj—” She caught herself. “The patient. I have to do this in proper procedure.”
“How long?” Turcotte asked.
“Fifteen minutes to—”
“Make it five.”
At the other end of this level of the facility Von Seeckt and Professor Nabinger were staring at an intellectual treasure trove. The archives had been dark when they opened the doors. When Nabinger hit the lights, a room full of large filing cabinets had come into view. Opening drawers, they found photos. The drawers were labeled with numbers that meant nothing to the two men. At the far end of the room there was a vault door with a small glass window. Von Seeckt peered through. “The original stone tablets from the mothership cavern are in there,” he said. “But they must have photographs of them in these cabinets.”
Nabinger was already opening drawers. “Here’s the same high runes from the site in Mexico that Slater showed me,” Nabinger said, holding up large ten-by-fifteen-inch glossies.
“Yes, yes,” Von Seeckt said absently, throwing open drawer after drawer. “We need to find ones she didn’t show you — the ones from the mothership cavern. I do not believe our Captain Turcotte will have much patience once his five-minute limit is up.”
Nabinger started going through drawers more quickly.
The woman’s hands shook as she worked on the panel.
Most of the cables had been disconnected and she was checking some readings. “What did you people do to him?” Kelly asked.
“It’s complicated,” the woman said.
“E-D-O-M?” Kelly spelled out the letters.
The woman stiffened. “How do you know of that?” “Finish the job,” Turcotte said.
The woman hit a key and the box began beeping. “It will be safe to open in thirty seconds.”
Von Seeckt had paused at one drawer, looking at the photos more carefully. At the end of the aisle Nabinger was moving on to the next cabinet when he noticed something in a glass cabinet on the wall. He moved over and stared at the object inside.
Von Seeckt held up a handful of pictures. “These are the photos from the mothership cavern! Let us rejoin the good captain.”
The beeping stopped and the woman pointed at a lever on the side of the box. “Lift that.”
Turcotte grabbed the red handle and pulled it up. With a hiss the lid came up, revealing a naked Johnny Simmons submerged inside a pool of dark-colored liquid. Needles were stuck in both arms and tubes led to his lower body. A tube was inserted in his mouth, a clear plastic-type material wrapped around the tube and molded to his face, ensuring a seal to keep the fluid out.
“I have to remove the oxygen tube and the catheters and IVs,” the woman said.
“Do it.” Turcotte said. He turned as Von Seeckt and Nabinger appeared in the doorway. Nabinger’s hands were bleeding and he held something wrapped in his jacket.
“You were not at—” Von Seeckt halted in midsentence when he saw the body inside the black box. “Ah, these people! They never stopped. They never stopped.”
“Enough,” Turcotte ordered. The woman was done. He leaned over and scooped Johnny up. “Let’s go.”
“What do I do with her?” Kelly asked.
“Kill her,” Turcotte snapped as he headed out the door.
Kelly looked at the woman. “Please don’t,” the woman begged.
“The change starts here,” Kelly said. She shot the woman with the stun gun, then hurried after the others.
They piled into the elevator. Turcotte leaned Johnny up against the wall and Kelly kneeled to support him.
Turcotte punched in the button labeled G and the elevator rose. He poked Nabinger in the chest. “You and Kelly carry him out to the van.”