The Nexus Series: Books 1-3 (46 page)

12

“NOW
it’s official department business,” said Jill.

“My thoughts
exactly.” 
Dizzie
immediately rolled her chair
in front of another computer.

“What’s going
on?” asked Bradley.

No one bothered
to answer.

Within seconds
Dizzie’s
screen flashed a message in several
languages: 
You are attempting to access classified information! 
Provide access code to proceed.  Be aware that all activity is closely
monitored.

“Let’s have that
code, Sherlock,” said
Dizzie
.

“
Of course,
Miss Mason
.”

“THERE’S
no need for me to bother with the usual preface,” Holiday began.  “You
know what information we need from you.  You know to what lengths we are
willing to go to get it.”

“You are the
director of this department?” the man asked.  Holiday recognized his
accent as Russian or Eastern European of some sort.  “Your work is
renowned among certain circles.”

“I enjoy
flattery as much as the next man, but let’s return to the matter at hand, shall
we?”

“You are an
idealist.”  The man’s voice and demeanor were pure calm.  His pale
eyes locked Holiday in an intense gaze.  “I’m an idealist myself, you
know.”

DIZZIE
growled from the computer in the corner of her cubicle.

“Didn’t the pass
code work?” Amber asked.

“It got me into
the Vilnius, Lithuania database.  Fat lot of good
that
did!”

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean there’s
still no record of the arrest of the tattooed woman.”

“We’re supposed
to be watching the interrogation,” Bradley said from across the cubicle.

Dizzie
shrugged.  “So watch it.”

“I don’t
understand,” said Amber, “How could that shooting not be mentioned at all?”

“Like I said,
they’ve got it recorded somewhere.  But apparently it’s too hush-hush to
allow even on the classified network.”

“So it’s pretty
sensitive information,” Amber concluded nervously.

“What about the
Moscow killing?” Jill asked.

“Checking it
right now.”

“That can wait!”
barked Bradley.

Amber gave him a
dark look.  “Easy for you to say.  You’re dad wasn’t killed by these
people.”

Bradley raised
an eyebrow.  “You’re sure these are the same people?”

“Leave
Dizzie
to it,” Corey told Bradley.  “There are still
four of us to listen in on the director.”

“Assuming you
stop interrupting so we can hear it,” Jill added.

Bradley furrowed
his brow.  “I’m not the one who interrupted.  She needs to stop
announcing whatever she finds.”

Dizzie
turned to retort, but Corey held up a silencing
hand.  “He’s right,
Diz
.  The rest of us
have to focus.”

She sighed and
went back to work.  Jill, Corey, and Bradley concentrated on the
interrogation.  Amber stood with them, but her eyes kept drifting toward
Dizzie
.

“Has it occurred
to you that we ultimately desire the same thing, Director?” the prisoner was
saying now.

Holiday
chuckled.  “So we both want you behind bars?”

“WE
are looking for a better world,” the man in cuffs said.

“I think you
mean you’re looking to eliminate those you believe are in the way of a ‘better
world,’ whatever that means to you,” returned Holiday.

“And you’re
not?  Is not imprisoning me for the remainder of my life just another way
of
eliminating
me?”

“I’ll admit your
way is simpler and doesn’t cost the taxpayers so much.  Speaking of the
taxpayers, they’re footing the bill for this conversation we’re having right
now, and I don’t think it’s so that we can discuss philosophy.”

“OH
come
on!”
Dizzie
yelled.

“Let me guess,”
said Jill, “the Moscow database had nothing about the tattooed shooter?”

“Not a thing.”

Amber wrung her
hands.

“Something’s not
right,” Corey whispered as he watched the interrogation. His hand unconsciously
reached toward his gun.  “He’s got something up his sleeve.”

“You worry too
much,” said Bradley.

“
Cor’s
right,” said Jill.  “Look at this guy.  He
acts like he’s sitting in his own living room.  It’s like...”

“Like he wants
to be here,” Corey finished.

THE
prisoner smiled.  Not an evil smile—sincere, disarming.  “Forgive me,
I was swept up in a wave passion.  You are quite correct, of
course.   We are not here to speak of these matters.”  The man
closed his mouth.  He pressed the tip of his tongue against one of his
teeth.

“UH-OH,”
said Corey.

The screens
showing the interrogation were suddenly snowy with distortion.  The
speakers hissed.

THE
two guards just outside the interrogation room saw and heard the
same thing on their monitors.  Through the one-way window they could see
the conversation, but they couldn’t hear it.  The speakers were only
static.

“Technology,”
one of the guards muttered.

The other chewed
his lip.  “This is fishy.  Come on, we’ve got to shut this thing
down.”

“WHAT
happened to the feed?”
Dizzie
asked, turning from her
computer.

“He’s jammed the
signal, somehow,” Corey said nervously.

“Or it just cut
out,” Bradley suggested.

Corey shook his
head and drew his gun.  “This is not a coincidence.  Come on.”

THE
director eyed the guards quizzically as they entered the room unannounced.

“No feed,” one
of them said as they stepped on either side of the prisoner.  “We’ll have
reschedule.”

Holiday looked
at prisoner doubtfully as the guards
uncuffed
him
from the interrogation table.

The tattooed man
spat.

A tooth—or
something that looked like a tooth—landed on the table.

The guards
stared.

Holiday lunged.

Too late.

The tooth
exploded.  As if by magic, a thick, vaporous substance filled the room
almost instantly.

COREY
led the way down the dark hallway toward the interrogation room.  The
thick vapor was drifting out the open door.

“Don’t breathe!”
Corey warned as they ventured inside.

An unconscious
Holiday still occupied one chair.  Two unconscious guards lay across the
other.

The prisoner was
nowhere to be seen.

“I’ll turn on
the alarm,”
Dizzie
said back outside the door.

“No,” said
Bradley.  “Let him think he got away unnoticed.”

Dizzie
looked to Corey.

Corey
nodded.  “We have a better chance of catching him if he doesn’t know we’re
after him.”

“Okay,
then.”  She pulled out her mobile.  “Show us where he went,
Sherlock!”

HE
found his black bag in the evidence room, around the corner from the
interrogation room he’d just escaped.

He didn’t unzip
it.  He didn’t need the rifle.  This time he needed what was
concealed inside the bag’s lining.  He found a particular part of the seam
and tugged, opening a hidden compartment within the scanner-proof,
metal-detector-proof material.  The opening contained several flat,
wallet-sized objects, each fixed with blinking devices at one end.  The
devices, along with a small mobile, were secured to a strap which he now
buckled around his waist underneath his prescribed gray shirt.

He exited the
room and continued down the dark hallway, leaving HQ farther behind.  He
came to an electronically locked door.  From a slit in the strap he’d
buckled around his waist he drew a card key.

He opened the
door.

At the end of
the hallway a series of metal rungs led high up into a recess in the ceiling.

He climbed.

At the top of
the ladder he stepped onto a metal ramp doubling back into the darkness. 
A few meters later the ramp had become a catwalk along the edge of the high
ceiling of HQ.  He peered down at the activity among the cubicles far
below.

They had no idea
what was going on directly over their heads—would have no idea until it was too
late.

“THIS
is where Sherlock lost him,” said
Dizzie
, reaching
the door to the passage.  She slid her card key.  The light on the
lock glowed red.  She tried again.  Another red light.  “Not
working.”

“Let me try,”
said Corey, pulling out his card key.

The red light
again.

“Is there any
point in trying mine?” asked Amber.

Dizzie
shook her head.  “Somehow he had a card that
was rigged to reprogram the lock.”

Bradley made a
frown beyond his usual frown.  “You’re telling me the
only person
with access to this door is an escaped prisoner?”

Dizzie
nodded gravely.  “That’s the size of it.”

“What’s in
there?” asked Jill.

“Old maintenance
passage from back when the base was being built.  No longer in use. 
I doubt anyone’s opened this door in years.”

“No cameras in
there, I’m guessing.”

“Nope.”

“This guy knows
too much,” Corey thought aloud.  “He knew we’d set up surveillance in the
Flynn Tower.  He knew we’d catch him—although I think maybe he was
counting on getting a shot off first.  He knew where the interrogation
room was, where the evidence room was, and where to go to get out of sight from
the cameras.  He even had a way to key and reprogram this lock.”

“He has inside
help,” concluded Amber.

“We’ve got to
follow him,” urged Bradley.  “Help me break down the door.”

“These passages
lead all over,” said
Dizzie
.  “He could be just
about anywhere on base by now.”

“So we’d better
hurry if we want to catch him.”

“
Now
should we sound the alarm?” asked Amber.

“Wait, we don’t
have to catch up to him,” said Jill.  “We can take another route to find
him.”

“Jill, without
any cameras—” Amber began.

“Think about
it,” said Jill.  “What’s the one reason someone would purposely arrange to
be brought into HQ—the one place here someone would want to go?”

THE
lights of the HQ floor and along the balcony that circled it didn’t reach him
up here.  The walkway hung in darkness, so near the ceiling that his
shaved head nearly brushed against it.  He held his hand up and absently
ran his palm along the textured metal as he walked.  Not far above his
hand, just beyond the expertly designed and constructed ceiling, were the
waters of the lake.

He was almost to
the first of his three destinations.  The route he’d taken among the
network of catwalks brought him all the way across the upper reaches of the
expansive room, ending at a door high up the wall.  Through the door was
another passage, which took him past an intersecting passage and to another
door.  He stepped through it.

The door led to
a small railed overlook.  He left the door open behind him, leaned against
the rails and peered beyond.

No one had seen
Sherlock from this vantage point in years.  The rows of columns glittering
with blinking lights rose from the floor far below him like stalagmites in a
cave.  Some were not as tall as the overlook on which he stood. 
Others rose above his level and connected with the ceiling above.  Stairs
and ladders connected layers of scaffolding, giving technicians access to
Sherlock’s extensive anatomy.

One of the
scaffolds stretched not far below the overlook where the man stood.  He
climbed over the rail and dropped onto it.

“WHAT’S
he up to?”
Dizzie
wondered aloud, her whisper all but
drowned out in the room’s intense mechanical hum.  From the shadows, they
watched as the tattooed man made his way along the scaffolding several meters
overhead.

“Isn’t it
obvious?” Amber asked.

“He wants to tap
into Sherlock,” said Bradley.

Dizzie
shook her head.  “In that case he’d head for
the data storage columns.  But he’s moving toward the processors.”

The man
descended a ladder and stepped onto a platform halfway up the room’s largest
column.  The massive cylindrical tower was several meters thick and
stretched from floor to ceiling.  From their angle they could see him
approach a console set into the structure.

“That’s the
control panel for the central processor,”
Dizzie
moaned.  She elbowed Jill in the ribs.  “Shoot him, shoot him!”

Jill gave her a
look.  “We can’t open fire in this room,
Diz
!”

“What’s he
doing?” Amber asked anxiously.

The man had
lifted his shirt, revealing the strap buckled around his torso.  He
removed two of the devices from the strap.

Corey
swallowed.  “Oh, boy...”

Dizzie
squinted.  “Are those...?”

Bradley
nodded.  “Explosives.”

The man began
cautiously placing the first device.

“Don’t worry,”
Corey reassured the others, “he won’t set them off until he’s a long way away
from here.”

“
We
should be getting a long way away from here!” insisted
Dizzie
.

“We should keep
him
from getting a long way away,” argued Bradley.