The Forgotten Room (24 page)

It was an emergency exit, leading outside.

Logan didn’t hesitate. Turning away from the main corridor, he made his way to the door; made sure it was not alarmed; opened it as quietly as he could manage—and then slipped out into the howling storm.

Even though he’d driven through the hurricane on his way back to Lux, the redoubled, elemental fury took him by surprise. The wind pressed him against the dressed stone of the mansion’s facade, ballooning his jacket up and away from his shoulders, threatening to pluck the contents from his pockets. Within seconds he was soaked to the skin.

Forcing himself back to the exit, he peered carefully around the doorjamb and through the little panes set into the door. The short corridor beyond was empty; no armed figure was rushing toward him. He had made his escape from the building without arousing notice.

He leaned back against the building. But now what?

He glanced down the gray sweep of lawn toward the ocean. The waves were beating against the rocky coast with a fury he had
never before seen; spume and spindrift tumbled angrily upward to mix with the lashing curtains of rain, blending together so completely that it was impossible to tell where sea left off and rain began. The rain, driving straight into his eyes, stung badly and he turned away, shielding his face with his hands.

He glanced to the left. He could barely make out the vast bulk of the East Wing, standing like a Gibraltar against the fury, a few dim lights glowing on its three floors. He could make his way to the edge of the wing, then sneak around it to the parking lot, and…

And what? Might not his car be under surveillance, as well? He’d seen no sign of it upon his arrival—if he had, he’d have been more wary about meeting Laura Benedict in her basement office—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. These men were pros, and they weren’t just here to send a message…not anymore.

Even if he managed to make it to his car, and get away from his place—what then? What about Kim? As he’d raced through the labyrinthine underground labs of gleaming steel, as he’d waded through the dim chambers and grottos of the ancient subbasement, he’d cursed himself for not thinking first about her safety. Instead of telling her to round up the transmitting devices for safekeeping, he should have ordered her to go someplace,
any
place, where she could hide.

Then again, he thought, Kim was a smart woman. She might have seen the strangers, put two and two together, gone to ground somewhere….

But this thought was immediately answered by another:
Pamela Flood had been a smart woman, too….

He drove this from his mind as best he could. There was something else to consider: the Machine itself. If he simply ran away, there would be nothing to stop Laura Benedict and the team of Ironhand enforcers from dismantling and making off with the equipment, under cover of the storm. After all, Lux was all but deserted. True, she’d said she was still days away from completing the work she needed to finish miniaturizing the technology to
make it suitable for transport…but after what had just transpired, that impediment wouldn’t stop her. She’d take whatever she could, now, and then disappear.

As he stood there, in the black shadow of the vast facade, the words he’d spoken to Benedict in her laboratory came back to him.
This device of yours is…unthinkable. To drive somebody, perhaps an entire army, insane…There are reasons chemical weapons were outlawed. Just how long do you think it will take for the technology to be leaked—and the same diabolical ordnance used against our own men and women?

The device had to be destroyed. She still needed it if she was to complete her work—she’d said as much. But what could he do? He was unarmed, facing a trained squad of killers. As he stood there in the shelter of the mansion’s south wall, he patted at his pockets, even though he knew the gesture was futile. A flashlight. A kitchen knife. A digital recorder. A cell phone…

As his hand closed over this last item, the vaguest outlines of a plan began to come together. And as it did, his heart began to accelerate once again. He took a deep breath, then another, looking around to make sure the coast was clear. But there was only him and the howling storm.

Logan pushed himself away from the protective wall and forced himself out into the wrath of the elements. Turning his back to the East Wing, he began plodding forward. The hurricane was like an animal force, trying its best to spin him around, force him back, prevent him from staggering on. He took one step at a time, laboring against the appalling force of nature. As he did so, the shriek of the storm intensified, as if outraged by his attempts to defy it. His injured leg, and the blow to his head, throbbed and protested with the effort. Once, his feet slipped from under him and he fell face forward into the sodden grass. It was so thick with water that, for a crazy moment, he felt as if he was lying at the lip of a lake. It would have been easy, so very easy, just to close his eyes and drift into unconsciousness. Instead he forced himself to his feet once again, but was almost immediately knocked down
once more by the hurricane. The howling of the banshee wind rang painfully in his ears. Against all reason, the tempest was still escalating.

Logan realized he couldn’t fight against the elements. The storm would sap all his strength before he even reached his destination…strength he would need for what lay ahead.

He veered out of the teeth of the storm and made his way back to the facade of the mansion. It seemed to tower endlessly over him, its crenelations and beetling gables invisible in the raging night. But here, under its eaves, the storm abated somewhat. Not much—but enough to allow him to continue forward.

One step, another, another. He soon lost track of time and, stupid with exhaustion, could not even begin to guess how far he’d come. The only way he was able to orient himself, to know that he was making any progress at all, was by sliding his right hand along the stonework of the mansion….

And then, directly ahead, something loomed up out of the darkness, black against black. At first, he sensed rather than felt it. And then, as he began to trudge forward yet another step, he walked straight into it. Half blinded by the wind-driven rain, he pressed his hands forward, feeling his way, trying to determine what it was that impeded his progress.

It was another wall of dressed stone, taller than he could gauge and perpendicular to the one he’d been following, dark and unlit and uninhabited, stretching away to his left into unguessable distances.

The West Wing.

Turning now ninety degrees to the south and leaning against this new support, Logan moved forward until he found what he was looking for: a small window, low, barely at knee height. Dropping to the ground, heedless of the pain in his leg, he applied numb fingers to the sash, tried pulling it upward.

Locked.

Taking shallow breaths, coughing out the rainwater that kept filling his mouth and eyes and ears, he took off his jacket, placed it
against the glass, and then beat at it—first with his fists, then with his left shoe. On the third blow, the window gave.

Using his jacket for protection, he gingerly plucked away the remaining shards of glass. Then he slipped through the window, careful this time to slide down to the floor feetfirst.

He shook the glass from his jacket. A brief circuit with the flashlight showed him he was in a small storage room, apparently used by the workmen who’d been engaged in the reconstruction. There were wooden sawhorses; stacked cans of paint; boxes full of caulking tubes; carefully folded tarps covered with Pollock-like drips and sprays in a multitude of colors.

His flashlight made out an open door on the far side of the room. He’d grab one of the tarps and stuff it into the window, then close the door behind him as he left the room; that would mute the sound of the storm, conceal the fact that he’d broken into the wing.

Just as he grabbed the topmost tarp, he hesitated.
No
, he told himself. First, there was something he had to do.

Putting his flashlight aside, Logan reached into the pocket of his sopping trousers, searching for his phone. He found it, shook off the beads of water that had accumulated on its face, then pressed the button to wake it from hibernation.

Several rows of faint orange light appeared beneath its number keys: a good sign.

He examined the tourniquet on his right thigh. It was as sodden as the rest of him, but it seemed to have stanched the flow of blood.

Now, raising the phone, he dialed Kim Mykolos’s number. No answer. He tried once again with the same result.

Then he paused in the darkness, phone in hand, carefully thinking through his next move. Finally, he raised the phone once more and dialed another number from memory. It was the internal
extension that had appeared on his phone when Laura Benedict dialed his Lux apartment, perhaps one hour before.

The phone rang five times before it was picked up. “Hello?” came the tense voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Laura,” Logan replied. He moved closer to the broken window, made sure that the storm could be clearly heard behind him.

“Who is this?”

“Who do you think it is?” Logan breathed raggedly, careful to add a manic, desperate tone to his voice.

“Dr. Logan?” Benedict sounded shocked, dismayed, uncertain.

“Right the first time. Want to come out and play? The water’s fine.”

There was a pause. “What happened?” she finally asked.

“What happened? Your boys led me on a merry chase. It took a lot of doing, and a lot of running, but I managed to escape them.”

“Where are you now?”

Logan let out a chuckle he hoped wasn’t too high-pitched. “I’m outside of the East Wing, near the parking lot.”

“Parking lot?” Alarm sounded in her voice.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Actually, that’s not true—I am going somewhere.”

Silence.

“Care to guess where I’m going, Dr. Benedict?”

The silence continued.

“No? Then I’ll tell you. Why shouldn’t I? You may get me, but by the time you do it’ll be too late.”

“Too late—” the voice began.

“I tried to make you see reason. But you refused. You even sent mercenaries to kill me. So I’m going to do it myself.”

A brief pause. “Do what? Kill yourself?”

Logan chuckled mirthlessly. “Destroy the forgotten room.”

“Dr. Logan…Jeremy—”

“You said yourself that your work there isn’t complete. So I’m going to make sure your work
never
gets finished. I’m going to
torch the whole goddamned room, and the rest of the wing with it if I have to. Just like your mercenaries torched Pamela Flood. And then I’m going to find the old notes and journals and lab reports—they’ll be around here somewhere, maybe in your lab, maybe in your private rooms—and I’ll torch those, too.”

“Jeremy, listen—”

“No.
You
listen!” Logan shouted against the roar of the storm. “That thing can’t be allowed to exist. Do you hear me? I’m going to make sure that weapon never sees the light of day—
if it’s the last thing I do
.”

Then he hung up.

Slipping the phone back into his pocket, he picked up the tarp again and stuffed it into the broken window. Then, plucking up the flashlight from where he’d placed it, he moved to the doorway, stepped through it, and closed the door behind him. Instantly, the sound of the storm grew muffled.

Almost the entire Lux faculty and staff had deserted the mansion ahead of the hurricane. This wing, he knew, would be utterly deserted.

Laura Benedict thought he was standing outside the East Wing. That meant time—if nothing else—was, for once, on his side.

But first he had to find his way back to more familiar ground. And, time or no time, he’d have to hurry: Benedict would already be on the phone again, rallying her men and telling them where to go. At least, he thought, that would take any heat off Kim. It was a calculated risk.

He shook the water off his shoes, squeezed the damp from his trousers. Then, pointing the flashlight ahead of him, Logan moved down the corridor, heading north in the direction of the West Wing’s entrance. He realized that, based on the height of the window through which he entered, he must be one floor below the main level. The hallway, which consisted of bare plaster walls, jogged left, then left again. Logan pushed away the pain in his leg and his head and tried as best he could to estimate his location by dead reckoning. Was he near the portal leading to the main building?
Or was he lost somewhere in the maze of narrow corridors and rooms that filled the rest of the wing?

Ahead, the hallway ended at a circular metal staircase, its triangular rungs heavy with dust and the imprints of booted feet. Logan shone his light up the staircase, then climbed the treads carefully, one step at a time, dragging his injured leg behind him now. He stepped out into a side corridor that he didn’t recognize, full of timber and lath and the stacked detritus of demolition. Here he paused a moment to squeeze the blood and water from the improvised dressing, then reapply it to the gunshot graze across his thigh. And then he moved forward again.

Following the narrow corridor, flashlight beam licking over the walls and ceiling, he emerged shortly into a wider space. This he immediately recognized: to his left was the staircase leading up to the second floor, and the jumble of intersecting rooms that lay beyond. In the distance, he could see the dark bulk of the nearest standing stone: a silent, grim sentinel in this ghostly, echoing place.

He switched off the flashlight for a moment and stood motionless in the darkness, listening. All was silent, save the moan of the storm as it beat against the building’s exterior. It was too soon for Benedict’s goons to be upon him—but it would not take them long. He had to hurry.

Making his way up the staircase—glancing behind to make sure he was leaving no trail of blood or rainwater—he slipped past the ruined offices, piles of plaster rubble, and half-destroyed walls, following the path by memory, until he reached the vague outline of Strachey’s shadow-haunted lateral corridor A. Turning down it, shining the flashlight ahead of him, he advanced until he reached the improvised
HAZARDOUS AREA
sign and the tarp barrier that lay beyond.

He paused another moment to reconnoiter and listen. Then he moved past the sign, ducked through the hole he’d made in the tarp barrier—had it really been less than two weeks before?—and entered the forgotten room.

He knew the room had been wired for electricity, but he did not turn on the light switch. Instead, he used the flashlight to get his bearings one more time: the Machine; its various controls; the heavy armorlike suits that hung from the rear wall. He noticed that the strange, elevator-like device remained corkscrewed into position on the third floor, its base flush with the ceiling.

Good.

In the close, listening silence of the West Wing, he now began to make out the faint sound of voices.

Quickly, he turned toward the rack of metal suits. He found himself recalling the long days he’d spent here; now he was angry at himself for never trying on one of the suits, familiarizing himself with their operation.

He moved the beam of his flashlight over the row of bulky garments, quickly selecting one that seemed like his size. Then—placing his light on a nearby shelf—he unhooked the suit from its tether and lifted it down.

He was surprised by how heavy it was. It seemed to be constructed of a single, unibody design, and for a sickening minute he could not figure out how it was meant to be put on. Then he noticed a series of hooks and grommets—flush with the suit and almost invisible if one didn’t know where to look—that extended in a long line from beneath the right armpit to the hip. As quickly as he could, his cold and wet fingers fumbling stupidly, he undid the fastenings. The seam was padded and reinforced on the inside by felt and leather. He pulled the knife he’d obtained from the old kitchen out of his waistband and let it drop to the floor. Pulling the suit wide, he took off his shoes, and then, raising his hurt leg gingerly, began to slip into it.

The fit was very tight, and the built-in metal slippers that served as shoes hurt his feet, but there was no time to search for a more comfortable replacement. He slipped his arms into the metal sleeves, pushed his fingers into the flexible, accordion-like metal fins of the gloves. Thank God: they, at least, fit.

Leaving the helmet dangling from the neckpiece, he pushed
the protective felt back into place, then began fastening, as quickly as he could, the hook-and-grommet arrangement that sealed the suit. With his fingers in the heavy gloves, this proved even harder than undoing the fasteners had been.

The voices grew louder. They were still indistinct, but one of them, he now realized, was that of a woman. She did most of the speaking, as if giving directions.

Of course
. Benedict knew the way into the room far better than he did. She would want to get her men into position, ready for the ambush, as far in advance of his arrival as possible.

Buckling the last grommet, Logan stepped forward. Walking was awkward and it took him several steps to get his balance. Grabbing the flashlight and playing it over the Machine, he found the primary switches set into the side of its central housing. He bent stiffly over them, curling the fingers of one glove around the power switch; he snapped it on; waited several seconds; then engaged the load switch.

Softly, almost below the threshold of hearing, as if more sensation than sound, the Machine began to hum.

Now Logan could hear footsteps overhead. It was as he’d hoped: Benedict would have her men approach via the weight-actuated spiral elevator, the method she no doubt had always used to enter the secret room herself. The voices were louder now, and he could make out her words.

“Close the retaining doors,” came her muffled voice. “Then give the winch on the other side, there, a clockwise turn. One turn will be enough.”

“You’re not coming?” returned a masculine voice—one Logan recognized from his pursuit in the mansion’s basement.

“I’ll wait up here.”

More shuffling of feet; a hollow boom; then an odd creaking noise.

Logan retreated to the front panel of the Machine, where the operating controls were located. He ducked down, so that he would be less visible. The elevator, he knew, would spiral to a spot
directly in front of the Machine—and its doors would open to face him.

He grasped the helmet, pulled it over his head, and gave it a twist to seat it into position.

Immediately, the room, already dark, grew blacker still. The faint hum of the Machine, the noises from above, were attenuated almost beyond the threshold of audibility. There was a small breathing orifice below the visor, lined on the inside with felt. Through the wire mesh of the faceplate, he could just make out the words on the control panel before him. The rest of the room was a blur.

Except for one thing: near the ceiling, the decorative circle that marked the base of the elevator was now descending, rotating smoothly and silently down into the room. And from within the curved surfaces of its matching outer doors came the yellow glow of multiple flashlights.