Authors: Fiona Quinn
Task 023984093 (Best means of entry into location)
HET - Winking. There.
Monitor – Describe.
HET - Dank, horrible smell, rats, skin dust, Metro rattle above.
Monitor – Move to street level.
HET – There.
Monitor – Follow a path a human could walk to get to your first location.
H
oly moly, I couldn’t believe I was doing this. This broke laws, protocol, my DNA code for self-preservation, and good old-fashioned freaking common sense, I told myself as I crawled over the pipes and slid under the vents. Yup, rats. I blew a breath slowly through my pursed lips and adjusted my headlight lamp back toward my feet after that last bang into the infrastructure. If I got out of this with only a few bruises, it would be a win.
“I’m going to win,” I whispered. I didn’t need to whisper—it was damned loud in here. The clackety clack of the Metro train above nearly deafening.
I raised the drawing that Major Trudy had made after his remote viewing task. And this was vaguely right, if I squinted my eyes and tipped my head to the side.
I was probably on a suicide mission. It certainly felt like a suicide mission. What would Omega do if they found me trying to break into their inner sanctum? I imagined what might happen to an Omega operative if they got caught crawling into our place. I think the guys would take him outside and use him for a vigorous game of hacky sack. My being a girl might afford me a smidge of restraint. But then, just a few months ago, they had operatives die trying to falsely arrest me. The false part probably didn’t siphon down to the lower levels so. . . Yeah, I probably couldn’t bet on them restraining themselves.
Ouch. Jeez. When I got out of here, I’d need a round of antibiotics, a tetanus booster, and my head examined. Again. When I was under what I thought should be the Omega complex, near James Cooper Road, there indeed was what looked like a hoola-hoop tunnel. Major Trudy had gone back in time, as I directed him to, to understand the origins of this chute, and it had been placed there as an experiment. A now-defunct company was trying to demonstrate the efficacy of their fire escape chute. They had tested it as part of the infrastructure instead of using their alternate design that could be tossed out an open window, which was housed in an unfortunately ugly box that interfered with interior décor and took up a fair amount of real estate in a room. Apparently the company had gone under before the end of Omega’s construction and rather than retrieve it, it was left in place.
Monitor – Is anyone aware that this chute exists?
HET – It’s in the schematics approved by the fire department.
Monitor – Does Omega train in its use?
HET – No.
Monitor – Does anyone from Omega or anyone who lives on the top floor of Omega know of its existence?
HET – Yes.
Boo. Though someone having the information tucked in the back of their subconscious and someone remembering that there was a fire escape here are two entirely different things. I wiggled the cloth chute and dangled from the outside to test its connection to the building. At the top of the chute, I should come out into the bathroom on the thirteenth floor. At least there were pipe-looking objects in the sketch. And Major Trudy thought the centrally located remote viewing space and the bathroom shared a wall. What I’d find when I got there. . .
Well, one step at a time. Right now, I could always turn back and no one would be the wiser. Maybe.
Next, I had to climb. Thirteen stories. Thirteen isn’t a bad omen, I told myself. When Omega was built, they probably chose thirteen floors on purpose as a symbol that messing with them would be unlucky, or that they were willing to laugh in the face of evil, or some other superstition. I swung my arms and kicked my feet out to get my body ready for the exertion. Thirteen. I could do that. And if I couldn’t do that? I’d slide back down and go home for a hot shower. See? I had an exit strategy.
I wished fervently that Spyder had responded to my text. Now my phone sat locked in my car and no one would be able to put two and two together to find me if I were to suddenly disappear. I had no strategy for what to do if I were injured or caught. I couldn’t tell anyone whose thoughts might have been picked up in the past by Indigo. The only people I could trust right now were Spyder (incommunicado), Striker (god only knew where), and Jack, who was in recovery mode, and I would do nothing to put him at risk. The rest of the team could only act in a field operation with an order from either Striker or Jack, so I couldn’t involve them. So here I was. All alone.
But bad things
weren’t
going to happen. A p
iece of cake. A walk in the park
, I worked at convincing myself. Sadly, my words didn’t ring true.
Okay, I’d settle on the mantra,
One step at a time
. I checked my watch. I needed to push if I were going to accomplish my whole task in time. Twenty hundred hours and the Redskins - Panthers game should be underway.
Monitor – Go to a time when the thirteenth floor will be empty for several hours.
HET – There.
Monitor – Why is it empty?
HET – The owner attends every Redskins home game.
If I didn’t do this now, I wouldn’t get another chance for a month.
So, here we go, Lexi, alley-oop.
I reached up and grabbed the fabric. It was probably great sliding down the tunnel fabric. But climbing up? I let myself slip back to the ground. From my backpack I pulled a roll of duct tape and a can of sports grip – the kind that’s supposed to help you catch a ball and hang on for dear life. I taped my gloves tightly to my wrists, then sprayed the bottoms of my shoes and my gloves with stickiness. I sniffed up a lung full of air and jumped for the fabric. Okay, I had a moderately better grip.
Very similar to the way Major Trudy had drawn it, inside the chute there was a gentle spiral. If I frog-legged and reached to pull, I moved up a good seven inches or so. It was sort of like doing the breast stroke — kick out, reach up, pull.
It was darned hot in here. And more than a little claustrophobic, though the website for similar companies said the fabric would allow for an air exchange while blocking smoke and ash.
Comforting
, I thought as I kicked and stroked, kicked and stroked.
I tried to figure out how many times I would have to kick to move past each floor. An average of sixteen stairs per ten-foot floor—if these were ten foot floors; they could be taller, since my mission prep was on the fly—I’d say two hundred and eight steps in all. And I would guess I was moving about one step per kick series. Okay so I can swim an Olympic-sized pool in twenty breast strokes. That meant I was only trying to swim a little over ten laps. Ten laps—that sounded doable.
Except this was a vertical swim not an, oof, horizontal one. No buoyancy to hold my weight. And no chance to cheat by hanging on the wall and kicking back off. But the payoff would be that, ugh, when I got to the top, oof, there
might
be a way to get into the bathroom on the thirteenth floor.
And
, there was a sixty-five percent chance Major Trudy was right, and I would have the space to myself. That was better than coincidental. I had a good chance of succeeding. Probability was in my favor. It was. Oof.
Okay, I was getting dizzy and disoriented. Not being able to see my progress as the fabric compressed above and below me; it seemed as if my efforts made no difference at all.
The only easy day was yesterday.
What I needed to do was screw on a little SEALs courage. I read about this one guy from Alaska who went home on a training mission. They dumped his team off of a truck and they hiked to the ice cold waters and dove in. They had to swim, numb-faced, in pitch-black darkness all the way out in the middle of the bay with the task of planting a mine on a frigate. Their problems were twofold. First, there was another SEAL team on the boat whose job was to stop them from planting the mine. Second, the SEAL team who got to hang out all dry and comfortable on the boat had helpers – attack dolphins. I laughed my head off when I read about that. But it was true. The navy had experimented with training attack walruses and dolphins. If the swimming SEAL team was detected by the dolphin, the dolphin was supposed to ram into them unmercifully and also sound the alarm by surfacing and shrilling for the guard on board.
Can you imagine that, Lexi? Swimming through the black frozen waters knowing that at any moment, you could get dive bombed by a kamikaze military dolphin?
To make matters worse, they knew there was an orca in the area, hunting.
Yay, that’s not me. I’m just, ugh, swimming up the side of a thirteen-story building
,
and until I come to the top, there was a sixty-five percent-ish chance that I was undetectable.
It seemed like forever. Like the sun had set and risen again, and I was still kicking and stroking. My hair, rubbing against the cloth tubing, had pulled little by little away from its ponytail, and now was a sweat-soaked rat’s nest that draped in my eyes. My legs quivered beneath me and threatened mutiny if I didn’t get somewhere soon. I pictured Jack and Blaze with a log held over their head during SEAL Hell Week, but it didn’t give me the added fortitude I thought it might. It just made me glad that it was them and not me.
You know, I told myself—trying to distract my brain from the kvetching that would sap my reserves—not only is thirteen not a bad omen, it was actually a very patriotic number. An American number. Thirteen original colonies. Thirteen stripes on our flag. July the Fourth has thirteen letters. So does E Pluribus Unum. Even the steps up to the pyramid on the dollar bill count thirteen. Steps. Steps would be a relief.
I scooped again and felt my nails graze across something solid. I couldn’t believe it. I had reached. . . something. The top? The thirteenth floor? I had no idea. I hefted myself up and found that the structure of the chute had a cage built around it. I set one of my hips on the ledge and, spreading my legs wide, I could hover, leaving my hands free to explore.
The first thing I discovered was that this did not open into the floorboards the way I had imagined it would. Instead, it seemed that the cage I was resting against created a space that allowed someone to scoot forward while lying on the floor, drop their legs, then their torso into the chute, and start their spiral descending slide. My fingers searched under the ledge and pushed upward, and a three-by-three panel slid slightly up. As soon as it moved, I heard moans.
Not alone. Was this the thirteenth floor? Was that Indigo? Was he hurt? Whoever it was was certainly in horrible pain. The EMT in me wanted to thrust the slide to the top, jump out, and help. The operative in me said I should sit tight and see what happened next.
That’s when the smell hit me—rotten eggs, pickled in sulfur. My stomach heaved and my eyes watered as I gagged as silently as I could. I yanked my headlamp from my backpack and used it to prop up the door so I could try to get a better understanding of what was happening. I pulled my elbow across my face. Even breathing through my mouth wasn’t helping much as the viscous scent coated my taste buds.
From behind the sliding door, came sighs of relief and the flush of a toilet. Bathroom. Blech. The man’s relief didn’t last. Very quickly the sounds of extreme intestinal discomfort swirled with the vapors of what I’d guess would be major food poisoning—or, shoot, maybe Ebola—through the three-inch crack.
His cell phone jangled in the room, and he answered it. I would never get over the modern idea that it was okay to be engaged in such a private moment and yet people were willing to chat through it on their cell phones. It blew my mind every time I was caught in a public restroom and there was chatter from the stall next to mine.
“No, I’m at home. I’m in agony over here. . . No, don’t come over, I don’t know what this is. . . No, do not increase the dose. He’s a big guy, but you don’t want him to go into cardiac arrest. Wait it out, he should get sleepy soon, and once he’s unconscious, you can secure him.”
Secure whom? Was this an Omega Commander? Were they after a criminal?
“Once he’s secure, I need you to do something. I can’t get to Elliot. I can get into his room, but there’s a doorknob I can’t get past. I need you to identify it and send me a text so we can figure out how to work around this. . . No shit, no, I can’t get anything. They stole their art back, and returned it to the walls. Now it’s impossible. . .” A major groan erupted from his throat. “Got to go. Call me later when you—shit. Got to go.”
Indigo.
He attends all of the home games–unless he was in major gastric distress, that is. He tried to go to Iniquus but that’s now secure. Woot! He knew General Elliot had a doorknob in his room, and he used the word doorknob, so he must understand that we figured out what was going on and were purposefully protecting General Elliot. I needed to get word to someone so they could place a security detail on the general. But I had no comms equipment with me. I couldn’t risk communications, especially after the Fuller Mine debacle with the D.O.A. I wasn’t at all sure that our comms had been secured. Anything I could say to Iniquus, I might also be feeding to our enemy.
Better safe than sorry.
No, that was the wrong phrase—there was no “safe” connected to my decision making; it was more like,
better hope for the best
.
Someone was helping Indigo. Someone who was close enough that they had his personal number, and he would be willing to speak with them while hovering over the toilet with such, um, violent outcomes. There was no one in my life that I felt that close to.