“It better be,” he said. “I think we’re running out of time.”
“Have I ever been slow about getting back in the suit?”
“I’ll see you in an hour or sooner, then.”
She tugged her cap down, gave him a ragged salute, and marched down the road with her arms tight to her sides. St. George kept an eye on her until she’d passed two buildings, then headed in the opposite direction.
He could move faster on his own. If he focused on the spot between his shoulder blades he could feel gravity get weak. It let him move in quick, long strides. He crouched behind a parked truck as a Humvee sped down the road.
Building nineteen had a security keypad. St. George kicked himself for not asking if he’d need a code or something. He was sure he could force the door open, and just as sure it would set off an alarm if he did. Then he kicked himself again for being dumb.
The lock popped off as he pried the window open. As he suspected, the Army contractors hadn’t bothered to put alarms on the fourth floor windows. He slid it open the rest of the way, spun in the air, and slipped into the building.
He couldn’t hear much in the building. The faint rumble of air conditioning. A phosphorescent tube crackled somewhere. As far as he could tell, there were no voices, ringing phones, or any of the other sounds of life one would expect from a populated building. St. George slipped into the empty hall.
It took him about ten minutes to find Sorensen’s lab. It had his name on a small plate, along with three long words the hero couldn’t pronounce—two bio s and a neuro . It also had another security keypad. He considered skimming around the outside of the building until he found a window into the lab, then realized Danielle was probably already at her workshop. If her numbers were right, she’d have the suit ready to assemble in twenty minutes.
He braced his feet, put his palm just above the latch, and pushed. The metal frame let out a little groan. The latch leaned in toward his hand and wrinkles appeared in the painted steel around his fingers. There were four quick pops from the hinges, a squeal of metal, and the door flew into the lab.
St. George half-expected the room to be filled with bubbling chemicals and a Tesla coil. It was mostly computers, including a huge screen he knew Stealth would never admit to wanting. A few brains floated in small tanks near diagrams and cross sections of their structure.
Five exes were fastened down on tilted gurneys, each pushed up against the back wall. The row of almost-vertical figures reminded him of a carnival ride, one of the ones that spun people around. Four of them had nylon straps across their foreheads and were gagged with what looked like pieces of a broom stick. The fifth’s head was free and it swiveled back and forth, snapping its teeth at the air.
Sorensen sat in the middle of the lab on a tall stool. He looked over his shoulder at the hero. “It’s open,” he said. “I haven’t locked it in months.”
“Where’s Zzzap?”
“Somewhere safe.”
St. George soared across the room and lifted the doctor by his collar. “No games,” he said. Hot smoke streamed out of his nostrils and mouth. “You’re going to take me to him now and you’re going to release him.”
“He’s much safer where he is,” said Sorensen. “They can’t get to him in there.”
“I said no games.”
“You can put me down,” said the doctor. “I won’t run. If it’s what you want, I’ll take you to your friend. But he is safer where he is.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
The doctor tried to shrug, but hanging in St. George’s hand he just swung in his coat. “I’ll need to get the blue flash drive from my desk.”
“What for?”
“It’s a code key. Mr. Burke’s held behind an interwoven trio of Faraday cages. It’s what’s keeps him there. The key shuts them off.”
“That’s it?”
“There’s a matching key one of the soldiers on duty will have. In theory we need both. I’m sure you could destroy all three cages if you needed to, though.”
St. George set the older man down on the ground. The doctor’s shoes clacked on the linoleum, a softer noise than the clicking teeth. “You’re awfully helpful all of a sudden.”
Sorensen shrugged again and adjusted his glasses. Then he tried to flatten the hundreds of wrinkles in his clothes. “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s all over now. With Colonel Shelly dead there’s going to be confusion. They’ve got no reason to keep pretending. Especially with you here.”
“Wait,” said the hero. “Back up. How did Shelly die? What happened?”
“Too much pressure on his mind,” said Sorensen. “That’s one of the bad things out here. These are good people. Good, brave people. There’s just too much on their minds.”
“Pressure on their minds? Wait a minute. Is this…Does this have something to do with the Nest?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, of course not,” he said with a sigh. “The Nest doesn’t even work.”
St. George looked at the older man and followed his eyes to the oversized diagram on the big screen. He recognized it from Stealth’s sketch the day before. The neural stimulator.
“That was the deal, you see,” Sorensen said. “I made a deal with the dead. I wouldn’t say anything if any of you came here. If they found you and you came here, I couldn’t say anything. Especially to her.”
St. George tilted his head. “Her who?”
“Her. Doctor Morris. That was the deal. The dead would follow commands, they’d act just like the Nest was working. But I couldn’t warn the one who’d killed him.”
“What are you talking ab—oh, shit.”
Across the room, the fifth ex had stopped clicking its teeth together. It stared at St. George. It grinned.
* * *
Danielle was stuck across the road from her workshop, hiding by the Tomb. Just as she’d reached the building a jeep had pulled up. Now two soldiers were searching inside her shop. Two more waited outside and did a weak job of looking around. They were some of the new recruit soldiers. One of them was seventeen, tops. The other looked closer to fifty.
After what felt like ages the searchers trotted out and shook their heads. They gave a last glance around the corners of the building and the sergeant typed something into the keypad. All four of them piled back into the jeep and roared off to another part of the base.
In the same situation, she figured Stealth would wait at least three minutes before stepping into the open. Danielle waited twice that. And then two more minutes just to be safe, even though she desperately wanted to get inside.
There was no sign of other soldiers. She couldn’t even hear another jeep.
She scampered across the street, bent low even though she was in plain sight and she knew it couldn’t hide her. Her cap slipped and she yanked it off, letting her hair spill down. Once she was by her workshop she tried to squeeze into one of the shrinking shadows as the morning sun got higher in the sky.
She waited another minute and then slipped around to the keypad. As near as she could tell, nothing had changed. It looked like the soldier had just reset the locks and security system.
If they’d reset her codes, using the keypad would alert them to her location. If not, it would get her into the shop and still alert them to her location. But if they hadn’t changed her codes, maybe it hadn’t occurred to them yet to track her with them. Unless they’d left the codes active just for that reason.
Her fingers danced on the keypad. The door clicked open. No sirens went off.
She pulled the door shut behind her and breathed a sigh of relief as it separated her from the outside world. Then she turned and bit back a scream.
A ring of twenty exes circled the tables where the Cerberus suit was spread out, lit by the high skylight. Four more stood at the center by the upright legs and torso section. All of them were in piecemeal ACUs. Each of them held an M16 rifle across its chest.