“Hell, we’ve come this far,” Kay says from the door. “And besides, I’m a Guardian,” she adds. “This is my idea of a good time, sunshine.”
“Okay. I’ll take lead. Rice in the middle. Kay will cover our backs. Let’s go.”
We start working our way down the hall, Rice making so much noise, I’m expecting a Florae to run at us at any moment. I’m so on edge I almost shoot a researcher cowering in the shadows. Rice puts his arm around her shoulders and coaxes her to stand, then guides her with us down the hall. He seems better, now that he’s helping someone else.
“I thought it was just a drill,” the researcher says, her voice echoing off the walls. “I didn’t want to leave my work for a false alarm.”
Rice shushes her and we continue our slow progress. When we reach a hall lined with open doors, I halt. Any one of those rooms could contain a Florae, waiting to pounce. The researcher is still sniveling, and although Rice is trying to help, he makes just as much noise trying to quiet her.
Frustration wells up inside me and along with it, guilt. I place my mouth close to Rice’s ear and whisper, “Look for a safe place.” I motion over my shoulder at the researcher. There’s no choice: I need to find a place to stash her so I can go get Baby.
Rice nods and scans the hall, pointing out a door at the far end that remains closed. A film of light leaks out beneath it. That room, whatever it is, has electricity. Maybe it has its own generator. If the door locks, the researcher will be safe there.
I move ahead to check out the open rooms one by one before allowing the group to move forward. It’s slow going, and in each lab there are too many places a creature can hide.
We are almost to the locked door when the researcher screams. There’s a Florae hurtling toward her from the end of the hall. I must have missed it in one of the rooms. Kay grabs her and tries to pull her along, dragging her down the hall. With her free arm, she shoots the Florae, missing its head by inches. She pushes the researcher toward me and returns to dispatch the Florae.
The researcher breaks free and is halfway down the hall when another Florae appears before her at its far end. It reaches her before I can get a shot off, and it latches on to her shoulder, biting her neck. Kay separates the Florae’s head from its shoulders in a single move and then is down the hall to the new Florae, focused on feasting on the researcher, and expertly shoots it. Green-black blood splatters all over the wall and the creature collapses. Kay puts a shot in the head of the now-still researcher before she can change into a monster.
Rice and I sprint down the hall. When we reach the only locked door in the corridor, Rice swipes his card and enters his code. The door beeps twice. “I can’t get it open,” Rice tells me as he desperately tries again.
“What’s the holdup?” Kay asks.
“I don’t know. This door shouldn’t even be locked.”
“We have to move on,” Kay says, already halfway down the hall. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, another Florae appears in front of us. Kay tries to draw down on it, but the Florae is too close and is on her before she can aim. It bowls into her and knocks her down as it rolls over her. I can’t fire on the Florae twisting next to Kay without risking taking her down too. Kay snaps to her feet with a knife in hand before the Florae’s next charge. She sidesteps it and stabs it hard through the neck, pushing the knife into the creature’s brain. It drops at her feet, a mess of green and black.
Just then the door Rice struggled to unlock finally opens. Ken stands in the doorway, looks at the carnage in the hall, then back at us. “What the . . . You mean that evacuation order was real? You’d better get in here.”
We push past him into his lab and he closes the door behind us, locking it. The lab looks like a scaled-down version of the main lab, with equipment I couldn’t even begin to understand. At the far end is another closed door.
“How do you still have power?” Rice asks.
“I rerouted it from the main lab using my laptop.” Ken taps his computer. “When Dr. Reynolds made his announcement, I thought it was a drill, and when the power went out, I figured no one else would need it. . . .” He stares at Kay and me in our synth-suits. His eyes flick from me to her.
“Tell me one of you is Kay.”
Kay pulls down her hood. “You know I’m always showing up to save your ass.”
“I didn’t know my ass needed saving.” He motions around the well-lit lab. “As you can see, I’m doing fine here.” Ken grins, and I’m amazed at how similar they look. Before, when I saw them together on the hover-copter, I was in so much shock, I didn’t have time to process their similarities. They’re even the same height.
They may look alike, but I know there’s a huge difference in their priorities. I face Ken. “Where’s Brenna?” I ask. If she’s down here, she’s in danger too.
“She’s safe,” he assures me.
“And the camera?” Rice asks, motioning to where it hangs in the far corner of the ceiling. He looks at me. “Dr. Reynolds will know we’re in here now.”
As the words leave Rice’s mouth, the power fails and the door pops open.
Ken shakes his head. “No,” he says petulantly and too loudly. “I made sure I’d have power so I could finish my work.”
“Dr. Reynolds turned off the power,” Kay tells him. “He released the Floraes to kill us.”
Ken refuses to understand. “He wouldn’t do that. Not to me. My work is too important.” He folds his arms.
“Where does that door go?” I ask, motioning to the far end of the room.
“It’s . . . nothing.”
Kay steps up into his face. “There are at least twenty Floraes running around, if not more by now,” she tells him. “Where the hell does that door lead?”
“It’s . . . It’s my personal office. Oh, just go. It’s open. There’s a manual lock inside. There aren’t any cameras. I didn’t want anyone spying on my results.” As I head to the door, I feel a twinge of guilt over scrambling for cover when I should be rescuing Baby, but I know we have to regroup and formulate a plan.
Rice gets the door open and goes inside while Kay and I wait at the door for Ken. He opens a drawer and takes out a folder.
“The Floraes aren’t interested in your data,” I tell him. “You’re wasting time.”
“These are my notes.” Somewhere in the maze of the lab, someone screams. “I don’t know why Dr. Reynolds is doing this. . . .”
“Ken, hurry!” I shout. I can hear Them snarling from the hall. Ken runs to us and shoves his notes at me.
“Hold these. . . . I have to get the blood samples. They might destroy those if they smell the blood.”
“No—” Kay tries to grab his arm to haul him in the room, but he shakes her off. He doesn’t even make it halfway across the room before a Florae flashes in from the hall and takes him down. Kay rushes to his side and I try to go and help her, when Rice yanks me into the back room and slams the door shut, leaving me with a horrible snapshot of the creature perched atop Ken, ripping into the side of his face and lapping up his blood.
I push against Rice, who is latching three separate bolts. “I have to help Kay!” I scream at him, forcing him from the doorway. My hands shake as I undo the bolts while Rice pleads with me.
I can still hear Ken’s screams, until he falls abruptly silent. Rice is at my back and whispers, “I was just trying to save you, Amy. I wanted you to be safe.”
I pull open the door and am knocked aside by a figure in black. Kay. She enters the room and collapses onto the floor, her hood pulled aside. I join her on the floor. Dazed, I try to comfort her as she weeps into her hands. She looks up at me. “I couldn’t save him,” she whispers and, for the first time, I see Kay’s pain. Rice is with us now and pulls Kay to a cot in the corner. He makes her sit down so she can collect herself.