The Cradle of Life (20 page)

Reiss studied the display and frowned, wishing he hadn't taken the stimulant cocktail in a sleep-deprived state. It was affecting his judgment, making him paranoid. The closer the computer came to finishing its task, the more anxious he became.

He expected to look up at any minute and see Lara Croft staring out at him from the clean room.

Ridiculous. She was half a continent away.

“The jet is ready.”

He turned to see Sean standing in the doorway to the lab.

“I'll be there in a moment.” Reiss didn't like leaving before the scan was finished, but the delay Chen Lo had caused by not delivering the Orb immediately had put them behind schedule. Duvalier had already called twice and the others would no doubt follow suit very shortly. He had calls to make, ruffled feathers to smooth, tasks best accomplished from his office aboard the Gulfstream.

He motioned Sean forward.

“Call me with the location of Pandora, as soon as you get it. Until then, make sure the Orb is never left unattended. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Reiss left the room. Two of Sean's men fell into step beside him.

He stopped to check in with Holliday, regarding the delivery system they'd set up for Pandora. She had questions regarding containment of the virus once it had been disseminated.

Reiss smiled and reassured the woman that containment would not be an issue.

Still trailed by Sean's men, he passed from the lab into the security room. A bank of video monitors lined one wall, tied in to cameras strategically placed throughout the lab and the mall beyond.

Reiss's laboratory occupied all of sublevel eight beneath the skyscraper. He'd personally supervised its construction, paying off the architect and his employees—in a manner of speaking—in a way that insured its existence remained secret. Research facilities, manufacturing equipment, living quarters for almost two dozen associates—the space had provided all the doctor could have asked for over the last decade.

As this was more than likely the last time he would pass through its doors, Reiss took a final look around, courtesy of the monitors.

A nod then, to the guard on duty, and the main entrance to the lab—a massive steel door—slid open.

Reiss, followed by the two men Sean had assigned to accompany him, stepped through.

 

“Sure?” Terry asked.

“You keep asking that. And I keep telling you the same thing.” Lara snapped the GPS display shut. “The Orb is here. Right here, in fact.”

They were on sublevel eight—the bottom level of the mall. According to the display, the transmitter was less than fifty feet away. Where, though…

That was the question.

There were no shoppers down here, no shops, either, just empty storefronts boarded over with plywood, painted with ads promising exciting new shops, coming soon. They'd passed an emergency exit to the parking garage, offices for a Korean real estate firm, a rest room with an
Out of Order
sign hung over it…

They'd tried every door—all were locked.

Lara was studying the ceiling, looking for an access panel when Terry grabbed her arm and pulled her behind a support column.

“What—”

“Shhh.” He put a finger behind his lips and pointed.

Jonathan Reiss, followed by two of his guards, was walking directly toward them.

“He came from there,” Terry whispered, nodding toward the real estate firm.

“Think he's buying real estate in Pyongyang?”

“Hardly.”

Reiss and his men walked past, on their way to the elevator banks. A car came and Reiss and one of his men stepped inside. Just as the doors were closing, a young boy burst out of nowhere, ran to the elevator, and stuck his hand in between the closing doors.

The doors popped back open and the boy—followed by a harried-looking couple Lara took to be his parents—dodged inside the elevator.

Lara caught a glimpse of a very annoyed-looking Reiss and then the doors shut again, this time for good.

Lara's attention was on the other security man.

“Take him?” she asked Terry.

“Take him,” he agreed, and as the guard walked back past, stepped out from behind the column.

Terry's knowledge of pressure points was truly amazing.

Approximately twenty seconds later, Reiss's man had supplied them with details of the lab's security system.

About a minute after that, Lara and Terry were inside, and their guide—as well as two guards who'd been manning the control center—lay unconscious at their feet.

The guards all wore wireless headsets. Lara took one for herself and another for Terry, adjusting the frequencies so they could communicate directly.

“Croft.” She looked up to see him standing next to a wall of video monitors. “We've got problems.”

She joined him and quickly grasped what he meant.

The monitors were apparently wired in to cameras scattered through Reiss's lab. It was huge—and very well manned.

“So much for easy…” Terry muttered.

But Lara's attention was elsewhere.

She had found the Orb.

Seeing it on one of the monitors, she heaved a sigh of relief. Watching Reiss leave before, she had feared he'd already finished with the Orb, and was on his way to Pandora. But there it was, in an isolation chamber of some sort—a clean room, perhaps—surrounded on all sides by floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas walls. Cradled in a pair of robotic hands some five feet off the ground, while a laser beam traveled slowly across its surface.

There was a display of some sort next to it: Lara used the controls on the monitor to zoom in on the image.

“I've got your back.” That was Terry, leaning in over her shoulder. “Go.”

Lara nodded and ran.

 

It took her a full minute to sneak past a secondary security post, four doors down the corridor.

Another minute wasted hiding in the shadows outside the canteen, while white-coated technicians paraded by her.

She doubled back, guided by instructions from Terry over her headset. Finally she found a side route that brought her to the main lab entrance.

She paused there a moment, hidden in an alcove. Beyond a double glass door, three technicians in full hazmat suits were gathered around a centrifuge.

Just past them, she caught a glimpse of the Orb.

“No good.” Terry's voice came over her headset. “There are two guards on the other side of the corridor and a good dozen technicians between you and the Orb, as well.”

“Take me 'round another way.”

“There is no other way. You've got to get everyone out.”

“What do you suggest, the fire alarm?”

The doors to the lab hissed open then and a technician walked out. Lara squeezed farther back into the alcove. It was a tight fit—behind her, a supply cart, lab instruments scattered on top of it, filled most of the available space.

Lara grabbed a knife from the cart and crouched down, prepared to attack if she was spotted.

She needn't have worried—the technician walked past her hiding place without once lifting his eyes from the clipboard in his hands. Not his hands, actually—he was wearing thick rubber gloves. Full hazmat gear, as well.

The entire lab, Lara realized with a start, was a hot zone.

Hence the glass walls, with biohazard symbols pasted all over them.

Lara looked up at those walls, down at the knife in her hand, and smiled.

“Hang on a minute,” she whispered into the headset. “I've got an idea.”

Seconds later, alarms were whooping throughout the complex.

 

As he stepped out of the elevator, Reiss's phone rang.

Duvalier, no doubt, the doctor guessed, glancing at his watch. Or one of the others—he was all of ten minutes late with the update he'd promised them. Well, they'd be happy enough once they heard his report, heard that they were hours away from having Pandora in their possession.

Suppressing a momentary flare of irritation, Reiss raised the receiver to his ear.

“Yes?”

But it wasn't Duvalier.

It wasn't any of the five.

It was the distinctive sound of the alarm in his lab below—and hearing it, Reiss froze where he stood.

Normally, that alarm meant the elaborate containment system he'd designed had failed, that somehow, one or more of the toxins he worked with had escaped into the atmosphere. Cause enough for concern.

But he feared that in this instance, it meant something far worse had happened.

“Croft,” Reiss said through clenched teeth.

He whirled, in time to see the elevator doors closing just behind him.

Cursing, he ran for the escalators.

“Rats fleeing a sinking ship,” Terry said into her ear. “Only two men left—both of them in the Orb room.”

Lara nodded and slid the knife into her pocket. The puncture she'd made with it was a small one and had only breached the outer glass wall of the lab, but—as she'd suspected—had done the trick. Set off sirens, sent the technicians and the guards—none of whom, she guessed, were paid enough to stick around to see how dangerous the breach actually was—scurrying out the buildings' emergency exits.

She walked silently through the now open lab door, past the centrifuge, and into a room whose walls were lined with row after row of sleek, silver boxes. The new NECs, she realized. The Earth Simulators.

If Bryce was here, he'd think he'd died and gone to heaven.

“Sorry?” Terry asked.

“Nothing,” Lara said, realizing she'd spoken aloud.

She wondered how Bryce was faring with his own translation of the Orb—whether or not he'd managed to figure out what the markings on the medallion meant. She wondered if the computing power she saw would allow Reiss to decipher the Orb without that key.

A flash of movement up ahead caught her eye.

“Terry?”

“Careful,” he whispered. “One of them's on the move.”

Lara walked on. There was a glass door at the far end of the computer room. Through it, she glimpsed the next—and final—chamber between her and the Orb. It looked like some sort of office, or meeting room. Desks and chairs, a long low counter at the back and—oddly enough—a mirrored ceiling. Through the glass door at its far end, Lara saw a man, standing on guard next to the Orb. She recognized him from the flower pagoda—he'd been with Reiss aboard the copter, before all hell had broken loose.

“I see him,” she said. “Right next to the Orb.”

“No,” Terry shot back. “He's the one I've got.”

“Where's the other?”

“Lost him,” Terry said, frustration evident in his voice. “Sorry.”

“Guesses?”

“He has to be in that next room over—the one you're making for.”

“You can't tell?”

“There's no camera in there.”

“Wonderful.” Lara took a deep breath. “All right. I'm moving.”

“Careful.”

“You said that already.”

She stepped toward the door and it slid open automatically.

Lara ducked down, and rolled forward, coming up behind the counter.

There was no sign of the second man. Perhaps he'd gone in another direction—or decided to run off with the others after all.

She paused a moment, considering how to best mount her assault on the Orb, and its sole remainding defender.

Which was when, of course, the man attacked.