Last time she’d simply cut a hole in the electrified fencing, taking care not to short the circuit, and slid through. Repeating such a method was inadvisable.
Her current plan held a great deal of risk, but time constraints loomed. Above all, she had to be in and away before Cal—Eight could think to search for her here. He had taken the news of her perfidy rather calmly, all things considered, but Trinity could not calculate if it was the calm of shock or a more durable disengagement from anger.
In the end, it didn’t matter. She should stop thinking about it and concentrate on the current mission. Once she was far enough inside the base, she could dissolve one of her few remaining pills and the sweet, cold clarity would fold over her. After she extracted what she wanted, there was no reason to stay in this part of the country anymore.
Thinking about the pills was bad, because the word placebo kept rising from dark corners of her brain, and that was uncomfortable. Much better to use any tool at hand to maximize her efficiency and worry about such things later.
When she was in the woods. If she ever reached them. I want to see the forest before I die. An irrational compulsion, to be sure, deconstruction proceeding, but at least she was moving.
The gate, a pane of chain-link topped with razor wire, moved sideways; the driver yelled a cheerful platitude to the gate guard, who replied in kind. More of the small talk Eight was so good at. He would no doubt infiltrate in another way—
Stop it. Pay attention.
The sound of the tires changed—base pavement was different than civilian. Trinity filed the sound pattern away for later analysis, ramping up blood flow to her right hand to bring her tingling fingers back to flexibility and readiness. Left turns were the worst; for some reason they threatened the stability of the magsol pads.
They were wonderful pieces of hardware, and somewhat illegal for civilians to possess, but she’d had the foresight to raid a cache of Division gear just after she’d made her escape.
Yet another case of planning being indispensable.
The truck heaved along, rolling through needles of stinging rain that showed no sign of slacking. Two left turns, a long shallow grade, a right turn into the parking lot, swinging out to loop around, then the semi shuddering and backing up an inch at a time, aiming its hind end at the back of the Commissary/PX. Any other time, Trinity might well have admired the skill with which the driver piloted the unwieldy thing, but she was too busy restoring blood flow to her extremities and unsealing the magsols, covering the pop of their disengagement with the sound of rain and burping of the semi’s engine.
The Commissary’s roof angled down over the top of the trailer, and the question of dismounting from the semi was solved rather neatly by a leap over the low ledge and onto the roof. She landed in flowing water—the gutters here were sadly underserviced—and had to pitch forward against the current. A service ladder at the other end of the roof provided her with an easy exit, and before she took advantage of it she palmed a pill up to her mouth, hunching with her back to the wind so the bottle wouldn’t flood.
Wet cars glimmered in the parking lot—night stockers, no doubt. Stealing a vehicle from the residential section afforded her much more of an operational window than taking the chance of a stocker going home early and filing a report.
It occurred to her that there would be an emotional reason against such a maneuver as well as a logical one—her fellow stockers, just scraping by, were stranded without their carefully nursed, rusting cars. Cynthia, the night checker, had a moderately new Nissan, and she often drove some of the other stockers home through still-sleeping Felicitas.
Trinity closed her eyes for a moment, hugging the wet shadows at the side of the PX, calling up maps of the base inside her skull. The chemical burn of the pill began in her throat and chest, and a welcome chill settled over her.
It helped her push away Cal’s face, pale and set, as he told her he wasn’t going to yell or hit her. Or his mouth, hot and hungry, almost greedy as it devoured hers. The comforting closeness that stilled the scrabbling machine in her head, his strong, healthy scent.
He’s better off now, she told herself again, and the strange piercing sensation in her chest faded as the drug took hold. Trinity suspected it wouldn’t vanish completely. Not even with the pills.
She waited for the chemical, whatever it was, to take hold completely, but before it did the discomfort mounted. Her cheeks were suspiciously warm. Deconstruction was almost total, and cognitive degradation would follow in its wake. Physical degradation might or might not, and Trinity wondered at what point she would simply take matters into her own hands.
The trees would hear a gunshot, and the wildlife would be silent for a little while. They would return to their chattering soon enough, though.
Pill-calm settled completely. It dulled the sensation in her chest, enough so she could function.
Trinity’s eyelids fluttered open. She glanced across the parking lot again, one part of her attention hearing the rattle as the semi’s trailer opened and unloading began, the song of jokes cracking between unloaders and driver. The pallets would be drawn out, and soon stockers would be imposing order on the shelves. Neatening, straightening, arranging.
In a certain way, that was just what Trinity intended to do—arrange and straighten a jumbled mess in the world. First she had to find the pieces. Then she would arrange them.
After that, it was time to turn off the light, lock the doors...and leave.
* * *
It was just the same—hushed halls, rain muffled by the size of the building, a clot-thick pall of dust and floor wax. Unlike other base buildings, this one was brick, and the damp would no doubt fuel some interesting microscopic life in the baked crevices on its outside surface. Also, the basement was a haven to all manner of desert life seeking to escape the flood—scorpions in particular, Trinity surmised, and took great care in placing her feet even on the second floor.
Her nose twitched, dust irritating tender tissues. Damp footprints couldn’t be helped, but this building was usually kept locked and silent, its files moldering away. The newer cabinets for Project Gibraltar were in a climate-controlled room, easy to crack if you had designed the safety protocols.
Still, she approached carefully, a doe in a mountain meadow, every hair quivering, every heightened sense alert.
Blowing dust through the gap in a glass shield over three brand-new cherrywood cabinets showed her the usual tangle of laser trip-beams. A small, unwilling smile tilted the corners of her lips up and she turned away, toward the old, rancid, leaning file cabinets that held the newer files instead. The security on those was much more sophisticated and less showy, but a few moments with a keypad and a handheld device from the Division cache narrowed down the pincode.
It hadn’t changed. She thought about this for a few moments, analyzing, and punched the numbers in with a latex-clothed fingertip. Well-greased locks inside the shambledown cabinets slid noiselessly aside, and she went for the middle drawer on the right. That was where it should be.
Her own non-redacted file. The black hole yawned inside her head, a moment of unambiguous, completely illogical terror.
Are you sure you want to know? At least, comfortable in unknowing, she could perhaps think she was somehow better than the woman who had agreed to infection and induction. We have all your paperwork on file, you specifically asked not to know...
She eased the drawer open and began carefully riffling through the files. Failed candidates, charts full of vitals and medical language, the induction process causing fatal seizures and cortical bleeds in male survivors of the original Gibraltar infection. The other drawers were full of these, as well. Near the end would be the survivor files—they required much less storage real estate here, their lives filed separately afterward.
She found the first one, Agent A. He’d disappeare
d into Russia, presumed dead. B through D had coded, died of seizures on the induction table. Then familiar files, ones she’d handled classified copies of all during her attendance on Bronson’s whims.
1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10–13, all accounted for. No Three, no Four, no Six, no Eight. Had they been pulled?
Interesting. CONFIRMED: DECEASED stamped in thick red across 1, 5 and 11, as well as B through D. Agent A’s file held no confirmed stamp.
Trinity breathed out carefully, softly, sliding the last drawer open.
There they were. In defiance of all logical and rational arrangement, Six’s and Eight’s files were in the very last drawer. After them, extremely new files of thick cardboard. Aleph. Beta. Gamma.
The newer iterations, male agents who could survive induction. A chill walked up Trinity’s spine.
Her own file...was missing.
A hot rasping she identified as irritation crawled up her windpipe, just as air began soughing through the overhead vents. It should have been usual, keeping the paper properly dehumidified and at the correct temperature. Instead, a heaviness brushed Trinity’s damp hair, her wet face, her wrists. She glanced up at the climate vents, the heaviness racing up her fingers and toes, and suddenly understood.
A colorless, odorless gas.
This was a trap, or a killing bottle. And she was the butterfly in chloroform.
She reeled drunkenly for the door, leaving the papers behind in their suddenly skew-morphing cabinets, but the dosage was high and her legs folded underneath her. Her breath held, lungs squeezing every usable scrap of oxygen from trapped air, she crawl-lunged for the corridor and freedom...
Nothing. Blackness.
Gone.
* * *
Two brief taps on his door. “Sir?”
Caldwell closed the briefcase lid and pushed the entire thing aside. “Come in.” No trace of impatience in his tone, even though irritation filled his entire mouth with bitter metal. He’d been just about to unseal the coldpac. Once he did so, the virus would start to degrade. He only had about twenty minutes after unsealing to get it into a warm, safe environment where it could start replicating—namely, his very own corpus. “Yes?”
It was red-faced Corporal Hector, his uniform spray-starched so hard it almost crackled when he moved. “Sir. The light, sir. The light’s gone off.”
“Slow down, son.” Caldwell folded his hands. The top of his desk was a little tacky-sticky, and he frowned slightly. Something less than shipshape around here. If he was in charge, everything would need a good scrubbing. Of course, this was the Southwest, where all the bean dip and carcinogens probably put a dent in everyone’s morale. Besides, the weather was awful, and creepy-crawly critters everywhere. It was a wonder people lived here at all. “What’s gone off?” He already had an idea, of course, but you wanted the lower ranks to learn to spit out information quickly and clearly.
“The light on the records, sir. We’ve caught someone.”
Caldwell’s smile stretched, pulling his lips up and back. Hector snapped to attention as he rose, but Caldwell merely linked his hands behind his back and took a moment to think things over.
“Very good,” he said. “And are we adhering to protocol? The records room is sealed, completely sealed, and nobody’s opened the door to take a peek?” Because if someone has, I’ll bust him back to below buckytail private and send him to goddamn Syria.
“Yessir.” Hector nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, sir. We wouldn’t even know someone was in there if it wasn’t for the light. It tipped ten minutes ago, turned red. The cameras were activated, and there’s a shape on the floor.” He swallowed, throat working. “Is it very bad, sir?”
“Not at all.” He could afford to be magnanimous. “Activate Delta Team, have them meet me there. Keep the room sealed, Hector. Absolutely virgin until I get there, do you understand?”
“Yessir. Sealed up tight until you get there. Whoever it is, they’re not moving. The gas went in, and bang, down they went.”
“Male or female?”
“Can’t tell through the fuzz on the monitors, sir.”
Let it be her. “All right. Dismissed, Corporal, go get them on the stick and remember, I want to pop that cherry myself.”
“Yessir.” Another salute, and he was gone, slamming the door in his excitement.
Caldwell headed for the door himself, but he didn’t leave his office just yet. Instead, he punched the lock tab and retreated to his desk, pulling the right-hand drawer out. The two hypodermics, each in plastic sheaths, guaranteed sterile, a second one bought because he believed in preparation. Belt and suspenders, as his grandpappy used to say.
Funny. He hadn’t thought of the old man, with his tobacco-stained teeth and his well-oiled strap hung behind the closet door, in years. Noah, son, the Army will make you a soldier. It’s up to you to make yourself a man.
Caldwell was about to do one better. He’d seen what these agents were capable of doing. An edge like that, deployed in the real world—the sky was the limit. Three, with her doll-pretty face and her efficient calculations, would be a very, very useful asset, once he finished with her.
Eventually, of course, he’d have to address the problem of Control. As if the thought summoned it, Caldwell’s phone vibrated in his breast pocket—two short, one long, a familiar pattern. Control, wanting an update on Bay—still out in the field—and Three. Noah touched the fabric over his phone, thought about it for a moment and shook his head once. The old man could wait. When Caldwell made a report, it would be that he had Three in custody and pliable.
Agent Bay, well...
“One problem at a time,” Caldwell muttered, flicking the locks on the briefcase and raising the lid. A few moments had the coldpac out from its foam nest, and he tore into it with a decided motion, shook the icy little vial inside, then readied a syringe.
The stabilized viral load had to be injected intramuscularly. Upper arm was out, and thigh was, too—not enough mass. Caldwell had read the injection protocols and planned on giving himself the highest possible dose.
It was a little ironic that in order to acquire greater speed, flexibility and endurance, not to mention neuroplasticity and a host of other benefits, he would have to drop trou.
Caldwell readied the syringe, stood up and reached for his belt buckle.
Time to become a superman.
* * *
Cal’s skin was crawling. It felt strange to be back in fatigues again, after so long in civvies. And here, on a base, with high-and-tight unfriendlies everywhere and buzzing expectancy even a normal could smell riding the air, he felt naked, as well. They’d arrived last night with torrents of rain; Felicitas and the base were both armpit saunas by now. Dry heat was better; this crap felt like breathing through cotton.
“I don’t like it.” Reese frowned through the windshield—he was back in camo as well, and it turned out Holly was a whiz with the sewing machine he’d found, the one with embroidery function. Their patches were as perfect as could be expected on such short notice, and they’d squeaked through the gate just before lockdown came out and the MPs on duty began hand-checking every single ID.
Something was going on in this sleepy little corner of New Mexico.
What do you want to bet it’s her? Goddammit, woman. Just...just stay alive. I’ll handle the rest.
Yeah. As soon as he figured out what “the rest” was.
“What transport capabilities does this place have?” Reese probably already knew, but he was making sure. It was good to work with him, really—if Cal could ignore the tickle at the base of his neck telling him that he was selfishly endangering both the other agent and Holly by letting them try to help clean up the unholy mess he’d made of everything.
Stay alive, Trinity.
“Paved airstrip and chopper pad.” Cal focused o
n the map. “She was coming in to look for records. That means, as far as I can tell, the north quadrant. It’s the only place security’s tight enough.”
“Records.” Reese nodded. “It’d be nice to get a peek at those myself.”
“Why would they keep them out here?”
“Nice and dry most of the time. Ass-end of nothing, lots of space.” Reese shifted in the driver’s seat. Little beads of condensation touched his forehead, gleaming. His haircut was fresh, just like Cal’s, and they looked like a pair of buddies just shooting the breeze, parked at the very edge of a residential section, Base housing turning its back on them. A high board fence, whitewashed to specs, kept them from being seen by any of the single-story buildings. When they started up, dust would roostertail, but until then, they were fairly anonymous. “Redundancy. Plus there’s a medical facility... Huh.”
Cal’s ears perked. He glanced at the map again. “Right smack in the northern quad, too.”
Reese tapped at the steering wheel. “Huh,” he repeated thoughtfully.
“I wonder,” Cal said, “if they might take her there first. They’ve nabbed her.”
“What makes you think they’ve grabbed her?”
“She’s not the type to warn them she’s coming, and the entire base is on lockdown.”
“Just checking.” Reese measured off spaces on the steering wheel between his index fingers. “It’s really, really likely. You realize that’ll be waltzing right into the trap, right?”
“As far as they know, we’re both out of the country.”
“She worked with them. Would she let them know otherwise?”