Close-ups of workstation screens show flow diagrams of laboratory processes, schematics of protein molecules, DNA and amino acid sequence data… and several neural maps. But the maps aren’t labelled with anything enlightening—like Andrews, l. or congenital brain damage study #1. Just meaningless serial numbers.
The layout of the building is completed; I wander through it in my mind’s eye. Five storeys, two basements; offices, labs, storerooms; two elevators, two stairwells. There are several regions coded pale blue for no data, where Culex couldn’t penetrate unaided, and had no opportunity to hitch a ride; the largest by far, twenty metres square, lies in the middle of the second basement.
This could be some kind of special facility—a clean room, a cryogenic store, a radioisotopes lab, a biohazard area; people would enter such places rarely, with most of the work being done via remotes. But the snapshots show only a drab white wall and an unmarked door; no biohazard or radiation warnings, no signs of any kind.
The chameleons are pre-programmed for two a.m.—just in case the place turned out to be mosquito-proof after hours—but now there’s no need to stick to that schedule; I send Culex back in, to tell them to activate in seven minutes’ time, at eleven fifty-five. Chameleons are too small to receive radio signals—which is probably just as well; radio is bad security.
As I approach the building, I pass the layout to P2, which superimposes it over my real vision. Fields of view of surveillance cameras, and regions monitored by motion detectors, glow with faint red auras; it’s tempting to think of this as danger rendered visible—as if some mod in my head could magically ‘sense’ the action of each security device—but in truth it’s nothing but a theoretical map, which may or may not be complete and correct.
At 11:55:00, 1 switch twelve patches of red to black—purely as a matter of faith. I have no proof that these blind spots have actually come into existence. If not, though, I’ll soon find out.
The perimeter fence is barbed, and my field meter says that the top strands are electrified at sixty thousand volts-well within the threshold of the insulators in my gloves and shoes. The barbs look wickedly sharp, but they’d have to be studded with industrial diamonds—and spinning at a few thousand rpm—to make much impression on the composite fibres in my gloves. I swing myself over and clamber down, hitting the ground as softly as I can; there are adjacent motion detectors still active, and I don’t know their sensitivity.
I slice open a ground-floor window, and slip into an unlit room, a lab of some kind. P2 adapts my vision rapidly to maximum sensitivity, for what that’s worth, but it’s Culex’s map that helps me navigate past obstacles at a reasonable speed. Fixed obstacles, that is; whenever I see a chair or a stool outlined in my ghost vision, I slow down and reach out to ascertain its current position.
The corridor, too, is in darkness, but I see red not far to my left as I leave the lab, and a second region still under surveillance comes within a centimetre of the doorway to the stairs. I’m about to turn the handle, when I realize that the elbow-shaped door-closing mechanism is on the verge of poking into the danger zone; P5 makes it clear that I don’t stand a chance of squeezing through the permissible crack. I reach up and snap the device at the joint, then fold the two limp halves flush against the door.
I descend to the lower basement. The chameleons have done their best to give me the widest possible access to every floor, but this place seems to have been sparsely protected to start with. With no live cameras nearby to catch the spill, I risk using a flashlight, bringing detail to my ghost vision’s wireframe sketch. There are bulk containers of solvents and reagents; a row of horizontal freezers; a centrifuge sitting against the wall, opened up and spilling circuit boards, as if in mid-repair, or mid-cannibalization.
I reach the no data region. It’s a large, square room, oddly adrift in the middle of an area that’s otherwise undivided, and it looks—and smells—like a recent construction. But if Laura is in there, why would they have gone to so much trouble to house her? Not to keep her discreetly hidden, that’s for sure; this ad hoc prison, if that’s what it is, could hardly be more conspicuous.
I circle the room; there’s only one door in. The lock is no great challenge; a little probing, then one carefully directed magnetic pulse is all it takes, inducing a current in the circuit that operates the release mechanism. I draw my gun, pull the door open—and find myself staring at another wall, just two or three metres away.
I step through cautiously. The space between the walls is empty, but the second wall fails to join up with the first, on either side. Before going any further, I close the door behind me and plant a small alarm at the top of the frame.
When I reach the corner on my right, it’s clear that the two walls are concentric; I keep going, and round the next corner there’s a door in the inner wall. The lock is of the same cheap design as the first. I wish I knew the point of this bizarre setup, but I can worry about that later; what matters right now is whether or not Laura is buried in here, somewhere.
I open the second door, and the answer is no, but —
There’s a bed, unmade since it was last slept in, the bedclothes drawn back on one side where the occupant presumably slipped out. A toilet, a sink, a small table and chairs. On the far wall, there’s a mural of flowers and birds, just like the one in Laura’s room in the Hilgemann.
The bed is still faintly warm. So where have they taken her, in the middle of the night? Perhaps she’s suffered complications, and they’ve had to move her to a hospital. I spend thirty seconds exploring the room, but there’s nothing much to examine; the mural, though, says it all. Laura was here, just minutes ago, I’m sure of that; it’s pure bad timing that I’ve missed her.
And she may still be in the building. Upstairs, undergoing a midnight brain scan? BDI may be so eager to complete their contract—whatever that entails—that they’re working round the clock.
Leaving the inner room, I almost turn right, retracing my steps, taking the shortest route out—but then I change my mind and decide to complete my circumnavigation of the gap.
The woman standing just round the corner, leaning wearily on a walking frame, looks exactly like Han Hsiu-lien. She glances up at me, and bursts into tears. I step forward quickly, and administer a tranquillizing nasal spray. She goes limp; I catch her under the arms and put her over my shoulder. Not the smoothest ride, but I’m going to need my hands free. The walking frame is a good sign; she may not be entirely recovered, but no doubt she can be moved without too much harm. Once I’ve got her out of the building, I can call for an ambulance—while I’m cutting a hole in the fence.
I’m three paces out of the second doorway when a male voice behind me says calmly, ‘Don’t turn round. Drop the gun and the flashlight, and kick them away.’ As he speaks, I feel a small, sharply defined patch of warmth alight on the back of my skull—an infrared laser on minimum strength. This is more than a palpable warning that I’m targeted; if the weapon is on auto, the beam’s scatter is being monitored, and any sudden movement on my part would trigger a high-intensity pulse in a matter of microseconds.
I comply.
‘Now put her down, carefully, then put your hands on top of your head.’ I do it. The laser tracks me smoothly all the way.
The man says something in Cantonese; I invoke Deja Vu for a translation: ‘What do you want to do with him?’
A woman replies, ‘I’ll put him out of it.’