In a pitch-dark tunnel. Without smart glasses.
“You can see,” I breathed.
Ian cut a glance at me, then Ferdinand, but my brother hadn’t heard me. Yet Ian had. He nodded once, sharply.
I bit my lip to stem the tide of questions I wanted to ask.
We rode in silence for the rest of the trip. It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the top. Ian stopped the car with our platform level with the bottom of the door. I’d lost signals during the trip, but now I could once again feel messages pressing against my skull.
“The soldiers are still on the first mine level,” I said. “Command pulled the fire team back and now it sounds like they’re planning an ambush. At least two teams, probably a fire team and a squad, so at least twelve soldiers. They are trying to capture us alive.”
The three of us versus twelve of them in fortified positions was not good odds, even if they weren’t shooting to kill. Ian must’ve decided the same thing because he was back to looking grim. He cracked open the door and surveyed the hallway beyond before opening it all the way.
“Hold this,” he told me.
I stood and moved gingerly to the door. I purposefully did not look over the side of the elevator. I held the door open while Ian picked up Ferdinand again.
“We need to move fast,” Ian said. “Before they have time to dig in further.”
“You set the pace since you’re carrying Ferdinand,” I said. “I’ll keep up.”
Ian nodded and set off at a ground-eating lope that was a flat-out run for me. I gritted my teeth and kept pace, even when it felt like my lungs would explode from my body. I didn’t get a break until we hit a gate, and even then, it was only the ten seconds it took for the codebreaker to unlock it.
By the time we made it far enough that we could see the elevators at the end of the tunnel, I was plastered in sweat and Ian was barely breathing hard, despite carrying another full-grown person. I would hate him if I had the energy to spare. Still, we’d covered the distance in ten minutes instead of the thirty it’d taken us going the other way.
Ian stepped into one of the side rooms and the lights came on. The room was a large rectangle, empty now. It could’ve been barracks or a mess hall. We checked all of the rooms clustered at the end of the tunnel, assuming that, like the level below, these used to be the soldiers’ rooms.
They were all empty.
“They could’ve left us a few blasters at least,” I grumbled. “Maybe some combat armor. A handful of grenades.”
Ferdinand looked up from his position on Ian’s shoulder and smiled at me, then rolled his eyes. My heart twisted at this small sign that my brother was still in there somewhere, maybe bruised and battered, but not broken.
I sobered. We were woefully underprepared to face a military unit in a fortified position. I’d hoped to be in and out before they realized I wasn’t who I said I was. Even if Ian was some sort of Genesis Project supersoldier, he couldn’t singlehandedly defeat a dozen soldiers and I was only of moderate help.
I needed to give us a chance. I used the codebreaker to unlock the final gate, then stepped through and asked Ian to hold it open. I wedged the tip of my knife into the edge of the gate’s control panel. The face panel popped off, revealing the wiring underneath.
There was no handy diagnostic port this time. I cut the network cable then carefully separated the individual strands of optic cable. I forced myself to work slowly even as the seconds ticked by, each one reducing our chances.
I opened the cable port on the side of my secondary com and gently fed the correct cable into each slot. I’d taken this com to MineCorp in case I needed to use this same procedure, but I’d been lucky there. Now karma was swinging back around to punch me in the face. I didn’t have time for this right now.
Once all the cables were in place, I set the com to fix the connections. Optical signals needed precise alignment and my just shoving the cable into the connector wasn’t good enough. The com would minutely adjust each cable until the signal worked. It could take up to five minutes.
I set the com down on top of the control box. I could use it from that position and it wasn’t at too much risk of falling.
“If you’re done on that side, you can come through and let the gate close. I just didn’t want it to lock you out if anything went wrong. This will take a few minutes, then I’ll need a few more. I’m planning to unleash a virus on the base that will take out any connected systems. How long do you think it will take us to reach the upper floor by elevator?”
“You’re taking out the power?” Ian asked with raised eyebrows. He came through the gate and set Ferdinand down next to the elevators.
“Ideally. Depends on how hardened their systems are.”
“Fifteen minutes should be safe,” he said.
I nodded. “Let’s get ready.”
Ian and I wedged open the nearest elevator doors but found a car instead of empty space. “Can you go through the roof?” I asked.
Ian grimaced. “I can, but it’ll be easier if I don’t have to.”
We tried four more doors before we found an empty shaft. Ian hopped in and claimed the elevator to our right, where we’d already opened the door. He lowered the elevator until we could climb up through the gap.
When I checked the com, the connection was good. I poked around on the network for a second just to see if anything obvious came up, but I didn’t see anything. It didn’t matter. If there was the smallest opening, the virus would find it. It was designed to penetrate military-grade installations.
I set up a simple script that would release the virus then wipe the com. It would run after a fifteen-minute timer. I cut the connection to my smart glasses and triple-checked that everything was set up correctly directly on the com. I checked the current time then kicked off the script.
“We have fifteen minutes. We need to be upstairs by then, just in case.”
Ian climbed onto the elevator, then waved off my attempt to help Ferdinand up. “You first,” he said. Once I was on top of the elevator with him, he continued, “This is the control box.” He pointed at the control panel. “This switch needs to be flipped to up, and the manual override set, like so. Then you must hold this button to ascend.”
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked slowly.
“You’re going up on your own,” he said. “I’m taking Ferdinand up the stairs.”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Yes. If they ambush us on the landing, we’ll be sitting ducks if we’re both in the elevator. They won’t expect me to take the stairs.”
“You plan to climb over four thousand stairs carrying another person? You won’t have to worry about me, I’ll be in a cell long before you make it to the top.”
“Want to bet?” Ian asked softly. He had a confident, arrogant tilt to his head that was wildly compelling. “What are you willing to lose?”
I huffed. “My life, apparently.”
“Trust me, Bianca. You know I wouldn’t put you in unnecessary danger. You go up in the elevator and provide a distraction. You don’t even have to shoot at them. Give them some sort of sob story. Tell them I went crazy, but you escaped. Whatever, just keep them distracted. I’ll follow and take care of it.”