SEVEN
THE BUILDING WAS COLD AND DARK, BUT
there was the soft hum of working machinery to break
the silence, to listen to over the pounding of her heart.
It wasn't too big, maybe thirty feet by twenty, but it
was a single room, big enough to feel unsafe, vulnerable.
Small lights blinked randomly all around it, like
dozens of eyes watching them from the shadows.
Man, I hate this.
Rebecca trailed the tight beam from her flashlight
over the west wall of the building, looking for anything
out of the ordinary and trying not to feel sick at
the same time. In movies, private detectives and cops
who had just crashed someone's house were always
strolling calmly around, looking for evidence, as if
they owned the place; in real life, breaking in somewhere
you were absolutely not supposed to be was
terrifying. She knew they were in the right, that they
were the good guys, but still her palms were damp, her
heart hammering, and she wished desperately there
were a bathroom she could get to. Her bladder had
apparently shrunk to the size of a walnut.
And it'll have to wait, unless I want to go wet the dirt
in enemy territory . . . Rebecca didn't.
She leaned in to take a closer look at the machine in
front of her, a stand-up device the size of a refrigerator
and covered with buttons; the label on the front
read, "OGO Relay," whatever that was. As far as she
could tell, the room was full of big, clunky machines
awash in switches; if all of the other buildings were
similarly equipped, finding Trent's hidden code panel
was going to be an all-night operation.
Each of them had taken a wall, and John was going
over the tables in the middle of the room. There was
probably a surveillance camera set up somewhere in
the building, which made the need to hurry even
greater - although they were all hoping that the minimal
staff meant no one would be watching. If they
were very lucky, the security system wouldn't even be
hooked up yet.
No, that would be a miracle. Lucky will be if we get
in and out of this alive and unhurt, with or without that
book...
Since they'd walked away from the van, Rebecca's
internal alarms had been ticking down to a full-blown
case of the nerves. From her short time with the
S.T.A.R.S. she'd learned that trusting her gut feelings
was important, maybe even more important than
having a weapon; instinct told people to duck bullets,
to hide when the enemy was near, to know when to
wait and when to act.
The problem is, how do you know if it's instinct or if
you're just scared shitless? She didn't know. What she
knew was that she wasn't feeling good about their
late-night raid; she was cold and jumpy, her stomach
hurt, and she couldn't shake the belief that something
bad was going to happen.
On the other hand, she should be scared - they all
should be; what they were doing was dangerous.
Something bad might actually happen, acknowledging
it wasn't paranoid, it was realistic -
- Hello. What's that?
Just to the right of the OGO machine was something
that looked like a water heater, a tall, rounded
device with a window in the front. Behind the small
square of glass was a spool of graph paper, covered
with thready black lines, nothing she recognized,
what had caught her eye was the dust on the glass. It
was the same finely powdered dirt that seemed to be
on everything in the room . . . except it wasn't. There
was a smudge across the dirt, a damp streak that may
have been caused by someone's finger.
A smudge on dirt?
If someone had run their hand over the dusty glass,
they would have cleared a path. Rebecca touched it,
frowning - and felt the pebbled surface of the dust,
the tiny ridges and whorls like sandpaper beneath her
fingers. It was painted or sprayed on - that is, fake.
"Might have something," she whispered, and
touched the window where the smudge was. The
window popped open, swinging out
and there was a sparkling metal square behind it,
a ten-key set into an extremely undusty-looking panel;
the graph paper was also fake, just a part of the glass.
"Bingo," John whispered from behind her, and
Rebecca stepped back, feeling a flush of excitement as
the others gathered around, feeling the tension coming
from all of them. The mist of their combined
breath made a small cloud in the freezing room,
reminding her of how cold she was.
Too cold ... we should go back to the van, back to
the hotel for a hot bath. She could hear the desperation
in her inner voice. It wasn't the cold, it was this
place.
"Brilliant," David said softly, and stepped forward,
holding his flashlight up. He'd memorized Trent's
codes, eleven in all, each eight digits long.
"It'll be the last one, watch," John whispered.
Rebecca might have laughed if she wasn't so scared.
John fell silent as they watched him plug in the first
numbers, Rebecca thinking that if they didn't work
she wouldn't be all that disappointed.
Jackson had called, informing Reston in his cool,
cultured tones that two four-man teams were on
their way by helicopter from Salt Lake City. "It so
happens that our branch office was entertaining a few
of the troops," he'd said. "We have Trent to thank
for that; he suggested that we start relocating some of
our security in advance of the grand opening, so to
speak."
Reston had been glad to hear it, but wasn't so happy
about the fact that they were there, three armed men
and two women poking around the Planet's entrance
in the middle of the night...
"They can't get in, Jay," he'd interrupted, gently,
soothingly. "They don't have access."
Reston had swallowed his knee-jerk response to
that, thanking him instead. Jackson Cortlandt was
probably the most patronizing and arrogant son of a
bitch Reston had ever known, but he was also extremely
competent and extremely savage if need be;
the last man who'd crossed Jackson had been mailed
to his family in pieces. Saying "No shit" to the senior
member was akin to walking off a tall building.
Jackson had then made it quite clear that while he
appreciated the call, it would be best for Jay to handle
such matters himself in the future - that if he'd
bothered to keep himself apprised of internal shiftings,
he would have known about the teams in SLC.
There was no explicit wrist-slapping, but Reston got
the message all the same; he hung up feeling as though
he'd been severely chastised; watching the five interlopers
search the entry building only added to his
mounting tension.
No codes, no access, even if they find the controls.
Twenty minutes. All he had to do was wait for
twenty minutes, half an hour at the outside. Reston
took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly...
... and forgot to inhale again as he saw one of them,
a girl, push on the window to the keypad. They'd
found it, and he still didn't know who they were or
how they knew about the Planet - but the way one of
the men stepped forward and started punching keys
suggested that twenty minutes could be too long to
wait for help.
He's guessing, random numbers, it's not possible...
Reston watched the tall, dark-haired man continue
to tap in numbers and thought about what Trent had
said at their last gathering. That White Umbrella
might have a leak.
An information leak, from someone high up. Someone
who might know the entry codes.
He reached for the phone again and then stopped,
Jackson's subtle warning making him break out in a
light sweat. He had to handle it, he had to keep them
from getting in, but everyone was asleep and there
wasn't an intercom, there was a gun in his room, but if
they had the code, he didn't have time to...
... override.
Reston turned away from the screen and started for
the door, kicking himself as he hurried out of control.
There was a manual override switch in a hidden panel
next to the elevator, he could keep the lift down even
if they had the entrance numbers...
... and the teams will come and collect our little pack
of invaders, and I will have handled it.
He smiled, a smile entirely without humor, and
broke into a run.
Leon watched anxiously as David typed in another
string of numbers, hoping their presence hadn't been
detected yet. He hadn't seen a camera, but that didn't
mean there wasn't one; if Umbrella could build
massive underground laboratories and create monsters,
they could hide a video camera.
David hit a final key - and there was sound and
movement at once, the low hiss of hidden hydraulics,
the distant hum of an engine. A giant piece of the wall
to the right of the keypad slid upward. As one, all five
of them raised weapons - and lowered them again
when they saw the thick mesh gate and the black and
empty elevator shaft behind it.
"Damn," John said, a tone of awe in his voice, and
Leon had to agree. The panel was ten feet across,
thick and heavy with machinery, and had completely
disappeared into the ceiling in two seconds. Whatever
mechanism was operating it was exceptionally powerful.
"What's that?" Rebecca whispered, and Leon
heard it a second later, a distant hum. Apparently
the entry code had also recalled the elevator; they
could hear it rising, hear the growing echo of welloiled
sound in the freezing darkness of the shaft. It
was rising fast, but was still a long way down. Leon
wondered, not for the first time, how the hell Umbrella
had managed to build such a thing; the Raccoon
lab had also been massive, with God-knewhow-
many floors of laboratory, all of it deep beneath
the surface of the city.
They must have more money than God. And one hell
of an architect.
"We may have triggered a warning device or
alarm," David said quietly. "It might not be empty."
Leon nodded along with everyone else; they were
all silent and tense as they waited, John pointing his
rifle at the mesh gate.
Reston found the flat, seamless panel, and pried it
open without any trouble -
- but there was a lock on the switch, a thin metal
rod hooked through the top, keeping it from being
pushed down. It wasn't until he saw the lock that he
recalled it; yet another of Umbrella's precautions, one
that suddenly seemed monumentally stupid.
The keys, the workers all have them, I got a set
before I came...
Reston ran his hands through his hair, wracking his
brain, feeling desperate and harried.
Where'd I put the goddamn security keys?
When he heard the lift being recalled to the surface
only seconds later, it was all he could do to keep from
screaming. They had the code. They had guns and
there were five of them and they had the code.
Takes two minutes to get to the top, I've still got time
and the keys are...
Blank. His mind was blank, and the seconds were
ticking past. He'd already hit the recall button, but it
wouldn't bring the elevator back down if someone
opened the gate on the surface. For all he knew, the
assassins or saboteurs or whatever the hell they were
had already pried opened the gate, were now watching
the lift on its way up, waiting...
... or maybe throwing a few pounds of plastique into
the shaft ... or...
... control, they're in control!
Reston turned and ran, across the wide corridor
and ten feet to the right, down the small offshoot
outside of control. His first day at the Planet, one of
the construction people had shown him all of the
internal locks - backup generator, drug cabinet in
surgical ... manual override for the lift. He'd
yawned his way through that particular tour, then
tossed the keys into a drawer in the control room,
knowing that he wouldn't be needing them.
He hurried through the door, deciding that he could
berate himself for forgetting the keys later, wondering
how things had gone so out of control in such a short
period of time. Only ten minutes ago he'd been
sipping brandy, relaxing...
... and ten minutes from now, you could be dead.
Reston hurried.
The elevator was big, at least ten feet across and
twelve deep. John squinted as it rose into view, the
harsh light from a naked bulb in the ceiling nearly
blinding after their long stint in darkness.
At least it's empty. Now all we gotta do is avoid
getting ambushed and murdered when we hit the
bottom.
The elevator came to a smooth stop. The latch on
the mesh gate unlocked and the gate slid into the wall.
John was closest. He glanced at David, who nodded a
go-ahead.
"First floor, shoes, menswear, Umbrella assholes,"
John said, not particularly bothered that he didn't get
a laugh. Everyone had their own preferred method for
dealing with tension. Besides, his sense of humor was
more fully developed.
Right over their heads, he thought, scanning the walls
of the elevator car for anything unusual. Well, maybe
not over their heads; it was more that they just didn't
appreciate his fine wit. He kept himself amused, that
was the important thing, it kept him from freezing up
or turning into a basket case.
The elevator looked okay, dusty but solid. John
stepped carefully inside, Leon right behind -
- then John heard a noise, just as a red light
started to blink on the lift's control panel.
"Be still," John hissed, holding his hand up, not
wanting anyone else to get on until he saw what the
light was for -
- and the mesh gate closed behind him, the latch
snapping shut. He spun, saw that Leon was on board,
saw Claire and Rebecca lunging for the gate from the
other side and David running for the keypad.
There was a rasping click from overhead and Leon,
closer to the front, shouted at Claire and Rebecca -
"Get back!"
- because the wall panel was coming down, slamming
down, and the girls were stumbling back. John
caught a final glimpse of their shocked and pale faces
in the gloom -
- and the door had closed, and although he hadn't
touched a thing, the elevator was going down. John
crouched by the controls, punching at the buttons,
and saw what the flashing red light was for.
"Manual override," he said, and stood up, looking
at the young cop, not sure what to say. Their simple
plan had just been totally screwed.
"Shit," Leon said, and John nodded, thinking he'd
summed it up perfectly.
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