Chasing Ghosts (25 page)

“
Individual incinerators. You noticed
there aren’t any garbage cans. I haven’t been able to find one
scrap of printer paper to give me a hint what the hell they were
working on down here. My only guess is that they were careful not
to print anything, that everything might have been kept on a hard
drive somewhere.”

“
So we have to find a
mainframe.”

CHAPTER 30

Dagger leaned against the wall and washed his
hands over his face. Sara had followed him into what might be a
trap. Neither one may make it out alive.

Sara’s eyes narrowed and she cocked her head
as though sizing up his response. She wasn’t going to let up. “Why
did you say home sweet home? Is there something you’re not telling
me? The numbers on that metal piece in your head had the
coordinates to this place.”

Dagger stared at her for several seconds.
Yes, her skills came in handy, but how could he live with himself
if something happened to her? “I know. I thought once I got here
everything would fall into place. Bits and pieces look familiar but
that’s it. I remember standing on the cobblestone and staring up at
the sky at some point in my life. Descending that mile of stairs
didn’t seem familiar until I reached the bottom and looked up.” He
raked stray hairs back. In the melee he not only lost his
sunglasses but also the band around his ponytail and the bandage
from his neck. His fingers gingerly touched the stitches. He wanted
more than anything to rip the computer chip from his body. Dagger
rustled through the gym bag and pulled out a couple power bars and
handed one to Sara.

“
Thanks. I haven’t eaten since I had
chicken earlier today.”

Dagger stared at her. “You walked into a KFC
nude?” He tried to slap that vision out of his mind.

“
No,” Sara said with a laugh. “The wolf
stole it and I ate it in a secluded place. I also found a
body.”

“
What?” Dagger tore off a piece of the
power bar.

Sara kept her voice low as she told him about
bathing in the pond and finding a car at the bottom with a body in
the front seat. “I took the license plate, or rather the wolf took
the license plate, and dropped it at the foot of a sheriff who was
called out by the farmer whose lunch I stole.”

“
The farmer calls out the authorities
because his food was stolen?”

“
The farmer thought I was a coyote or
something I guess.”

Dagger started to speak but Sara held up one
hand. She cocked her head. The intense look in her eyes told Dagger
she was using her enhanced hearing. She placed a hand on the floor,
as though feeling for a vibration.

They quickly finished their power bars.
Dagger dropped the wrappers into the hole in the floor. “Where do
you think it is?”

“
It sounds like it’s idling, like it’s
waiting for us to make the first move.”

They moved cautiously to the opposite side of
the room and stepped out into the hallway. The tank was waiting for
them.

“
MOVE!” Dagger pushed Sara back into
the room as a computer and desk behind them exploded in a barrage
of wood and metal. He fired off a shot but the bullet bounced off
of the armor. They wove around cubicles as debris rained down
around them. Dagger couldn’t stop long enough to get a shot
off.

“
How is it tracking us?” Sara
yelled.

“
Probably thermal imaging.”

They tore down a hallway, around a corner,
and into another large room with cubicles.

“
Wait.” Dagger counted the floor tiles
from the point where they were standing to the hallway. He handed
the gym bag to Sara, pulled out a knife and pried the tile up.
Sliding it aside, he said, “Wait here.” He jumped down the four
feet into the utility space beneath the floor. Dagger counted the
tiles overhead. When he reached what he thought was the hallway, he
removed the tile, leaving an opening in the floor. Dagger returned
to the office, climbed out, and replaced the tile. “Now let’s see
how badly it wants us.”

They moved through the office to the next
doorway. Dagger peered around the corner. The tank was waiting near
the first doorway. “Wait here.” He moved out into the hallway at a
run. A loud whining erupted from the end of the hall as the tank
tore off after him. He darted through the next doorway as heat from
a blast rushed past him. A quick peek into the hallway revealed
that the tank hadn’t slowed down any. It was headed toward the
opening in the floor. Dagger had the Kimber ready. The panel to the
right of him exploded. “Damn. I’m going to rip that fucker apart
screw by screw.” But the tank stopped. It had detected Sara’s
thermal image. But where? Dagger stole another peek to see that the
tile behind the tank had been removed. Sara was in the utility
space. He had to smile. Her mind was always clicking. Next, the
tile to the right of the tank dropped away. Slowly the tank’s
turret turned. It was searching for Sara. Would it be smart enough
to check beneath it? At some point the tank had to run out of ammo.
The tank’s turret made a sudden 180 degree turn.

“
SARA!” Dagger called out. He hesitated
not wanting to fire for fear of hitting Sara. The turret turned
back to him. Fire erupted from the tank’s gun. The tank advanced
oblivious to the opening in front of it and just as it tipped into
the empty space in front of it, Sara fired at the power pack. There
was a crash and clatter as the tank hit concrete.

Sara pulled herself out of the utility space.
“One less energy pack.” She replaced the tiles that had been
removed.

“
Good job but a stupid move. I could
have shot you.” Dagger turned and stalked away. He pushed through
an exit door and back out into the courtyard where he dropped the
gym bag onto a bench under the overhang and sat down. A soft rain
dotted the cobblestone as angry clouds drifted across the
sky.

Sara took a seat next to him. “How can it be
raining?”

“
Sprinkler systems. Gives the illusion
of the outdoors so everyone who was trapped down here didn’t suffer
from reality withdrawal. Pretty clever.”

“
Can I have my water bottle,
please?”

Dagger downed two aspirins with his remaining
water, then opened another bottle. He rationed out two more protein
bars and settled back. He could feel Sara’s eyes silently prying
answers. She was patient to a point. His hand again moved to his
neck, feeling the scar from the incision.

“
Whatever is in your neck, I think the
answers are here,” Sara said. “Doc said the scar tissue is at least
twenty-five years old. You don’t remember being here as a
kid?”

Dagger shook his head.

Sara reached out and pulled his hand from his
neck. “You aren’t sure of anything prior to five years ago?”

Dagger said nothing.

“
Maybe these holograms are your
memories triggered when you entered the facility,” Sara
suggested

Dagger said nothing.

“
And I think you suspect the same
thing.”

Dagger still said nothing.

Sara studied the buildings across the street,
the potted plants, the skies which lit up with artificial
lightning. “It feels like the entire place is alive. But it appears
to be for someone else’s amusement.”

“
Well, I hope we run into whoever it
is.” Dagger’s bottle hovered before his lips.

Sara studied the buildings more closely. “Do
you think we are being watched? After all, someone sent the tank
outside, right where we were standing.”

“
Cameras don’t work, remember? I
scrambled them all,” Dagger said. He tilted his head back and
checked the overcast sky. “Of course, maybe it isn’t a sky at all
but a window.”

“
How big do you think this town
is?”

Memories flashed through Dagger’s brain. Just
entering this underground city appeared to have opened up wounds he
didn’t know he had. He wasn’t sure if the memories were his or if
he was being bombarded with illusions of memories.

A rainbow stretched across the sky as
sunlight broke through the clouds. The drizzle quickly ended and
the sounds of birds and insects filled the air.

“
It’s like someone is sitting in front
of a control panel pushing buttons. Cut the rain, start the birds.
Even the temperature seems to be controlled, not to mention the
oxygen.” Sara stood, folding the wrapper from the protein bar into
a neat square. She looked around for a garbage can. There was a
marble pillar nearby, its opening as wide as the opening in the
floor they had found next to the desk. She peered into it. “Think
this is an incinerator?”

“
Yes.” Dagger stood, slipped his arms
through the handles of the gym bag, and hefted it onto his back
like a backpack. “Let’s check out the rest of the town, but this
time, let’s walk.”

Although the sun shone brightly overhead,
there was no mistaking they were below ground. Perhaps it was the
dark cobblestone or the stone walls in the distance that made them
feel confined.

Sara said, “I may not like crowds but there
is something about one mile of rock on top of my head that leaves
an uneasy feeling.”

Dagger searched the courtyard behind them.
They hadn’t been to the park yet. Then he looked ahead where the
large chrome and marble buildings stretched three stories high.
“Just don’t know where to start.”

A large lit screen appeared to drop from the
sky a few feet in front of them. It was a computerized map of the
area. They took a step back and waited.

“
This is really bizarre. I am not
liking it at all.” Sara slowly approached. “How is this
happening?”

A flashing red dot on the map
marked
You Are Here
. The
underground city was no more than five square blocks. They were
currently in the central part of the city. Dotted throughout the
map were residential areas, training camps, schools, the park,
restaurants, a gym, clinic. A small inset map revealed that one
floor below was
The
Lab
.

“
The Lab,” Sara said.

“
Very strange. Everything down here is
identical to a normal town. It has streets and a sewer system.”
Dagger’s finger tapped a spot on the map that marked the
Director’s Residence
. “Let’s go check
out this guy’s life.”

“
Sure.”

They dodged puddles as rain water trickled
down to grated drains. The street had that just-washed smell to it.
Dagger remembered seeing a waterfall in the park but that might
have been a hologram, too, for all he knew. Except for the
intermittent sounds of nature, the area was desolate and quiet.
There was a rhythm to the birds and insect noises, as if the sounds
were taped on a loop and replayed. Maybe Sara was right. Someone
was pushing the right buttons, someone who knew they were there. He
didn’t like that feeling.

They passed marble buildings with chrome
railings, passed what looked like back alleys. For all the
brightness that the sun churned out, there still were pockets of
shadows.

Butterflies swarmed planters filled with
flowers. Dagger opened his mouth but before he could ask, Sara
said, “Holograms.” They turned a corner and stretched in front of
them was a flat marble building that looked more like an elaborate
mausoleum. Marble statues watched over a garden. Birds dodged
around a bird bath. Flowering trees sprouted from marble urns.

“
So this is how a director lives,” Sara
said.

Dagger felt a cold sweat prickle his skin.
His eyes immediately riveted on a second floor window. Why that
one? He had the image of a gun in his hand pressed to a man’s
forehead. He shook the picture from his mind and trudged up the
walk.

“
What’s wrong?” Sara asked. “Your pulse
has elevated.”

There wasn’t much he could keep from his
partner. It was a curse and a blessing. “I don’t know.”

“
Think you’ve been here
before?”

They reached the front door but there wasn’t
a doorknob. Dagger pressed his hand to the door but before he could
give it a shove, the door hissed open.

“
That was weird.” Sara stepped closer.
“Wait.” She listened for sounds from inside. “Something is running,
something electrical, maybe a refrigerator or air
conditioning.”

They stepped into a marble foyer that was the
size of a basketball court. Sunlight streamed in from windows on
the roof. They were too large to be skylights. A curved staircase
led to a second floor. There was something clinical about the
house. Everything was white and chrome.

A whirring sound came from a hallway. Dagger
pulled his Kimber and waited. A robot about four feet tall whizzed
across the floor. “Hologram?”

“
No.” Sara grabbed his arm. “Wait.” The
metal machine had a round head and feet that were round disks.
Flashing lights circled the round disks, blinking in rhythm to its
movements. “It’s a vacuum cleaner.”

“
A what?”

“
I know that’s a peculiar word for
you,” Sara said with little humor. Dagger wasn’t known to do much
in the way of housecleaning. “The last person out of this town not
only didn’t turn off the lights but also didn’t deactivate the
toys.”

“
I just need to know if it’s armed.”
Dagger pointed the Kimber at the robot. It halted and slowly turned
its head in Dagger’s direction.

“
I would say to put your weapon away,
Dagger,” Sara said, her voice strained. “As soon as it stopped
moving, a red light appeared in that square of glass where its eyes
should be. It thinks you pose a threat.”