The Breach

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Travis couldn't tell if there was more happiness or anger in her embrace. Either one might account for the fierceness of it. Over her shoulder, he saw the others passing the wire cutters along one by one, each freed person flexing circulation back into near-dead hands.

On the table beside him lay the backpack, which he'd worn under the suit, and the top half of the suit itself, which he'd taken off a moment earlier.

At last Paige let go of him and met his eyes. She had only a little difficulty finding her voice. "It's against the rules to double human bodies, you know."

"I'm new here," he said. "Gimme a break."

He glanced at his corpse on the floor. Christ, it was a sight.

Behind Paige, the last of the survivors had been freed. Some were looking at Travis, but most were watching the doorway warily.

Travis turned to the backpack, unzipped it, and took out the Doubler. "You guys can make enough weapons to protect yourselves, if anyone else shows up here. But I think all the rest are working on the blast doors on B42."

He picked up the top half of the transparency suit again. "I'll go take care of them now."

He saw Paige's eyes after he said that. Saw that she wanted to go with him, her instinct compelling her to put herself in harm's way before others, or at least share the danger. But the obvious didn't need stating: the suit's advantage only worked if he went alone.

So instead she only nodded. "They'll be on a maintenance rig suspended in the elevator shaft from the floor above. It's the only way to access those doors."

He nodded, kissed her, then pulled on the suit top.

It was strange, watching her eyes lose him. She was still looking at where his face had been.

He turned toward the three guards he'd killed a moment before. Two of them wore holstered pistols in addition to the rifles they'd carried. The advantage of a pistol, small enough to conceal beneath the transparency suit, was obvious. Travis had seen that advantage annihilate a team of heavily armed men in Alaska, and had come within a second or two of falling prey to it himself. It didn't escape him that the tables were now precisely turned. He was the one in the suit this time, going up against the Whisper. If he made the slightest mistake, and allowed Pilgrim time to take it out of its box, the suit would be of no help at all. It hadn't been for its last owner.

But he didn't think it would happen that way. It would be nothing so simple. Not after all this. Not after reading the message on Ellis Cook's painting.

He was resigned now to whatever fate the Whisper had mapped out for him, and for the world. There was simply no avoiding it. There was only hitting it head-on and finding out what the hell it was.

He took the nearest guard's pistol-a.45-and the two spare clips in the man's pocket, and started for the door.

Then he stopped. And though no one could see it, he smiled.

"The elevator is three stories below us," he said. "The cables are broken, so its brakes against the shaft wall must've stopped it."

"Yeah," Paige said, looking toward the sound of his voice.

"Anyone know how to override them?"