She ignored him.
With a growl, he hurried after her, then we all did, staying low and looking around cautiously while Roberta seemed to be making a point of holding her head up high.
We caught up with her just as she reached the fence. The wires had been cut to create a rectangular hole roughly a foot by a foot and a half, and the severed section was rolled up and taped up out of the way. The hole was bordered on all sides by the thick alloy steel cable that reinforced the fence. Each of the snipped electrical wires had been spliced with a generous length of insulated wiring, bypassing the hole.
Rex shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said.
“See?” Claudia said.
The hole in the fence was so tiny I had my doubts about whether I would even fit through it. Roberta was twice my size, and thickly muscled. But instead of backing down like Rex, she just glared at us, then dropped down onto her stomach and started wriggling through. She got her head in—I didn’t think even that was going to happen—but then her shoulders touched the steel cable, eliciting a bright spark, a brief tzzzk, and a faint whiff of ozone. She shuddered and pulled back out, glaring up at Claudia.
“Roberta, come on,” Ogden said, but she was already trying it again, this time feetfirst.
She got as far as the middle of her thigh before the fence sparked again and she shot back out, cursing under her breath.
“This is ridiculous,” Claudia said. “If she keeps sparking it, someone’s going to come looking to see what the problem is.”
“Roberta, we don’t have time…” Ogden began wearily, shaking his head as she flipped onto her stomach and tried to scoot in that way. She moved carefully and made it past her thighs, but I knew there was no way she was going to get much farther than that.
Claudia stamped her foot. “Enough,” she said to Ogden. “She’s never going to fit. The only thing she’s going to accomplish is getting us all caught.”
Roberta pushed herself another inch farther, so that the steel cable was digging into her flesh, even as the shocks continued. Finally, with a growl, she clawed her way back out and scrambled to her feet, rubbing her behind and muttering curses.
She put her face right in Ogden’s. “They didn’t send me along to hide in the shadows,” she said, scowling as Claudia dropped to the ground and gracefully slipped through the hole. “They wanted me to go with you in case there’s trouble.”
Claudia got to her feet on the other side of the fence and said, “Maybe there won’t be trouble if you’d just wait back across the road instead of calling attention to us.”
“Screw you!” Roberta snapped, stepping up close to the fence to glare at Claudia, who didn’t step back.
“Stop it!” Ogden snapped at her through gritted teeth. “This is not the time or the place.” He turned to Roberta. “And you’re supposed to be here to help me, not cause problems. I’ll tell you when I need you. Meanwhile, go back across the street and wait for us there.” He looked at Rex. “Both of you.” He dropped to the ground and slipped through the fence in a single fluid motion. “Now.”
As Roberta stalked off across the street, Rex turned to watch her. Then he turned back and looked down at me.
“You be safe,” he said.
I nodded. “I will. Sorry to leave you with Ms. Congeniality over there.”
He smiled and nodded as I dropped to the ground and tried to slip through the fence the way Claudia and Ogden had done. Halfway through, I got zapped on my butt—not as bad as a shock baton, but enough to propel me through the fence.
Luckily, Roberta hadn’t seen it, but I heard a snicker anyway and whipped my head around to see Claudia covering her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said, as I got up rubbing my stinging behind.
Claudia unfurled the rolled-up section of fence, so it hung down more or less in place. Up close, it was obvious it had been cut, but in the darkness, the cuts were invisible from just a few feet away.
Ogden seemed frazzled by the confrontation with Roberta. He took the lead and Claudia and I fell into step behind him.
The terrain was hilly enough that you couldn’t see far. We stayed low, walking around the hills instead of over them. Then Ogden whispered, “Wait here.”
He climbed one of the hills and dropped into a crouch. He scanned the surrounding area with night-vision binoculars, then backed down the hill and gathered us into a huddle.
“The second fence is about thirty yards ahead,” he said quietly. “Beyond it, there’s a couple of long, low buildings to the right. Those are the coops, where they keep the chickens. Then there’s three other buildings: two basic brick squares that could be anything, and a taller building with corrugated metal walls and lots of smoke stacks and ductwork. I imagine that’s some kind of processing facility. And I bet that’s where there are chimeras being held prisoner and forced to work. They’re probably being housed in one of the brick buildings.”
“So what’s the plan?” I whispered.
“We just get a little closer, set up the LIDAR, get some good scans from each angle, see if we can get a look at what’s going on in there, then we leave.”
The LIDAR-mapping camera was about the size and shape of a thick fantasy novel, with an egg-sized dome on the top, and a lightweight tripod on the bottom. Ogden ran back up the hill, raised the tripod into the air for a second, then lowered it and ran back down.
We followed him to the next rise, about forty yards away, and waited while he repeated the maneuver, getting a scan from a slightly different angle that included a small shed with a smokestack. After that, we followed him another forty yards or so, where he did it again, then again forty yards after that.
Halfway around, we crossed a long, illuminated driveway that ran from the gate in the outer fence to a gate in the inner fence. Claudia and I hung way back while Ogden took his time capturing that view with the LIDAR, then we darted across a dark stretch of the driveway and continued on.
As we returned to the spot where we had started, completing the circle, I moved next to Ogden and whispered, “We haven’t seen a single person, chimera or otherwise, or any evidence of anyone being held against their will or anything like that.”
“I know, it’s weird,” he said, apparently oblivious to the not-so-subtle accusatory tone in my voice.
“Do you think it’s bogus?” Claudia asked. “Bad information?”
Ogden shrugged. “Or maybe we need to dig in a little deeper.” He glanced at Claudia. “Maybe get through the next fence and poke around inside.”
She shrugged a half-hearted yes, but was clearly unconvinced.
“Okay,” I said. “Where?”
“We passed that shack a little ways back, just inside the fence. That should give us some cover. We can cut through there and have a look inside.”
I was increasingly concerned about the possible fallout if this was bogus, and getting caught breaking into a facility owned by Howard Wells with a pair of CLAD members. The FBI would be sure I was part of CLAD, and there would be nothing I could do to convince them otherwise. I gave him a dubious look, but I nodded. “Okay.”
We doubled back the way we’d come, and after a minute, Ogden crept up one of the hills, then came back down. “Okay, the shed is right there.”