Despite a slight accent, the man spoke nearly perfect English.
23
Annabelle Stacy pressed against the wall and held perfectly still, hoping to stay hidden from the two guards coming toward her along the main corridor.
Fortunately, they never reached her position. Instead, they turned off and went through a big and open door, apparently doing exactly what she was doing: heading in the direction of the gunshots.
She heard voices from up ahead and proceeded forward at a slightly faster pace, pausing once to wait for a swiveling security camera to point in the other direction. As she arrived at the door she recognized the loudest of the voices as belonging to Dr. Waters.
Annabelle peeked inside. She saw red doors on either side of a big rectangular room, two rows of three pillars, and an unmanned control console standing about fifteen feet from her position. While she knew that the platform must be the nerve center for that area, it was currently neglected in favor of something going on at the far end of the chamber. She saw Waters standing back there, as well as eight guards, all with their rifles raised.
She immediately guessed that Major Gant was the focus of their attention but did not know for sure until she heard his voice yell a nasty expletive in regard to Dr. Waters's parentage.
"Major, you are trapped," Waters spoke in a tone that suggested his patience had come to an end. "Raise your hands and come out. You have no choice."
So there it was. Thom had broken free but they had cornered him in this place. From what Stacy could see, there was another door at the far end but it was closed and it was more likely that it would open to let in more guards than to let Thom escape.
Unless …
Since escaping from the test chamber, Annabelle had wandered the halls of the facility with no direction, no plan. What she had seen in the storage room had upped the ante, but had not led to any ideas on how to get out of that place alive. In fact, whenever she had thought about trying to survive her mind had come back to Major Thom Gant. Any chance she had lay with him, and so she would need to take a chance to help him.
Besides, she did have one or two questions for Dr. Waters.
Annabelle walked into the specimen containment room and directly to the unguarded control console. She stood there for several seconds until she realized that no one had even taken notice of her; they all faced the rear of the room where Gant apparently hid, their backs to her.
"This is your last chance. I need an answer."
The panel was rather simple. She easily found the appropriate switch to close the door behind her. The guards were so focused on Major Gant that they did not even turn to look when the bulkhead shut with a solid thud.
It took her another four seconds to understand the function of the thirty switches lined in two rows, an associated panel of square buttons, and the lever marked CONTAINMENT FAILSAFE on the right side of the console.
There were more switches and buttons that she wanted to understand, but she ran out of time.
"I gave you your chance, Major. Kill him."
Half of the soldiers started toward the divider wall at the back of the chamber where Gant hid.
Stacy yelled, "No!"
Waters turned quickly, as did most of the soldiers. Half of the guns in the room now pointed in her direction.
"Dr. Stacy? I take it you never made your scheduled test. Congratulations to you, but you would have done better to stay in hiding."
"Don't anyone move," she said.
The guards shuffled their feet, unsure of why they should not move. Waters was more direct.
"My dear, you're not in a position to dictate. Unless I'm missing something, you don't appear to be armed."
She did not respond.
Waters drew the attention of two of his men and told them, "Keep your weapons on her, just in case. The rest of you stay on the major. He is far more dangerous."
"Leave him alone," she said with a hint of authority in her voice.
"Tell me, my dear, exactly why we should do anything you say."
She glanced down at the console controls then back to him.
"If anyone moves, I'll open every cell in this place. You and your men will be overwhelmed in about three seconds."
Waters was not impressed.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, but we have safeguards in place for just that type of eventuality. Besides, you're in here with us. You would be committing suicide."
He smiled at her while a solitary tear, a symptom of his chronic condition, streaked down one of his dark cheeks.
"Still," Waters went on, "I'll play for a moment. What is it you would have us do? Open the front door and let the two of you go?"
It seemed to her that Waters — again — showed an interest in games.
"Everything is a test with you, isn't it?" she asked. "You don't really believe I can do anything, but instead of having your men shoot me or rush me, you want to see what I want. Like you're going to gain some sort of insight into the human condition."
He shrugged and admitted, "Maybe. I find people and the choices they make fascinating. Sometimes I wonder if we really are nothing more than big animals, with our so-called free will and sentience nothing more than advanced instinct. Don't you find that interesting? You are, after all, a scientist."
"I'm not a sadist. You're a sad man, Waters. You didn't survive that monster back in Zaire; it killed you just as surely as it did everyone else in your village. The only difference is, your body lived. An empty, soulless shell."
Of course she tried to sound brave. She tried to sound judgmental. Truth was, her stomach lurched with fear, her arms trembled, and her voice quivered with each word.
Yes, she was afraid. But not quite as afraid as she had been the day before.
He responded, "You have a flair for the dramatic. I can appreciate that, Doctor. But I am a scientist. I'm dealing with subjects and situations that are far bigger than one person or one village."
She saw Gant stick his head out — just a little — to glimpse the conversation. It seemed to her, however, that he was in no position to do anything. If they were going to escape this particular predicament, it would be up to her.
"Interesting that you say that. You see, Dr. Waters, I've been going for a little stroll around this base of yours. I’ve found some interesting things."
"Oh really? Like what?"
"I found your storage room," she said, and her mind drifted to the centerpiece of the collection. "Tell me something. What does the Phaistos disc have to do with a parasitic fungus?"
Her adversary hesitated.
Stacy went on, loud enough to be sure Thom heard.
"You have a high-tech bio weapons facility here, but one room is more like a museum. Tell me about that, Waters."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Actually, I hold a doctorate in history from Penn. You don't get one of those without covering the classics. I recognized the Phaistos disc immediately. It comes from the Minoan civilization. It's one of those mysteries of the ancient world that you kind of learn about in maybe your sophomore year in high school. Discovered on Crete over a hundred years ago. Last I heard, no one had deciphered it, but there was a theory that the writing was linked to Linear A. Of course, no one has deciphered that yet, either."
Waters found his smile again and took a step forward, using his cane for balance. Stacy felt her legs urge her to turn and run. If she were fast enough, maybe she could open the door and get out without suffering a bullet wound to the back.