Had somebody found the technician? Had he woken up within seconds of her leaving rather than minutes, and raised the alarm himself? But the empty corridors, if not a coincidence, suggested a quiet evacuation of the area had been taking place even while she’d been installing the Yagizban electronics unit.
None of it made sense. She was missing something.
Any further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by finding herself at the lift shaft. Three levels down was a gap in the ladder that she wouldn’t have tried to negotiate in full light and a drop of three metres onto a foam mattress. That she would be trying it in the deep shadows cast by a torch pointing almost everywhere except where it would do some good, and that the drop was five levels and finished in water that had, at the very least, a jagged section of ladder waiting beneath the surface, put her right off the idea.
Should she stay on the same level, then, or try her luck on one of the others she could reach from the lift shaft? She would have to prise the doors open, but doubted that would be too difficult. In a nearby office she found a chair, its seat broken, lying on its side. A minute’s work with her multi-tool’s screwdriver had a leg off. She slipped it into her bag and went back to the shaft.
Trusting to obtuse light and ageing architectural fittings with all the enthusiasm she had displayed last time, Katya stepped into the void and found the ladder with her hands and leading foot. The ladder creaked alarmingly under her weight, but obliged her by not coming away from the wall and dropping her eight levels into the inky waters that waited below. She paused; from somewhere she heard a loud bang that echoed around the walls of the abandoned level. They were through the door, and would be following the trail through the dirt soon enough right to the lift shaft. Fear spurring her, she started to climb.
One level didn’t seem to be enough, so she pushed on to the next. Here she climbed up far enough that she could step across to the concrete lintel below the door edge with one foot, her other still on the ladder. Bracing herself against the cool metal of the doors, she drew the chair leg from her bag and jammed it into the crack that separated them and heaved. The door slid over a centimetre or so, then stopped dead with solid certainty.
Katya glared at it as if it had personally insulted her, and leaned hard against the chair leg. She could see it bowing slightly under the force, but the lift door remained solid. Below her she could hear boots running, echoing, growing closer. The fear grew in her; they were almost there. In a moment they would be at the lift shaft, they would look up, and it would all be over. In desperation she put her body weight into it, pushing as hard as she humanly could in such a position. Something gave inside the door, the chair leg slid free, and she found herself thrown against the inner side of the left hand door. Her hands scrabbled hopelessly at the sheet steel for a moment, and then she fell, the chair leg falling down the shaft, ricocheting off the sides as it went, announcing her presence to all.
She cried out and grabbed at anything she could find. Nothing for a moment, then she crashed heavily against the concrete lintel, knocking the breath from her. Her hand found a structural stanchion beneath the lintel and she held on for her life.
A torch beam shone up at her from the open door two levels below her. “She’s here!” a male voice called. “I found her!”
The lift shaft was illuminated by another torch. Looking up, she could see the shaft in better detail than ever before. The door she had bounced off stood open perhaps thirty centimetres. It looked like whatever had been holding it shut had finally given way. She could see the ladder not far away. If she swung her right foot into it, she could be on it in a couple of seconds, another three or so to climb up to where she’d been a moment ago, step across, grab the door edges, open it, dive through. In fifteen seconds she could be running again.
“Shoot her,” said the lieutenant.
Katya realised she was never going to run again, because in fifteen seconds her corpse would be in the water, ten levels down.
There was nothing she could do. A half-formed thought that perhaps it would be better to fall than be shot and fall. At least she would be the one who made the final decision of her life.
“Belay that order!” A new voice, confident, authoritative, and angry. “Do not fire!”
“Sir!” she heard the lieutenant say, then they stepped away from the mouth of the shaft and she couldn’t make out anymore.
Then there was a distinct, “Yes, sir!” and the lieutenant was leaning out to look at her.
“Can you reach the ladder?”
“I think so,” she called back.
“Then do so. You have my gun at your back. If you attempt to escape, I will kill you without hesitation, Kuriakova. Do you understand?”
She understood very well. Moving slowly, she got her foot onto the ladder and slid her hands along the stanchion until she could reach the rungs. Here she rearranged her shoulder bag so that the strap was no longer across her chest, but only hung on one shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“The strap’s caught on the rung,” she called back. “It’s alright. It’s free now.” She climbed down at half the speed she had ascended, giving the lieutenant no excuse to fire. When she reached the level where he waited, she stepped across and stumbled very deliberately. Her bag slid from her shoulder and fell down the shaft. “My torch!” she cried as she grabbed the doorframe, trying to give the impression that was all she was concerned about, and not that she was trying to get rid of any evidence that it might contain. A taser of Grubber manufacture would be hard enough to explain by itself.
Her upper arms were grabbed painfully hard and she was half lifted, half dragged out of the lift shaft, before being dumped on the filthy floor of the corridor.
She looked up and found herself ringed by the four Federal troops she had seen in the corridor. Then she saw the fifth man and her heart sank. He was one of the Secor agents who had interrogated her after Shurygin was shot. She’d always had a feeling that she might cross paths with Secor again sooner or later, but had been very much hoping for “later.”
“You owe me your life, Ms Kuriakova,” said the agent.
Ringed in harsh torch light, she squinted up at him. “I’d rather they’d killed me.”
Her arms were dragged behind her and she felt restraint strips being wound around her wrists. She started to struggle, but they were too strong. A fabric bag was pulled down over her head and secured around her neck.
“Yes,” admitted the agent. “You’ll find yourself thinking that often over the next few days.”
They led her back to the door into the Beta grade section. When they reached the door, they had her lift her feet high and she thought it must be because they had blown down or cut through the door, and there was still a bit of it in the bottom of the frame. She never knew for sure.
After that, she had no idea where they took her. The corridors were silent and she guessed they were still evacuated. They took her to another level in a lift, along more corridors, and nobody spoke. It was only when they took her through another door and the sound ambience seemed to change that she realised that she was now in a room, and not a large one. She was put in a chair and she felt straps being secured around her upper arms even though her wrists were still restrained. They double checked her wrists, then she heard the door close.
Katya listened for a minute or two but couldn’t hear anything at all; no breathing, no sound of somebody shifting their weight from one foot to another. Experimentally, she tried pushing down with her feet, but the chair wouldn’t move at all. It seemed to be bolted to the floor.