MirrorWorld

11.

The Shiloh woman is still out, despite the blaring, high-pitched shriek of the building’s security alarm. She looks frail. I consider leaving her behind, but it would be like abandoning a wounded bird in the clutches of a house cat—death would only come after drawn-out torture. The bruising and fresh scars on the woman’s arms suggest that she’s been tormented long enough already.

But can I keep her safe during my escape? It seems unlikely, but I picture her floating in green liquid, just another face in the death gallery, and know I can’t leave her behind.

I lean over her, tapping her face. “Hey. Wake up.”

No reaction. Whatever they’ve been lacing her IVs with, it’s powerful stuff.

With time running short, I slip the IV needle from her arm, undo her restraints, and pull the blankets away. She’s dressed in a loose hospital johnny. I lean her up. Her head lulls, but I catch it against my chest. “I got you.” Moving carefully, I scoop her up behind her back and under the knees. She’s light. Maybe a hundred pounds.

I head for the door, leading with Katzman’s gun, which is poking out from under the woman’s knees. The hallway is empty. I head for the distant exit sign, passing the Documentum room. There are voices within—shouting. Sounds like Allenby and Lyons. Katzman is either still unconscious or heading my way. I look down at the woman’s face, soft and peaceful. She doesn’t know it, but she’s depending on me to save her.

Just beyond the Documentum room, on the opposite side of the hall, are the elevator doors. Red numbers above the doors scroll higher. Someone is already on the way up, most likely security of some kind.

I move on, toward the exit sign at the end of the hall, which ends at a T junction and a row of windows, slanted at a forty-five-degree angle. Turning left, I see the exit door ahead. I try the knob with my left hand, balancing Shiloh’s weight on my forearm. It’s locked. A key-card terminal is mounted next to the door.

I gently place the woman on the floor and swipe Winters’s card across the flat card reader, but the light flashes red. I try again with the same results. The security alarm triggered by Lyons must have put the building in a lockdown. But there might be a way to override it. I sprint back to the T junction. Halfway between the end of the hall and the elevators, I had spotted a bright red fire alarm.

I round the corner and run for the alarm. It’s encased in a plastic dome to prevent it from behind triggered accidentally, but it lifts up easily enough. I wrap my fingers around the small white handle and pull. The alarm ripping through the hallway becomes a whooping siren. Strobe lights flash.

It’s all enough to keep me from noticing the opening elevator doors—that is, until someone yells, “Don’t move!”

But I move.

And the guard, who probably has no idea what kind of situation he’s just run into, doesn’t see it coming. Because he’s a low-level employee and probably doesn’t know the full extent of what goes on here, I’m merciful. I fire two shots. The first strikes his hand and knocks his weapon—a stun gun—to the floor. The second hits his thigh, far from the femoral artery. With a shout, he drops to the floor, clutching his good hand over his wounded hand over the hole in his leg.

The attack took just over a second.

Geez, I have good aim.

“Switch to lethal response!” shouts a strong-sounding woman still inside the elevator. “This is Alpha Unit. Target is armed. All units switch to lethal response.” Through the wailing siren, I hear various teams confirming the news. I also hear the sound of readying weapons. I have successfully roused the hornet’s nest.

Running backward, I retreat—not out of fear, but the desire to free Shiloh. A shadow inside the elevator shifts, and I squeeze off a single round.

Someone yelps and ducks back inside.

I keep the security force at bay with two more equally spaced rounds. They saw how fast their man went down. When I reach the T junction, they finally get up the nerve to return fire. A barrage of bullets scorches the air where I stood a moment ago. The rounds punch into the slanted, tinted glass window, which spiderwebs but doesn’t shatter.

While the security team continues to fire blindly, I swipe the key card. The light shines green. Whatever lockdown was put in place by the first alarm has been undone by the fire alarm. The door is unlocked. I whip it open to find a stairwell. But it’s not empty. A team of five security guards turn their heads, and guns, in my direction. I duck back as bullets punch into the backside of the metal door.

The blind fire from the elevator continues until magazines run dry.

In the moment of silence that follows, I heft Shiloh over one shoulder so I can run and fire at the same time. Holding her is a risk. She could get shot. But I’m willing to bet both our lives that the security guards won’t shoot at an unconscious woman. Me? I might. No, I would. But they’re not me.

I lean against the corner wall of the T junction, poke my head around the corner, and fire two more missed shots into the elevator. A moment later, a second barrage tears up the hallway and the window at the end. When the firing stops, I step out into plain view, weapon raised, ready to charge into the elevator and finish things. But before I can, a door at the far end of the hall bursts open.

Five soldiers in black armor, complete with helmets and face masks, storm into the hallway. They’re armed with laser-sighted MP5 submachine guns. I can’t beat them. Not now. But my gambit has paid off. They haven’t opened fire.

Yet.

That changes when the Documentum doors swing open and Katzman steps out. He points at me and shouts, “Kill him!”

I turn and run.

Bullets chase me, punching into the window ahead as they buzz past. Despite the order to kill me, the soldiers are obviously trying not to hit Shiloh. There’s a good chance she’s going to die anyway, but they haven’t left me with much choice. I put a few more holes in the now loose and sagging window, lower my shoulder, and slam into it like a hockey player against the boards.

The abused pane bends outward, resists for a fraction of a second, and then gives way. Instead of punching through the glass, as planned, the window lifts up and falls beneath me as I leap out of the window. I land hard on my ass, feet forward, like a kid on the world’s biggest slide.

Startled shouts pursue me but fade quickly as I begin my glass-on-glass carpet ride down a several-hundred-foot-long, forty-five-degree slope. The windows beneath shriek as we etch a path of scratches in our wake. Our escape is going to cost Neuro Inc. a lot of money, though I suspect the damage is a negligible expense compared to losing the contents of the syringe in my pocket.

I lean forward, watching the ground quickly approach. Looks like a five-foot drop at the bottom, but the building is surrounded by a carpet of thick grass that should cushion our fall. Shiloh’s the lucky one. She’s as limp as a rag doll in my arms. Of course, I have no trouble staying loose, either. A lack of fear means that I’m free of the thirtysomething hormones dumped into the body when afraid. My muscles are relaxed. My heart rate is regular. There’s no tunnel vision, meaning I’m still able to focus on the larger picture, planning moves in advance, rather than just reacting.

With five stories to go, an explosion blows out the third-floor window directly below us. I glance up. Katzman is above us, shouting into a two-way radio, no doubt directing the unit waiting for us below.

When we reach the fourth-floor window, with just a moment to spare, I roll hard to the left, throwing myself over Shiloh and then yanking her back on top of me. We whip past the open window and the startled faces of the team waiting to put a bullet in my head.

Our descent slows thanks to the friction created by my jeans and the soles of my feet. When we reach the bottom, I have time to sit up, get Shiloh into my arms, and inch over the edge. I land on the grass, bending at the knees to keep Shiloh from being jolted too hard—again. If she wakes up anytime soon, she’s going to hurt.

Better than being held prisoner or kept in a tube.

With the woman over my shoulder again, I glance up. No one in sight. Not a single man is willing to follow my escape route. I dig into my pocket, remove Winters’s keys, and push the lock button. A distant horn beacons me onward.