The communicator continued, oblivious to the carnage: “First suspect is a female — five feet, eight inches in height, one hundred twenty pounds, medium length blond hair. Second suspect is male—”
Eva bent down and switched off the guards’ communicators, then reached over and did the same to mine. She turned and glared up at the level’s display until we reached level thirty-five. Then she raised her tasc gun and pointed it at the still closed elevator doors.
“Things are going to get a little more difficult now.”
The doors opened — no one was there. Eva led the way out of the elevator, tasc gun in hand. I followed her down the passage, fumbling for the weapon in my belt. We moved as quickly and quietly as possible, periodically checking to make sure no one was behind us.
At the end of the passage, we ran into a barrier: a door marked Top Level Security Clearance Required — No Unauthorized Entry. Eva brought out the card she’d taken from the Chameleon. “I hope this thing works.”
She ran the card through the reader an the door. Nothing happened for several secinds, then I heard a click. Eva pushed the door, and it swung open. Then she slid the card back into her pocket and barely smiled. “If they didn’t know where we were before, they do now.”
She spun around and sprinted back down the hall. I was a few steps behind her and running on pure adrenaline. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve been resting back at the lake and smoking a cigarette. As it was, my toxin-laced blood was pumping through clogged arteries at a rate not seen since my teens.
Ahead of me, Eva slowed down, then came to a stop outside one of the doors. She leaned against the wall next to the door and motioned for me to do the same. My damaged lungs ached, and I tried to control my breathing without bending over or passing out.
We waited as silently as possible for what seemed to be a long time, though it was probably only a minute or two. Then, behind the door, I heard a voice, which suddenly started to increase in volume. The door opened, and a middle-aged man stepped into the hallway, still looking back over his shoulder and talking.
Instantly, Eva had the man’s arm twisted behind his back and her tasc gun pointed at his head. Keeping the man in front of her, she walked through the door, and I followed her inside. The room was very white and brightly lit. It was quite large, but there were only seven people in it, at least as far as I could see. Eva moved her hostage roughly into the center of the room and raised her voice menacingly. “Everyone! Move together! Do anything stupid, and I’ll kill all of you!” The stunned group, five middle-aged men and two somewhat younger women, slowly clustered together.
“Get down on the floor! Hands behind your heads!”
Everyone complied in varying degrees. Some lay face down, others went only to their knees. Eva shoved her hostage toward the group and told him to join them. Then she turned to me and spoke so everyone could hear. “Keep your gun on them. If anyone moves or makes a sound, kill ‘em.”
I nodded and aimed my weapon at the center of the group. Eva tucked the tasc gun into her belt and walked off. I kept my eyes glued on the hostages. Behind me, I could hear Eva working on one of the computer consoles.
As I waited nervously, the men and women looked up at me with expressions ranging from terror to loathing. A part of me felt sympathy for them. These were living, breathing people like me, and I tried to keep from imagining myself in their place.
Technically, I’d already been an accessory in the deaths of three security guards, and killing had never been an easy thing for me.
Then I thought back to the things I’d seen at the penal colony. Whether these people knew it or not, they were abetting one of the most hideous schemes in the history of mankind. These cult members believed themselves superior to the innocent billions living unsuspectingly on the planet below. Somewhere on board the Moon Child were thousands of lethal satellites, waiting to be unleashed so they essentially eradicate the Earth’s entire population. As I looked at the faces before me, I thought of Louie and the mutated gang of regulars at the Brew & Stew. If the cult was allowed to fulfill its prophecies, my friends would die. I tightened the grip on my tasc gun and steeled myself. It was for the greater good that the people on the Moon Child die. Myself included.
Apparently, Eva knew exactly what to do with the Winter Chip and finished installing it within minutes.
“All right. It’s ready to go.”
I kept my eyes on the hostages. “So… what happens now?”
Eva glanced at her watch. “We get the hell out of here. There’s no telling how long it will take the chip to crash the system, but I’m planning on it being sooner than later.”
On cue, an alarm began to blare. I scanned the room quickly and saw lights flashing on most of the consoles. Eva was looking around frantically. Seeming to make a decision, she moved toward a corner of the room, where a tall filing cabinet stood. I backed away in the same direction, still keeping my tasc gun trained on the now-terrified group.
Glancing back and forth between the hostages and Eva, I saw her pull out the drawers to form a set of stairs. Standing on top of the cabinet, she could easily reach the ceiling, which I now noticed consisted of acoustic fiberboard tiles, laid into a grid of metal supports.
Eva pushed on one of the tiles,moved it aside, and then pulled herself up and out of sight. I backed up to the file cabinet and briefly wondered why we hadn’t gone out the door. As I started climbing up the drawers, one of the men got to his feet. I aimed and fired, knocking him down. Reaching the top of the cabinet, I set the gun on the fiberboard and pulled myself up, kicking the cabinet over in the process. At the same instant, I realized why Eva hadn’t taken the obvious escape route. I heard the door open, and several sets of boots scrambled into the room. The hostages began to yell.
I picked up the tasc gun and spotted Eva some distance ahead, carefully moving along a catwalk. The crawl space was about five feet tall and stretched out for hundreds of yards, maybe miles, in every direction. I crouched and ran as fast as I could manage. The bedlam below faded away.
I was about twenty feet behind Eva when a hail of bullets ricocheted past me. Over my shoulder, I caught sight of several guards in hot pursuit. I couldn’t look at them for long.
The catwalk was perilously narrow, and one false step would send me down through a ceiling tile, into God only knew what. There could’ve been just about anything below us, from an ocean to a desert. Eva and I were now moving at a recklessly dangerous pace.
To make matters worse, a wall loomed directly in front of us. Eva reached an intersection on the catwalk and turned right.
We continued at break-neck speed, zigzagging left and right along the narrow walkway.
We were quickly approaching another wall. Behind us, the gunshots echoed sporadically. When I turned to check our pursuers, it was clear they were gaining on us.
As I looked back to Eva, I saw her reach the wall, then drop out of sight, followed an instant later by a loud clang. I reached the spot where she had vanished and saw that she’d jumped down onto a metal-grate landing. I lowered myself just as a slug put a dimple into the wall right above my head.