“Amanda Lucas.”
Passcode.
“Two-two-three-seven.”
Access denied.
“Oh shit.”
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Someone must have seen us on the corridor cams and frozen my clearance. Leighton will know in a matter of seconds.”
“Give it another shot.”
She scans her card again.
Name, please.
“Amanda Lucas.”
Passcode.
She speaks slowly this time, overenunciating her words: “Two-two-three-seven.”
Access denied.
“Goddammit.”
A door at the opposite end of the corridor opens.
When Leighton’s men step out, Amanda’s face pales with fear, and a sharp, metallic taste coats the roof of my mouth.
I ask, “Do the employees create their own passcodes or are they assigned?”
“We create them.”
“Give me your card.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe no one thought to freeze my clearance.”
As she hands it over, Leighton emerges from the same door.
He shouts my name.
I look back down the corridor as Leighton and his men start toward us.
I scan the card.
Name, please.
“Jason Dessen.”
Passcode.
Of course. This guy is me.
Month and year of my birthday backwards.
“Three-seven-two-one.”
Voice recognition confirmed. Welcome, Dr. Dessen.
The buzzer rakes my nerves.
As the doors begin to inch apart, I watch helplessly as the men rush toward us—red-faced, arms pumping.
Four or five seconds away.
The moment there’s enough space between the vault doors, Amanda squeezes through.
I follow her into the hangar, racing across the smooth concrete toward the box.
Mission control is empty, the lights beating down from high above, and it’s dawning on me that there is no possible scenario where we make it out of this.
We’re closing in on the box, Amanda yelling, “We just have to get inside!”
I glance back as the first man explodes through the wide-open vault doors, a gun or Taser in his right hand, a smear of what I assume is Ryan’s blood across his face.
He clocks me, raises his weapon, but I round the corner of the box before he can fire.
Amanda is pushing open the door, and as an alarm blares through the hangar, she disappears inside.
I’m right on her heels, launching myself over the threshold, into the box.
She shoves me out of the way and digs her shoulder back into the door.
I hear voices and approaching footsteps.
Amanda is struggling, so I throw my weight into the door alongside her.
It must weigh a ton.
At last, it begins to move, swinging back.
Fingers appear across the door frame, but we’ve got inertia working in our favor.
The door thunders home, and a massive bolt fires into its housing.
It’s quiet.
And pitch-black—the darkness so instantly pure and unbroken it creates the sensation of spinning.
I stagger toward the nearest wall and put my hands on the metal, just needing to tether myself to something solid as I try to wrap my mind around the idea that I’m actually inside this thing.
“Can they get through the door?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. It’s supposed to stay locked for ten minutes. Kind of like a built-in safeguard.”
“Safeguard against what?”
“I don’t know. People chasing you? Getting out of dangerous situations? You designed it. Seems to be working.”
I hear a rustling in the dark.
A battery-powered Coleman lantern glows to life, illuminating the interior of the box with a bluish light.
It’s strange, frightening, but also undeniably exhilarating to finally be in here, enclosed by these thick, nearly indestructible walls.
The first thing I notice in the new light are four fingers at the foot of the door, severed at the second knuckle.
Amanda is kneeling over an open backpack, her arm thrust in to her shoulder, and considering how everything just exploded in her face, she seems remarkably composed, calmly triaging the situation.
She pulls out a small leather bag.
It’s filled with syringes, needles, and tiny ampoules of a clear liquid that I’m guessing contains Ryan’s compound.
I say, “So you’re doing this with me?”
“As opposed to what? Walking back out there and explaining to Leighton how I betrayed him and everything we’ve been working toward?”
“I have no idea how the box works.”
“Well, that makes two of us, so I guess we can look forward to some fun times ahead.” She checks her watch. “I set a timer when the door locked. They come through in eight minutes, fifty-six seconds. If there were no time pressure, we could just drink one of these ampoules or do an intramuscular injection, but now we have to find a vein. Ever inject yourself?”
“No.”
“Pull up your sleeve.”
She ties a rubber band above my elbow, grabs my arm, and holds it in the light of the lantern.
“See this vein that’s anterior to your elbow? That’s your antecubital. That’s the one you want to hit.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing this?”
“You’ll be fine.”
She hands me a packet containing an alcohol wipe.
I rip it open, wipe down a large swath of skin.
Next, she gives me a 3ml syringe, two needles, and a single ampoule.
“This is a filtered needle,” she says, touching one of them. “Use that one to draw up the liquid so you don’t catch a glass shard. Then switch to the other needle to inject yourself. Got it?”
“I think so.” I insert the filtered needle into the syringe, pull off the cap, and then snap the neck of the glass vial. “All of it?” I ask.
She’s tying a rubber band around her arm now and cleaning her injection site.
“Yep.”
I carefully draw the contents of the ampoule up into the syringe and swap needles.
Amanda says, “Make sure you always tap the syringe and push out a tiny bit of liquid through the needle. You don’t want to be injecting air bubbles into your vascular system.”
She shows me her watch again: 7:39…
7:38.
7:37.
I thump the syringe and squeeze a drop of Ryan’s chemical compound through the needle.
I say, “So I just…”
“Stick it in the vein at a forty-five-degree angle, with the hole in the end of the needle facing up. I know this is a lot to think about. You’re doing great.”
There’s so much adrenaline raging through my system I barely even feel the penetration.
“Now what?”
“Make sure you’re in the vein.”
“How do I—?”
“Pull back a little on the plunger.”
I pull it back.
“See blood?”
“Yeah.”
“Good job. You hit it. Now untie the tourniquet and slowly inject.”
As I depress the plunger, I ask, “So how long until it takes effect?”
“Pretty close to instantaneous, if I had to…”
I don’t even register the end of her sentence.