The border point had landed the right way up, but the LED was blank. It was out of action. In ten minutes’ time, Grant would push the magic button to a fanfare in his head, and be sorely disappointed. It could take hours for that point to be located and replaced.
‘Ewan,’ she said to the radio, ‘you can scrap the time limit. I don’t know how long we’ve got, but it’s more than ten minutes now.’
‘Prove it.’
‘I just shot a border point with a good quality sniper rifle. The shield won’t activate unless every link in the chain is working. We’ve got loads of time before they replace it.’
Ewan didn’t answer, suggesting he was satisfied.
‘Lovely,’ answered McCormick. ‘I’m almost at the HPFC. Don’t bother chasing me, Kate. I’ll be done by the time you get here.’
Kate snarled. McCormick was most likely right, and there was no point denying it.
‘Fine, you do that,’ she whispered. ‘When I’m done here I’ll meet the others on Floor F and we’ll head upstairs together. That OK, boys?’
‘Not without me, you won’t,’ McCormick butted in before Ewan or Alex could answer.
Stuff that. If I can’t put myself at risk for you, I’m not letting you do the same for us. Sorry sir.
‘We’ll be far above you,’ she answered. ‘We can’t afford to hang around for you to catch up, and then spend another half an hour waiting for you to recover. When you’re done with the backup server, find a safe place to hide and we’ll meet you on the way down.’
‘You’re trying to keep me safe. That’s not what I’m doing here.’
‘Sorry sir,’ came Ewan’s voice, ‘but Kate’s right. And we’re not just being protective. We literally can’t wait for you. Just trust us to do the right thing while we’re up here.’
‘Oh, I know you’ll do the right thing,’ answered McCormick with misery in his voice, ‘that I don’t doubt.’
His feelings were clear without the need to see his face. The mission had been his first direct action against Grant since before Christmas. He had endured Lorraine’s ugly surgery to earn the right to take part, risked his life on a gamble in the vehicle port and exhausted himself with the stairwell, only to be denied the opportunity to see it through to the end. The final showdown would involve the other members of his family – the adoptive sons and daughter – but not the father. It almost made Kate feel guilty, but she knew better.
‘Good luck down there sir,’ she finished. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
*
Oliver Roth’s keycard still worked against the Experiment Chamber exit. He took a long breath of fresh air and tore the Kevlar away from his chest, moments before the thermite fire chewed its way to his skin. He staggered into the Floor F corridor and collapsed from physical exhaustion, crying tears of real pain. Stripping to his bare chest and crawling on all fours, he reached a fire extinguisher outside the neighbouring room and sprayed its water all over himself in an effort to remove the heat from his body.
I was so stupid! If he’d got me in my head or neck, I’d be dead!
Why did I follow him in there when he was almost certain to die? Would the other exit even have worked?
Roth lay topless on the cool tiled floor, looking down at the burn marks that were forming across his muscular frame. The thermite itself may not have touched his skin, but the heat alone had been damaging enough. There would be ugly misshapen scars across his chest for the rest of his life.
As the minutes passed, the throbbing began to fade but his tears did not. Oliver Roth came to realise that he was no longer crying through physical pain, but through emotion. It was a level he had not sunk to since he was a young child, and he felt ashamed of himself. Lying half-naked on a corridor floor with burn marks that even a whole fire extinguisher could not sort out, crying because an older boy had outwitted him, Roth wondered what his bosses would have thought if they could see him at that moment.
At least I had enough common sense to wear the Kevlar…
As he spread his twitching arms and legs, his tired brain came to realise the unspoken benefits of a bulletproof vest.
It hadn’t just saved his life. It had given Ewan every reason to think he was dead. And no doubt he would be showing off to his pathetic teammates.
‘Oliver,’ barked a voice on the other end of his radio.
Roth looked down, surprised. Other than a few melted parts to its casing, his radio was undamaged. He sat himself upright, and took some time before answering. Iain Marshall could wait until he had steadied himself.
‘Oliver.’
Roth wiped his tears from his eyes, and breathed slowly enough for the wobbling to vanish from his voice.
‘Yeah…’
‘You sound miserable. Did your trap work?’
The tears almost returned, but he fought them off.
‘No, but—’
‘And the Experiment Chamber?’
‘Up in smoke. But on the plus side—’
Going by Marshall’s yells, which Roth didn’t bother listening to, he was not in the mood for silver linings.
‘…On the plus side,’ Roth said once Marshall had finished yelling, ‘the rebels think I’m dead. Ewan ran off thinking he killed me. Sorry sir, got to go.’
Roth switched off the radio before his voice crumbled, and he collapsed to the floor again. The redness in his torso had not faded, but it had started to feel numb. He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.
Either way, Oliver Roth relaxed his muscles, and smiled through his own tears. ‘Missing, presumed dead’ was a powerful position to be in.
Chapter 21
Alex was struggling to navigate along his improvised route, thanks to too many clone platoons blocking his original path. Lorraine and Shannon had done their best to redirect him, but with limited success.
Thankfully, there was something familiar about the path he was on.
Nothing about Floor F had been familiar, despite him having been there before. It was a gap in his memory, just like everything that had happened between being trapped in the clone factory control room and resurfacing in a bungalow somewhere.
Nonetheless, something was familiar about the corridor he jogged down.
It didn’t take him long to work out what it was. The clone factory control room was dead ahead.
Alex’s common sense conflicted with his instincts. One told him to investigate; to gain clues about the gaps in his memory. The other told him to get the hell away from there.
He went inside.
His decision was helped by Kate’s assurance that time was no longer a factor. That, and he would probably never get another opportunity to revisit the place where his memory ended. The door was unlocked: there had been no reason to secure a door to a disused room.
The Alpha Control Room was similar to how Alex remembered, as much as he could remember it. The layout of the control panels and diagonally downward windows all matched the picture in his head. The view past the windows, however, was entirely different.
The clone factory was a metallic wasteland. Steel and glass lined the floors, with raised pads that had once been the bases of the clone pods dotted approximately across the factory floor. Chemical pipes that had been ripped apart still lay in place like gutted snakes. The monorail carriage stood at the station, charred and useless. But most striking of all was the silence: even behind the glass, the constant hums and hubbub of the factory floor had made it to Alex’s ears. It had since been replaced with deathly silence.