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“Copy,” he said. He sounded grim. “Get out. I’m calling the cavalry. ”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m checking the offices. They died for something. ” She had a briefcase with her, and opened it to remove and don a pair of disposable gloves. She hadn’t touched the break room doorknob; the door had been cracked open already, so there’d been no need. She retraced her steps to the left and began opening doors. The first was an office. There was no nameplate, no pictures, nothing personal…just a desk, a dead computer monitor with no PC attached, some junk in the drawers, and a few emptied-out file drawers. She checked around. Nothing hidden.
The next was another office—again, stripped bare. The third door led to a file room with ten cabinets. She checked the drawers. Empty, again. A small safe was built into the floor, but it had been cracked, too.
The next door opened onto a bathroom. The killers must have used it for cleanup; she saw drips of dried blood on the sides of the sink and a pale stain on the porcelain. The trash can was overflowing. She forced herself to search anyway.
That was how she found the thumb drive.
It was a small silver thing, wrapped in a clean paper towel and shoved down the side. It wouldn’t have wound up here by accident, not wrapped that way. It spoke of panic and fear and a last-ditch effort to hide something.
She was, in effect, holding someone’s last testament in her hand.
Bryn said, “Joe?”
“Yeah, I see what it is. Come out, Bryn. We need to get the cops in on this. ”
She had no pockets in this suit, which hadn’t annoyed her until now; the briefcase she had with her was her only purse. She propped it on the sink and started to open it, but one of the combination locks had spun, and the left side stubbornly refused to open. Screw it. She took the thumb drive and stuffed it into her bra.
“One more door to go,” she said, and went out and down the hall.
She knew the second that she opened it that something was wrong; it just felt wrong. In one sense it was the same as the others…emptied-out desk, missing computer, no personal effects.
But there was a square, dark shape sitting on the desk, just a dim outline in the flickering fluorescents.
It had a blinking re
d light that sped up as she stared.
“Get out!” Joe’s voice exploded in her ear, and her own instincts screamed it a half second later.
She was out the door and in the hall when the bomb went off with a violence that threw her ten feet, limp as a rag doll. Fire rolled overhead, and the fact that she’d fallen flat was all that saved her from the ball bearing antipersonnel shrapnel that shredded the walls at waist level. It was a Wrath of God explosion, shaking the building, blowing out glass, shattering walls, and she was buried in a fall of brick and drywall.
No time for a damage assessment of her body; she clawed her way free of the debris and saw that there was a murderously hot wall of burning rubble behind her, and a mound of burning debris that totally blocked the way to the reception room.
“I think we’ve got a magenta situation here,” Bryn said, and had the wild impulse to laugh. Shock. She had blood in her mouth and spit it out in a vivid red rush; something was broken inside, but that would heal. She got up, but her legs wouldn’t hold. Something broken there, too. She crawled instead, heading for the far end where the fire wasn’t yet taking hold. The smoke—black, thick, terrifying—billowed out and up. In seconds it had formed a thick layer over her head, and the stench of plastics melting made her retch up more blood as she crawled. Keep going, she told herself. You’ve had worse.
Not really. Magenta, magenta, magenta…She was back in Iraq, with her supply convoy under heavy attack. IED, we hit an IED, the truck rolled. …She’d survived that, survived with only minor injuries. She could survive this.
Hell, she couldn’t die. …
No, she could. She could burn.
The fire terrified her, and the fear forced her to keep crawling even as the nanites rushed to the injuries and began the cattle-prod pain of repair. Joe was two minutes out, he’d said—he might be even closer. …
He can’t get to you, said a cold little logical voice. You have to get out by yourself. Now, before it’s too late. The smoke was lowering, thickening to the consistency of black water. She’d drown in it, pass out, and then the fire…She might be alive and aware for that part of it. The nanites would struggle to keep her going, even while she was burning.
“Bryn! Talk to me—tell me what you want to do!”
There was a white-hot snap of agony somewhere deep in her back, and she jerked and convulsed with it. When it subsided two breaths later, she felt pins and needles stabbing into her skin, and then she felt her legs moving.
Whatever had gone wrong in her spine, it was fixed now.
“Bryn, I’m coming up!”
“No,” she said raggedly. “No, you can’t. Stay down there, Joe. You can’t help. ” She scrambled up to her hands and knees. Her legs weren’t working well, but they moved, and she moved drunkenly toward the end of the hallway. Even then, the air felt thick and toxic, the smoke swirling as heavy as fabric around her face.
The break room was the last door. She slammed the entrance open and braced herself for the smell, but the stench of the fire had overwhelmed everything else. The plastic-wrapped bodies still lay in an orderly row, but the coffeepot had given up its struggle; electricity had shorted out. Fires burned at the outlets. This room would go up in minutes, and there was no safety here.
