Guilty Minds

55

I took my toolbox and strode through the maze of hallways to the strong room. Merlin was holding the door open, and for an instant I was jolted by his strange appearance until I remembered we were both wearing masks. He said, “I knew it was just a matter of time. Can I take off this damn mask yet?”

“Not in here,” I said.

“I know. You’re right.”

Merlin let the door close, with a pneumatic sucking sound, like opening a can of tennis balls, then a thunk like a car door closing. There was nothing else in this vault but a long row of black metal file cabinets. Then I noticed another keypad mounted to the wall next to the doorjamb. I noticed it because it had begun to beep, a slow, ominous, high-pitched electronic beep.

“What’s that?” Merlin said.

“Oh, shit.”

I had a good idea what this was, though I’d never seen one before. Everyone entering the vault had to reconfirm credentials by punching in a verification code.

Or else what?

I wasn’t sure.

“It might be the same as the code that opened the door,” I said. “Do you remember what it was?”

Merlin unfolded his list of numbers. “Yes. Two nine three five.”

I spun around and pressed the four numbers. But the beeping continued, a red diode flashing.

“That’s not it,” I said. “Shit.”

“What’s this, a secondary alarm?”

“Of some sort, yeah. Auto-activated at night, probably.” I tried the standard defaults, 1111 and 9999 and 1234, but nothing halted the beeping.

Behind the mask, sweat trickled down my face. It was hot, and damp, and uncomfortable.

“You want to try?” I said.

“Sure, but I’ll just be guessing, too.”

“Meanwhile I’ll go through the files.”

I stepped aside and made room for Merlin. He began punching digits in no discernible order, faster and faster.

The beeping continued implacably.

I scrutinized the line of file cabinets. There were twelve of them, four drawers in each, and they were arranged alphabetically. The first drawer was labeled “A — Am.” I wasn’t sure where exactly I should be looking. “S” for Slander Sheet? For the Slade Group? I moved down the row of cabinets, found the drawer labeled “Sh-Sy,” pulled it open.

The files were marked with plastic tabs, names like Schuster Institute and Symons, Kendrick.

And there it was: Slade Group. I pulled out the brown folder, my chest tight. I opened it and found correspondence between Ashton Norcross and a woman named Ellen Wiley, of Upperville, Virginia. Ellen Wiley, whose name sounded vaguely familiar.

The beeping stopped abruptly.

“You get it?” I said, turning around.

Merlin shrugged, said, “No. It just suddenly—”

A metal ka-chunk sound.

“What the hell?” Merlin cried.

“Sounds like a relocking system. Spring-loaded locking bolts. Open the door — now.”

He went right away to the door and turned the lever. But the door wouldn’t open.

“What the hell?” Merlin said.

“I was afraid of that.” The relocking system, I knew, was designed to block the door from opening. The sort of feature you might find in some safe rooms or survivalist shelters. In fact, I was pretty sure the strong room was actually a prefab, standalone safe room.

“We’re locked in,” he said.

I nodded.

“There’s always an internal vault door release.”

“Depends on how it’s designed. Not necessarily.”

He tried the door lever once again. “Shit. Well, screw this.” He slammed a fist against the steel door, which did nothing but hurt his fist. He groaned and turned away. I moved in and examined the doorframe, noticed the silicon gasket. I took out a pocketknife, flicked the blade, and ran it along the gap between door and frame. It was tight. Every foot or so the blade hit something solid, which I assumed were the relocking bolts. I didn’t see a way out.

Then I smelled smoke.

I sniffed, looked around, saw Merlin lighting a piece of paper, which he’d apparently grabbed from a file drawer. The paper went up in flames, sending up a plume of smoke.

“What the hell are you doing—?” I shouted as a loud klaxon began to sound.

“Check it out.” He pointed with his free hand at the ceiling, at what looked like a smoke detector. Arrayed around the ceiling, every eight feet or so, were sprinkler heads, only they were hissing gas, not sprinkling water.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“That’s going to automatically trigger the unlocking mechanism on the door,” Merlin said with a crooked smile.

The sheet of paper floated away in a black wisp and danced through the air, the smoke now thick enough to sting my eyes.

“You goddamned idiot!” I said. “That’s halon gas!” A label on the wall to the left of the door warned:

“They don’t use halon anymore!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes they do.” Some years ago it was determined that halon damaged the ozone layer, and it was banned. But existing systems were allowed to remain in place. They were grandfathered in. It was still considered a superior alternative to water-sprinkler systems, especially in archives and places where water could damage paper records. Nothing as effective had taken its place.

Halon was not only bad for the environment, it was bad for humans. At high concentrations — in other words, in a few minutes, when enough halon had hissed out of the ceiling-mounted nozzles — it could cause permanent nerve damage and then death.

And we were trapped in here.

The fire suppression system didn’t unlock the doors. The relocking mechanism on the doors had been triggered by our failure to disarm the secondary security system.

Merlin was coughing, and then I began to cough as well. I was furious at him for setting off the halon system, for doing something so impulsive without even checking with me. But even more, I was beginning to feel icy tendrils of panic seep into my bowels.

Because I did not see a way out.