The Line Book One: Carrier (14 page)

My stomach went icy. “No.”

He nodded as if he agreed. “That settles it then. They’re yours now.”

“But I’ll be running forever. That’s what you’re telling me. Even after my prints are gone, they’ll always be looking for me. For the babies.”

“Probably. Yes. Whoever did this will want to find them, and you. Very badly.”

“As long as Auberge is in power,” I said.

“Or, like Tym says, the alien apocalypse.” Doc cracked a small grin. His dimple appeared, and I resisted the urge to touch it.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, looking away from his mouth. “Great.”

* * *

Back inside Tym’s room of computer buzz, Tym handed Doc a small black earpiece and slapped him on the back. It wasn’t until Doc turned from Tym and stared at me oddly that I realized this was goodbye.

“I wish you all the very best,” he said.

“Oh. Me too. I just... That’s it? But I’ll see you after, right? You’ll be keeping tabs, you said.”

“Yes,” he said. He added hastily, “Of course.” His eyes left mine and went to the floor.

“Oh. Okay.” I let it hang in the air, uncertain what I should say. I managed, “Thank you, Doc. For everything.”

He cleared his throat and suddenly sounded very professional as his green eyes met mine again. “You’ll need to see an obstetrician after you get to North.”

“Can’t I come back and have you check me?”

Tym laughed out loud. “You ain’t got the right parts, sweetie.”

Doc smiled again. “I’m not a medical doctor. I’m a veterinarian.”

The dog and kitten posters from the clinic—I should have guessed. I’d realized it was a veterinarian’s office, but not that he was a vet. That made me grin. “Does the clinic know?”

“Why do you think the clinic is free?” Doc laughed a little, but it trailed away and shriveled in the tension. “Anyway, take care.”

“Yeah. You too.” I stepped forward, as if to hug him, but I couldn’t do it. My arms froze at my sides, and all I could do was offer him my hand, which he shook quickly.

It seemed like there was more to be said, but he turned away and shoved the earpiece Tym had given him into the canal of his ear. “Can you hear me now?” His voice sounded over a pair of old speakers, plugged into a drive on one of Tym’s tables.

“Loud and clear, Doc,” Tym said. “Good luck.”

Doc nodded and breezed past me as he left. He didn’t look back.

I stared at the door for a moment, caught in what I wanted to say but was unable to voice.

Don’t go.

Tym got up to pull out another swivel chair. “Have a seat, Natalia. This is going to take a while.”

Chapter Thirteen

I was worthless to help, and this drove me crazy.

Insane.

I didn’t last long in the chair to which Tym had directed me. I paced back and forth behind him and wrung my hands. On the screens showed empty hallways, air ducts and the exterior of Auberge headquarters.

Sonya’s breathing came from speakers Tym had synced with her earpiece, so I could hear, but I couldn’t talk back.

This made it worse.

They were probably wise to exclude me from the plan, but why torture me by making me watch?

Useless.

My hands were clammy inside the leather gloves. Despite taking them off and rubbing my palms on my jeans, they were quickly moistened again once I put the gloves back on.

After what seemed like an eternity, Sonya appeared in the corner of one of the cameras, at which point Tym started typing feverishly on the keypad in his lap. Sonya still had all her piercings but wore a pair of skin-tight black pants, a similar shirt and carried a tiny backpack slung over her shoulders. And, of course, no shoes. She must have left the bunny slippers at home.

Tym’s hands swung into the air, and security camera screens flung about like balls in the hands of a juggler. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Loop started. You’re clear in five, four, three, two, go.”

I tried to keep quiet but failed. “Loop?”

“Footage of these same passageways from the last time we went in,” Tym explained. “That’s here in these boxes lined in red. I run that on the monitors in the security booths, and they think their air ducts are free and clear while Sonya slips in unnoticed. Meanwhile, what’s in these blue screens is what’s actually happening with our girl. Oh—” His attention was diverted back to the screens. “Bogey at three o’clock, Sonya.”

In one of the blue screens, Sonya crouched on the cracked cement sidewalk, using a small mechanical screwdriver to unscrew an air grate on the exterior wall of headquarters. She left each screw in the grate as she loosened them.

“How much time do I have?” She had two screws left.

“Ten, nine, eight...” Tym watched the screens, fumbled around the table in front of him looking for something. He found his glasses on top of his head and flopped them down on his nose. “Seven, six...”

One screw left.

I felt bile gathering in the back of my throat but swallowed it down.

Sonya had the last screw off. She opened the grate, crawled through and closed it behind her.

“Five, four, three...” Tym said.

On an adjoining screen, Sonya appeared. Inside the air duct, there was an immediate ninety-degree turn down, and while propping herself up by jamming her bare feet into the metal air duct wall, Sonya was able to use her hands to rummage in her tiny backpack for a battery-operated socket wrench and tighten the backside of the four screws that held the grate from the inside.

She had two screws left when Tym whispered, “Freeze.”

In the corner blue screen, a security guard wearing a wool uniform and black boots ambled by the grate. Two screws visibly poked out the opposite side.

Sonya held her breath. She slid partway down and ducked.

Tym didn’t speak a word. He waited for the guard to walk by.

The guard strolled at a leisurely pace, scanning the area around him. Just as he was about to round the corner, one of the protruding screws from the grate fell from the outside and hit the sidewalk with a clink.

The guard stopped.

I gasped.

Tym held up his hands to silence me.

The guard turned around and checked behind him but failed to notice the loose screw, which had rolled into a crack in the sidewalk.

After a few seconds, which felt like a million minutes, the guard turned and went back on patrol.

Tym and Sonya both let out their breath at the same time.

I ran out the door. I couldn’t stand the pressure. It squeezed my chest until I couldn’t feel myself breathing.

After getting a grip, I came back inside to find Sonya in another blue screen. She’d made it partway through the air ducts and was sliding along like a worm on her belly, a tiny flashlight in her mouth lighting the way.

When she reached what appeared to be a dead end, Sonya took out the socket wrench and unscrewed the grate blocking her way. It fell off and disappeared without a sound.

“Sending it your way. Coming from above,” Tym said. He noticed me peering over his shoulder. “Feeling all right?”

“Just nervous.”

“There’s a bucket under that table over there I use for old circuit boards. Dump it out and hang onto it in case you need it. It’s not safe for you to be alone outside.”

“Okay.”

“Here it comes,” Tym said, his attention back on the screens. “Less than three.”

“I see it,” Sonya whispered.

I walked over to the table Tym had indicated and found an old wooden bucket full of plastic green rectangles covered in tiny cubes and wires.

“Careful dumping those out. They don’t make them anymore and they’re hard to come by. Okay, Sonya. The elevator has stopped on the level below. You have three seconds... Wait, someone just pushed the button. Go!”

On the screens, Sonya slid out of the air duct onto the top of an elevator without a sound. The elevator moved up, and Sonya disappeared from view.

“Where’d she go?” I panicked.

“No cameras in the elevator shaft. We’re dark until she appears at the bottom and gets back into the air duct system.”

“It’s going up!” Sonya whispered. It was strange to hear her and not see her. She was like some disembodied ghost floating through the warehouse.

“Can’t be helped,” Tym said, his fingers flying feverishly over the keyboard. “If I override, it might raise suspicions. Once we drop off the passenger, I’ll get you to the sub-basement without interruption.”

She sighed.

I stacked the circuit boards carefully on the concrete floor where the bucket had been and took it back with me to stand behind Tym. My stomach seemed fine at the moment, but I didn’t want to risk a flare-up.

“A’right,” Tym said. “Hang tight, we’re headed down.”

“Oh God.” My nerves were shot and my stomach made an audible grumble.

Tym chuckled. “Fourth floor.”

“How can you tell without cameras?” I asked.

Tym pointed to a map in the top right corner of the screens. “Up there. See that red dot?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the elevator.”

“Ah.”

“You’re at the basement, girl. One more.”

“Damn, it’s cold,” Sonya whispered.

“And...stop.” Tym’s fingers flew some more. “Sixty seconds.”

We heard the whirring of the electric screwdriver and a couple of pings as the screws from the grate hit the roof of the elevator.

“Air duct loop in place. You’re clear.”

Suddenly, Sonya appeared out of blackness and into one of the blue screens on the right side of the wall.

“We have visual,” he said.

“How’s my ass look from there?” she asked, clamping the tiny flashlight back into her teeth and crawling along.

“Can’t tell,” he said, sounding disappointed. “We’re seeing you from the wrong angle. But from the looks of things, your nose hairs could use a trim.”

Sonya stifled a laugh. She caught the flashlight as it dropped from her mouth, just before it hit the floor of the air duct.

Tym’s face fell. “Sorry.”

She shook her head as if to say it was no big deal, but I could tell he was shaken. If Sonya had been heard, not only was she dead, but the rest of us soon after.

“Go left,” Tym said.

At an air duct intersection, Sonya nodded and slithered past one screen and reappeared in another.

“Second grate. Yes, that one.” He typed hard against the keyboard still in his lap. “Loop in place. Go.”

Sonya took out her socket wrench and loosened the screws of the grate on the floor of the air duct just in front of her. When all four screws were the majority of the way out, she slid closer and used her fingers to guide the grate out to keep it from falling to the floor.

Carefully, she turned the grate sideways and brought it up into the air duct, resting it on the other side of the opening. She then shimmied forward, pushing the grate ahead, and slithered over the opening until her feet were above the hole. Then, bending at the hips, Sonya lowered her feet into the opening and slid out, being sure to hold on to the edge of the hole with her hands. It was so graceful and utterly silent I was amazed.

Sonya had disappeared from one blue screen and reappeared into another one on the opposite side of the wall. I could tell instantly that it was a server room because it looked almost exactly like Tym’s warehouse, only clean, better organized and had thick, soundproof padding along the walls and ceiling.

Floor-to-ceiling cabinets lined every square inch of the walls and held rectangular black boxes. The black double doors leading to the rest of the sub-basement were barely visible behind Sonya. In the middle of the room were shelves and shelves of more back-to-back black boxes, stacked two cubes deep. The room couldn’t have been any bigger than Tym’s lair but housed twice as many hard drives and seemed more like a maze than a room.

Sonya moved silently around the aisles, counting shelves. She’d taken the flashlight from her mouth and held it in her hand.

Tym’s breath had quickened. “There.”

Sonya put the flashlight down and whipped her backpack off. She rummaged around for a second and pulled out a small black hard drive, then flicked open the connector and inserted it into a black cube’s port.

“How did you...?” I started, but Tym shushed me.

“Starting upload,” she whispered. “Twelve minutes to go.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. I knew Doc had said twelve minutes was too long, and at the time I’d disagreed, silently, and thought that twelve minutes had sounded rather reasonable. But he’d been right. Twelve minutes was a long time to stand in the middle of a room and hold a tiny black box plugged into another black box.

Anything could happen in twelve minutes.

The rest of the screens suddenly caught my attention. I’d been watching Sonya and hadn’t paid any attention to the others. But now I understood their importance.

Guards walked in and out of view at an alarming rate. At any moment, one could appear, and the whole plan would be shot.

My stomach churned and I felt a rise of bile.

“Eleven minutes,” Sonya whispered.

I threw up in the bucket.

Tym grimaced but didn’t say a word.

I backed up and stood by the door. I hadn’t meant to vomit right beside Tym’s ear, but that was exactly what I’d done.

“Doc,” he said. “Baby bird is blowing chunks.”

“How many times?” Doc asked through the speakers.

I’d forgotten he was listening to everything from atop his motorcycle at the pick-up location.

“Just once so far,” Tym said. “In my ear.”

“Sorry.”

“Get her some water,” Doc said.

Tym shook his head as if Doc could see him. “Can’t leave the screens.”

“If she dehydrates, she could lose the babies.”

My stomach did a somersault. “I can get it.”

“It’s outside,” Tym said. “But you shouldn’t be out there alone.”

“Ten minutes,” Sonya whispered.

I inched toward the door. “I’ll be fine.”

“No,” Tym insisted.

“If she vomits again she doesn’t have a choice,” Doc’s voice sounded from the speaker.

“Really, it’s fine. Just tell me where it is,” I said.

“Forget it,” Tym barked, losing patience. “Just breathe through your mouth and chill. We’re almost there.”

I stood quietly for a few moments, concentrating on my breathing, but the smell of the bucket was getting to me. With no sink to rinse it out, the vomit sitting at the bottom seemed to grow in stench by the second. I fought to keep my stomach calm, but my reflex got the best of me and I retched again.

Tym groaned. “All right, all right. Outside, down the stairs. Hang a right. Back door leads to another door on the right. In there is my bedroom. Water is in the little fridge. And rinse out the bucket while you’re there. Cripes, that’s potent.”

“Sorry.”

“Smells like rotten syrup.”

“Nine minutes,” Sonya whispered.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Forget it, baby bird.” Tym’s eyes never left the gathering of screens. “I got bigger fish to fry.”

I went out the door and tiptoed down the stairs. It was cooler in the warehouse. Wrapping the army jacket tightly across my chest, I headed to the back door, which I’d thought before to be an exit.

Through the door was a long hallway. The floor had bright orange industrial carpet, and the walls didn’t look like they’d been painted in at least twenty years.

On the right I found the door leading to Tym’s room. It was unlocked.

Inside, there was a decent-sized room with a sofa, viewing screen on the wall across from it, a deep sink, a countertop with an electric skillet sitting on top and a small, dented refrigerator that seemed too small to hold more than a stick of butter.

A glass pitcher full of cool water was inside. I rummaged around the only cupboard and found a glass. I had two glasses of water and put the rest back into the refrigerator.

On the other side of the room from the couch was what I took to be Tym’s bed. It was small and unmade. Above it, there was a shelf of stacked colored papers. I couldn’t help myself and went over to see what they were.

When I reached up and took one down, I was surprised at the weight of it. It was about one hundred pieces of paper, bound together in the middle. There were various-sized boxes of colored pictures inside and some guy wearing a blue suit with a giant “S” on his chest flying around. Characters in the book spoke in little white bubbles.

I wanted to stay and read a few of them, but the fact that Sonya was still in the server room in Auberge headquarters pulled me out. I was in the hallway before I realized I’d left the bucket in the deep sink.

I went back inside to retrieve it when I heard shouting.

Dropping the bucket of vomit on the floor, I ran from Tym’s bedroom and down the hall. Inside the heart of the warehouse I could hear Tym shouting.