Chasing Ghosts (26 page)

Slowly, Dagger put his gun away and held his
hands out. “This is stupid,” he whispered. “Having to show some
piece of metal that my hands are empty.” The red light faded and
the robot went about its business, disappearing through a doorway,
the hum and swishing of the vacuum growing fainter, replaced by
voices, whispers, coming from the upstairs.

Dagger took the stairs two at a time, again
pulling his Kimber from its holster. He briefly wondered why he
hadn’t found any high tech weapons in this town. Did they keep them
locked up or take them with?

With her lightning speed, Sara reached the
top stair before he did and placed her hand on his chest to slow
him down.

The voices were louder now, but they sounded
intimate, soft murmurs, something sounding like kisses.

Dagger and Sara hugged the wall as they made
their way to opened French doors. From the hallway they could see a
platform bed, drawers in the marble wall which probably served as a
dresser. They reached the doorway and peered in. A woman was
cuddling a baby and smiling up at a man who vaguely resembled
Dagger. The man’s hair was military short. The woman had long, dark
hair and a face that could grace just about any magazine cover.

Sara gasped when she saw the similarity. “You
have a wife and baby?”

CHAPTER 31

“
Not to my knowledge.” Before Dagger
didn’t trust his memory. Now he had a hard time trusting his
vision. Yes, the husband did resemble him somewhat, but married?
The woman didn’t even look vaguely familiar.
“Holograms?”

“
Yes,” Sara replied.

They ignored the obvious family display of
affection and searched the room. If there was a desk it was pretty
well hidden as were any indications of a closet or nightstand.

“
Wow.” Sara walked over to the shelf
which was lined with individual fish containers. Their bright
colors were striking— royal blue, scarlet, bright red, with long,
flowing fins.

“
Holograms?” Dagger barked out as he
aimed his gun at the shelf.

“
YES.” Sara stared at him in shock.
“They are only fish. Chill.” She turned back to the shelf and read
from a gold plate on the wall. “Betta splendens. Native of Thailand
and very aggressive toward other male bettas.” As each fish
maneuvered in its container, it would catch sight of the fish next
to it and go into a frenzy. Its fins ballooned and the fish darted
at the reflection in an attempt to get to the other betta. “Aren’t
they beautiful?” Sara took a step back, her face reflecting
realization. “I remember my research. Scientists have been studying
these fish since the 1930s as it relates to the aggressive nature
of man.” Sara repeated things verbatim as she recalled details from
her memory. “They believe it is linked to an endocrine disrupting
chemical and at one time the military thought of duplicating it in
man to create a super sol…”

Soldier
. Dagger
didn’t have to finish her thought.

“
Oh my God,” she whispered. “Is that
what BettaTec is all about? Is this where it all
started?”

“
Let’s get out of here.” Dagger stalked
out of the room and rushed down the staircase. A wife and baby? Why
didn’t he remember? And why did seeing the fish bring back memories
of small fingers, his fingers, tapping the glass? And was Sara
right about someone creating super soldiers? Demko’s abilities were
still fresh in his mind. Skizzy did mention genetically engineered
soldiers as Doc Akins was removing the cover to the chip in his
neck. And how Demko changed after looking at Dagger reminded him of
the betta fish.

He was out the front door and down the walk
before Sara caught up with him. Five years ago he had succeeded in
destroying BettaTec’s one satellite. Then a year ago he found out
they not only had one but two satellites in orbit, more
sophisticated and capable of destruction. But what happened before
those five years? The military training, Special Ops, police
academy— was all of that fabricated?

Sara was surprisingly silent as they stalked
back to the courtyard. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. The
possibility of having a family somewhere was enough to silence him
let alone Sara. But more importantly…where were they now?

Dagger stopped in the center of the
courtyard. “Map,” he called out. The map materialized in front of
them. “Lab.” A bright yellow light pulsated on the map. The lab was
the next building over from the maze of cubicles. “Can you find
your way back to the elevator you used?”

“
I think so. Why?”

He turned to face her. So young, so innocent.
So fragile. “I want you on the elevator and out of here.”

“
No way.”

“
It’s not open for
discussion.”

“
I’m not leaving you.”

“
I’ll drag you there if I have to, now
get out of here.”

She stepped in front of him, hands on her
hips. “You and how many Demkos?”

Dagger almost barked out a laugh but it
caught in his throat as he remembered the two men Sara had flung
fifty feet and over a truck cab. It pained him to do it but the
only way to get her out of harm’s way was to knock her out and put
her in the elevator. His fist came out with lightning speed but was
met by her opened palm. Before he could blink, she had his arm
behind his back and twisted up.

“
I don’t want to hurt you, Dagger. You
won’t be any good with a broken arm.”

Dagger struggled to pull his arm free, tried
grabbing her with his left hand but she pinned that one, too. He
winced as she pressed his arm further up.

“
Promise me you’ll behave.”

Dagger heaved a sigh. Maybe to get her out of
here he would just have to shoot her. “I promise.”

She released her hold but played it safe by
stepping several feet away.

Dagger shook the blood flow back into his
arms. “Let me put it another way,” he said. “When and if I get out
of here, I won’t go home, unless you leave now. Your choice.” He
turned his back on her, expecting her to plead, shed some tears.
But all he heard were footsteps. Dagger turned to see Sara stomping
off. He hated being a bastard. He was so good at it when he
directed it toward Sheila but with Sara it hurt. She didn’t
understand that he was trying to protect her and she sometimes
overestimated her ability to protect him.

Sara stormed down the stairs, through a
passageway and pounded her way into the building. She took angry
swipes at the tears blinding her. “That arrogant S.O.B. If it
hadn’t been for me Mitch Arnosky would have stabbed or shot him.
Dagger would still be hanging by his thumbs from the catwalk when
those jewelry thieves robbed us. But no.” She stalked down a wide
hallway, glass walls on her right. The rooms beyond the glass
appeared to be surgical rooms. What looked like robotic arms hung
from the ceiling. The walls and tiles were constructed of the same
white marble in the hallway.

Her pace slowed as she realized no matter
what Dagger threatened, she couldn’t leave him. Not here. Not like
this. Not without knowing that he ever made it out of this place.
She stopped and took in her surroundings, not sure if anything
looked familiar. She didn’t remember passing the surgical rooms
when she first arrived. The elevator had emptied into an office,
not a hospital wing, and she had turned and immediately found an
exit door. She didn’t see any exit doors in this wing. Her gaze was
drawn to a metal catwalk at the end of the hallway behind her.
Metal stairs descended from the catwalk. Above the surgical rooms
was a glass bubble. Did people witness the surgeries?

A knocking sound came from up ahead. Sara
cautiously continued down the hallway, stopping every few seconds
to listen. Beyond the surgical rooms was a door. A closet? Storage
room? Several other taps came from behind the door, then a hiss
which sounded like a snake.

“
Oh God, I hope it’s a hologram.” She
patted her pocket. The sub-compact was still there. Slowly she
pulled it out and hoped she still had bullets left. She didn’t
remember how many she had used up on the tanks. Her steps faltered
as she reached the corridor. She stood for several seconds and
listened. She didn’t detect a heartbeat. Whatever it was, it wasn’t
alive. More tanks? The tapping was clearer now, quick tap-tapping.
It was coming from around the corridor. She stole a glance over her
shoulder wondering if she should go back outside, maybe try another
entrance.

When Sara turned back around a spider with a
body the size of a motorcycle helmet was fifteen feet in front of
her. Another crept along the wall and paused. Sara heard a loud
shriek and realized it was coming from her. She fired two shots but
her hand shook so much the shots hit the wall. “I HATE SPIDERS!”
she screamed.

A bullet whizzed by her head and struck the
spider in front of her, blasting it into pieces. A second shot
knocked the other spider off the wall. It broke into several
pieces.

“
Are you okay?” Dagger asked as a smile
spread across his face.

“
What are you laughing at?” Sara
demanded.

Dagger used his foot to kick the metal pieces
of the body away. “It’s a robot.” He bent down and flipped the body
over. Sara crept closer. The underside had a power pack similar to
the one the tank had. Two round black eyes shifted left and right
as though the spider had some type of intellect and was searching
for its attacker. “Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Dagger was in full blown
laughter now.

A sudden realization hit Sara. There was
something all too familiar about these. Skizzy had helped Dagger
create robot spiders last year, far more advanced than these. They
were closer to the size of a normal spider and Dagger had used them
for audio and visual surveillance.

“
That’s how you knew how to create
those other robot spiders.” Sara jammed her fists at her waist and
waited.

“
What?” Dagger straightened but the
smile never left his face. He just gave a helpless shrug. “What
else could they be? Everything else down here is either a hologram
or a robot.”

“
Now I know I’m not leaving you alone.
You want to threaten not to come back to Cedar Point…fine. But I’m
not leaving.”

Dagger’s smile faded. So far they hadn’t run
into anything life threatening but it was the unknown that was
dangerous. Will something trigger a deadly gas? Are there fault
lines in the area? He again considered punching Sara out and
dumping her into the elevator if he could ever find it. Climbing up
one mile of stairs carrying Sara wasn’t something he looked forward
to.

Dagger stared over her shoulder then moved
slowly around her and toward a large metal door.

“
What is it?”

The glass window on the door was frozen over.
“Maybe all the inhabitants of this place have been frozen,” Dagger
said. He swiped a hand across the glass but it didn’t do much to
let him see what was inside. There wasn’t a door handle or a latch,
only a panel to the right of the door with an image of a hand.

“
Place your hand over the image,” Sara
suggested.

“
Why would my hand…” But Dagger never
finished. Sara grabbed his hand and pressed it against the panel.
There was a loud hissing and they both lurched back as though
expecting something to emerge. A hallway led to another door which
hissed open.

Frigid air blasted from the opening and as
the frosty air cleared they could see a cave of ice with several
pedestals jutting from the floor of the cave. Dagger waved her to
follow but Sara shook her head. “The door might close on us. I’ll
stand here and hold it open. You go.”

Dagger entered, wrapping his arms around him
to ward off the chill. “It looks like a Doomstay Vault.” He brushed
a hand across one of the labels on a pedestal. “It gives a list of
all the seeds that are being preserved.”

“
I thought the Doomsday Vault was in
Norway,” Sara said from her sentry post.

“
There are fourteen hundred seed banks
around the globe. But why here and why is BettaTec in charge of one
of them?”

Sara stepped closer to see the size of the
cave. “How do they keep everything running in this place?”

Dagger studied a panel on the wall inside the
cave. “Photovoltaic technology. It converts sunlight directly into
electricity.”

Sara glared at him with one perfect eyebrow
lifted. “You know about the tanks, the spiders, how the place is
powered, your prints opened the vault yet somehow you aren’t sure
if you have ever been here before.”

“
Yeah, puzzling isn’t it?”

Sara held up her hand to silence him.
“Listen,” she whispered.

Dagger stepped away from the vault and the
two doors closed. He strained to listen but other than the faint
hum of the ventilation system, he didn’t hear anything out of the
usual. Then he heard it. “Violin music?”

They moved cautiously down the hall, Dagger
on one side, Kimber in hand, and Sara on the opposite side. The
music slowly increased as they crossed a corridor. They stood at
the intersection and listened. The music was coming from up ahead,
in a sector marked Central Control on a brass sign above the
hallway.

Dagger wanted to tell Sara to hang back out
of harm’s way but she was already several steps ahead of him. She
was as stealthy as a cat with a curiosity to match. He hurried to
catch up. They passed what looked like office doors to their left.
Other than desks and chairs the rooms were bare.

Sara stopped abruptly. The marble wall was
replaced with floor to ceiling glass panels. They stepped into an
empty room with one high-backed chair facing a blank wall. The
violin music was coming from this room. But from where?