"I can't see," Dieter said as he bumped into what felt like an office chair. He took hold of it and pushed it in front of him like a bulky white cane. "I've got a touch of snow blindness. Keep talking and I'll find you."
"Over here," Tricker called. "There's a hallway. I'm in the first room on your left.
This way."
Dieter found the wall and followed it, still pushing the chair until his hand fell through an opening. "It's pitch-dark for me," he said. "Are the lights on at all?"
"No. There's a switch to the right of the door, about four inches from the frame."
Von Rossbach found the switch easily and flicked it on. To him the light was
dim, but he could easily make out a man tied up on a bunk. "Ah! I see my young friends have already been here," he said with a smile.
"You must be the guide they mentioned," Tricker said sourly. "Did they try to kill you, too?"
"Did they try to kill you?" Dieter asked, surprised. He unzipped the parka and began to shrug out of it.
Tricker thought about it. "No. I guess not." He lifted his bound hands significantly. "You gonna help me out here?"
"No," Dieter said, and turned around, peering into the dark of the hallway.
" No?" Tricker said. "Why not?"
"They're just a couple of crazy kids," von Rossbach explained. "There's no real harm in them. I'll round them up and get them out of your way. The thing is, if they've tied you up they must have had a reason. Until I find out what that is, it might not be safe to let you go. Eh?"
"Buddy, this is a U.S. government scientific installation! I demand that you let me go."
Dieter looked at him. "Are you the only one here?" he asked mildly.
Tricker hesitated. "At the moment, yeah."
"You might have a touch of cabin fever, then. It may be that you attacked my young friends. Where are they, anyway? Is there another large building on this
base? I didn't see one."
Tricker tightened his lips and put his head back down on the pillow. "Maybe they ran off into the storm," he muttered.
"And left you like this? I hardly think they'd be so irresponsible."
"They left you, didn't they?" Tricker said precisely.
"A different situation altogether," Dieter assured him. His eyes were beginning to adjust and he could see things, finally. Like the roll of duct tape on a shelf and the open door on the other side of the hall. He picked up the duct tape and began to wind it tightly around his torso, feeling immediate relief. He cut it off with the knife he found on the shelf. It was John's; he decided to keep it. "I'll just have a look around for them, shall I?"
"Like you'd stay put if I told you no?" Tricker muttered.
"Surely you want me to find them," von Rossbach said cheerfully. Even his face wasn't feeling so bad now; maybe he'd escaped frostbite after all.
"Oh, surely," Tricker muttered as he heard the man clatter down the stairs and then heard the elevator begin to work. Don't call me Shirley, he thought woozily.
He'd only been awake for maybe a minute when he heard the man come in.
Then, when he'd heard that slight accent, he'd thought, crazily, that it might be Viemeister coming after Bennet.
That kid must have hit me pretty hard, he thought. Hell, if I'm imagining that
super-kraut would risk his precious ass in an Antarctic blizzard for a woman who has publicly rejected him, then I might actually have brain damage. But then this place seemed to be turning into Grand fucking Central Station, so who knew who was going to turn up next.
He got to work pulling his belt around so that he could use the buckle to get him out of this mess. This definitely wasn't one of his most shining moments, he complained to himself. On the downside, it was three to one and the kid had his gun.
But on the upside, that wasn't his only gun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Clea was hiding in one of the labs that John had already inspected when she heard the elevator engage. Empty, she thought as she mentally switched to the surveillance camera. But von Rossbach waited patiently for it to arrive…
She had assumed the Sector agent was dead and was not pleased to see him.
Still, having almost all of her important enemies in one isolated place had its charm. Though having one less to worry about would be even more charming.
So far the seals had been a disappointment. "If only Antarctica had polar bears!"
she mused.
The I-950 quickly moved to a lab three doors closer to Viemeister's when John entered another lab to inspect it. She watched Wendy work through the security cameras, and evaluated the program, even helped her when the girl got bogged down too much. It would be necessary to be careful, though; it wouldn't do to
help her so much that she began to install the second and, presumably, dangerous part of her program.
Meanwhile von Rossbach had entered the elevator and was on his way down.
Fortunately, one of the base's security measures was the ability to halt the elevator at any point. Clea did so now, freezing it between the office and laboratory floors.
From the look of the man, she doubted he'd be able to squeeze through the escape hatch. Of course he could just break the controls— but that would send the car plummeting to the bottom of the shaft. Actually overriding them would take either sophisticated equipment or specialized knowledge and a great deal of patience. Which left him out of the equation for the moment.
Tricker was still writhing around on the bunk, trying to get free. And even if he was free, how was he going to get down here? The elevator was disabled, and the emergency exit couldn't be opened from outside, so that was two down.
Which left her free to deal with Connor and the girl. It would be the girl first after all. Connor would return to her eventually, which was convenient. And once she'd ensured that the girl's program couldn't harm Skynet, the I-950 would have plenty of time to deal with all of the humans.
Clea slipped down the corridor to Viemeister's lab. It amused her that despite all of his elaborate precautions, it seemed never to have occurred to Connor that she might have a key to this door. Such a simple thing, she thought, silently working the lock, but so very important. The I-950 slid into the lab so quietly that Wendy never once looked up.
Tricker flung the last of the duct tape from him in disgust. Then he rushed out to the office to put on his parka and gloves. Step one, he thought, is to find whatever damned jamming device they've brought with them and disable it. Even if McMurdo couldn't send help because of the storm, they'd at least be able to block their escape. He flung open the door, swearing under his breath.
Something huge reared up with a roar and threw itself at him, stinking of rotten fish and gleaming with fangs. Tricker slammed the door and braced himself against it as it nearly jarred loose from its hinges when the thing struck. The pressure wasn't constant; he just managed to slam it home and work the dead bolt before the next lunge hit it. He wished he had a bar to put across like a castle gate.
Was that a seal? he thought in disbelief. An unmistakable series of urrrfing barks and a less violent hammering answered the thought.
"Yes," he said numbly, "that's a seal." A very big, homicidal seal.
Every time he opened this door today there was something dangerous out there—
a whiteout blizzard, the spy kids, a killer seal.
Would-be killer seal, he corrected himself as his heart rate returned to normal.
He wouldn't count the mystery guide; the guy had let himself in.