Despite my protests about never getting a mandatory vacation, I don’t know what I’d do if forced to stay home and abandon what I need to get done. I don’t think I could tolerate being forbidden to continue working on a case or a project, especially if it’s a passion, and I ask ART to access the anonymous phone call Fran mentioned.
The audio recording begins playing as I get out of my truck . . .
“NASA Langley, what is your emergency?” the dispatcher in my earpiece.
“I can’t tell you who I am . . . ,” the caller sounds male and British.
“How may I assist you?”
“Obviously, I’m inside Building 1205 contrary to orders or I wouldn’t know to report a hissing sound,” possibly he’s someone older. “But I won’t be here by the time anyone responds so don’t bother looking for me. Second floor, the Durability, Damage Tolerance, and Reliability lab across from the stairwell. I suggest you hurry . . .”
“Now what?” I ask ART, stopping at the building’s nondescript front door, the sun dipping lower, the wind much calmer. “Do I use my smartcard or my WAND?” as I rub my faintly tingling right index finger.
“What gesture would you like to set in memory for accessing outer building doors on campus?” his pleasantly modulated voice is in my ear as if we’re chatting on the phone.
“Sort of a swiping motion over the reader,” I show him. “As if I’m holding my smartcard. Will that work?” and the lock clicks free.
Opening the door, I step inside. The heat and lights are turned low, a long hallway of locked lab doors chilly and spooky with deep shadows, a distant exit sign glowing red.
“All right, we’ll make this quick,” avoiding the elevator, I choose the dark stairwell.
17
TURNING ON my tactical light, I illuminate the Use Handrails warnings painted in yellow on the metal-edged concrete steps.
At the next landing, I emerge on the second floor directly across from the lab the anonymous caller mentioned, and I can hear the hissing through the shut door. My first worry is the liquid nitrogen used in scanning electron microscopy to cool the sample stage. But it’s not what I’m picking up.
My implanted sensors and those built into my CUFF aren’t detecting nitrogen or any other potentially toxic or combustible chemicals that might be leaking. Pressing my ear against the door, I listen to a relentless low hiss, something about it confusing me.
May as well use my new digital gesture, and I unlock the door, pushing it open a little as the hissing gets louder. I’m not seeing or smelling anything, and it seems the noise is coming from the computer workstation on the other side of the lab. My light paints over gas cylinders strapped upright to a wall, and glass-doored cabinets lined with brown bottles of acids and caustics.
The room is overwhelmed by all the usual equipment I expect in metallurgy. Fume hoods, grinding mills, drilling machines, hot plates, vacuum pumps, a drying oven, Pyrex glassware all over the place. My signal-sniffing CUFF detects an audio transmission, and I think I know what’s going on. And can’t believe it.
Except I can, as I approach the workstation, the hissing noise playing through computer speakers. The recording has been activated remotely, and I get out of there as fast as I can, shutting the door behind me as something clatters down the dimly lit corridor. Then all of the lights go out.
“Oh boy, this can’t be good,” shining my flashlight in the direction of the noise I just heard, and next Fran calls me again.
“I don’t know what’s going on but we’re in the complete dark over here!” her tense voice in my earpiece.
“Me too,” I start walking toward the sound coming from a lab halfway down the deep dark throat of the corridor, something heavy and metallic scraping and clanking against a hard surface. “Is your power off?” I ask.
“Only the lights, which is weird.”
“Probably the same thing here,” and ART lets me know in my lenses that only two locations have had their lights knocked out.
Protective services headquarters and the building I’m in this moment, and that indicates the outage is deliberate and targeted. Someone has hacked into our power grid and who knows what else.
“It happened while Butch was taking the kid to the john. And now he’s gone,” Fran in my earpiece.
“Lex made a run for it?” my gut clenches like a fist as I reach the source of the clanking and scraping, a space assembly lab.
“You need to get here right away,” she says as I think of the look on his face when he was standing in her doorway staring at the gory photos.
Scanning open the door, I discover a robotic arm has been activated, shiny steel flaring in my light, the long truss-boom snaking and writhing on the test floor, folding and unfolding as if demon possessed or seizing.
“What’s all that racket?” Fran’s unhappy voice as I shut the door, and I break into a run.
“Someone up to mischief,” I fly like a bat out of hell toward the red glowing exit sign. “Get everybody available out looking for Lex. Hopefully he’s headed home,” but I sure as heck don’t think so.
The sitemap in my smart lenses shows that the full-scale wind tunnel has a new visitor. The ID number of the smartcard indicates someone just used it to access a maintenance door in the west passage.
“Where are you right now?” I ask Fran, my boots loud inside the stairwell as I light my way in pitch blackness, hurrying down to the first floor, worrying what’s next. “Because if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re in the full-scale wind tunnel. At least your ID badge is . . . ,” I start to say before she cuts me off.
“Hell no . . . ! Judas Priest . . . !” she bellows as it dawns on her.
“It would seem Lex has your ID badge,” I push through the door that leads outside, pocketing my tactical light.
“That little piece of . . . !” cussing up a storm. “Seriously, Calli, I don’t know how . . . ! Well screw him, I’ll just deactivate it immediately . . .”
“No, you won’t. Not right now,” the cold air feels good on my face as ART remotely starts my Chase Car. “If he has your smartcard, at least we can track him to some extent. Anything’s better than nothing. Do not deactivate it,” I’m emphatic, unlocking my truck with a gesture.