The windows were set in the middle of each side of the tower, so to minimize the chance of being seen we approached on foot from the diagonal, climbing rusted-out fences and navigating huge chunks of concrete and asphalt in order to keep our angle.
The massive pile of rubble between us and the tower looked dangerous, an unstable heap of bricks and concrete punctuated by jagged glass and twisted rebar. When we got to the bottom of it, we huddled up.
“I think the entrance is right around the corner,” Claudia whispered.
“And probably guarded,” Rex added.
I nodded and looked up at the top of the rubble pile. There was a gaping window right above it. I pointed at it. “Maybe we can get in there.”
They followed my finger. The rubble pile was three stories tall, half as tall as the structure it had once been. Above it, we could see the exposed brick where the wing used to abut the tower. The window was actually on the side of the tower that faced onto a little courtyard that looked like it used to be surrounded by the rest of the building. It appeared to be an easy reach from the top of the pile.
Rex squinted up at it. “Do you think it’s safe?”
Claudia and I looked at each other and both started snickering despite ourselves, and despite the dire situation. It was totally not safe.
Rex rolled his eyes. “Come on. You know what I mean. Alright, whatever, just be careful.”
“And quiet,” Claudia added, elbowing me with a look of mock disapproval.
I nodded and we started up, picking our way around the most dangerous of the debris. We went in order of weight—Claudia, then me, then Rex—to minimize surprises from the rubble shifting.
As we were approaching the top, Claudia looked down onto the other side and held up a hand. Rex and I stopped, and Claudia turned and held up one finger, then pointed down at the side of the rubble pile, at the entrance next to the van. She mouthed the words One guy.
I nodded and crept up next to her and peered over the top of the pile. Zak was down there, leaning against the wall next to a gaping double doorway. All of his attention seemed to be focused on a hangnail, but he also had a rifle at the ready.
The open window was just a few feet away from us, but climbing through it would completely expose us. I looked at Claudia and held up my dart gun. We were well within range. She smiled and held hers up, as well.
We lay down as low as we could on the rubble and rested our guns on the rocks.
“On three,” I whispered, and she nodded. I counted off. “One…two…three.”
The guns spat out an almost simultaneous thwip thwip. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Zak leaned against the wall and slid awkwardly to the ground.
I gave Rex a thumbs-up, then we climbed to the top of the pile and in through the window.
I’d been in lots of places that had been abandoned for years or even decades, but this place felt like centuries had gone by since it had been used or occupied—or since the pigeon crap had been cleaned out.
The wood floor was unfinished, or maybe more accurately de-finished, worn away by time and weather. It was soft and spongy, and felt like it could give way at any moment. The tower was wide open, maybe forty or fifty feet across, with exposed brick walls and banks of windows on each side. There was a door to a stairway to our right, and what looked like another one on the far side of the tower.
As we stood there, getting out bearings, we heard footsteps approaching—two sets, sounding like they were coming down a set of stairs.
Rex poked his head through the doorway leading to the stairway closest to us. He looked back at us and shook his head, then cocked it toward the doorway, seemingly suggesting that it might be a good place to hide.
Claudia and I nodded and followed him in. As we ducked against the wall, the footsteps grew louder and were accompanied by voices—Roberta and Cronos.
“You vouched for him,” Cronos was saying, “so if he has abandoned his post, I’m going to hold you responsible.”
“Yes sir,” Roberta replied, as the footsteps began to recede. “But Zak is solid. I’m sure it’s just a problem with his radio.”
I waited another moment to let them get farther away, then I leaned close to Rex and Claudia. “If they’re going to check on Zak, they’re going to figure out he’s been darted, and they’ll be back up here in a minute, looking for us.”
“We need to hurry,” Claudia said.
We ascended the steps—seven flights—trying to be both quiet and fast, so we wouldn’t end up caught by Cronos and Roberta before we had a chance to do what we came to do.
Luckily, when we peeked through the doorway onto the top floor, the only person up there was Ogden, standing next to a bank of electronic equipment at the center of a large, open room. It was similar to the one we had entered from the window, except that the ceiling was at least forty feet high, and each of the four walls was largely taken up by an identical huge, round stained-glass window showing Nipper the dog, listening to his master’s voice on an old Victrola. Ogden was looking right at us, as if he had heard us coming from a mile away.
He waved us in, frantic, and whispered loudly, “Hurry up. They’ll be back in a minute. They’ve gone to check on Zak.”
I held up my dart gun and whispered back, “We darted him.”
As we approached, he said, “Well get in here even quicker, then. This is our Wellplant.” He pointed at a tiny cylindrical gadget held in the air by four spidery metal arms. I’d never seen one outside of a person’s head before. It really did look like a spike, about the size and shape of a tube of lipstick, with a small, gray glass disk at one end, a vicious-looking point at the other, and a huge mass of wires snaking out from various places to the different devices stacked on the racks surrounding it, including a tablet computer and an array of batteries.
Ogden eyed the whole setup with an odd combination of fear, respect, and affection. “Say what you will about Wells, but the Wellplant is one incredibly impressive piece of technology: bio-powered, quantum computing, globally networked. I’ve only scratched the surface of its capabilities.”
“You can tell us all about it later,” Claudia said. “Right now we need to get a move on.”
Ogden nodded. “You’re right, we do. The reason I’ve barely scratched the surface of that thing’s capabilities is because it’s really made to be implanted, but I did pick up a high-priority, system-wide alert on the network. ‘Operation Wellspring’ has been moved up to four p.m. Eastern Time. I assume that’s the release.”
Rex looked at his watch. “That’s barely an hour.”
“Exactly,” Ogden said, “And we still don’t know how they’re planning on releasing it.”
Rex and Claudia and I shared a guilty look at that. I shook my head—there didn’t seem to be a good reason to tell Ogden our suspicions about how Wells was planning on releasing the virus.
“What?” Ogden asked, apparently having sensed the unspoken exchange.
“Nothing,” I said. “That’s not much time.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. “So, I’m thinking, we smash the Wellplant, here, and make sure Cronos sees you leave. As long as he thinks it was you, not me, he should leave my family alone.”