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I got the notebook out and checked the code. "So why have one guarding a fire exit?"
He shrugged. "Why not? If the contamination is truly bad, do you really want those inside getting out?"
"Isn't the whole point of a fire exit being able to escape when something bad happens?"
He pressed the thumb against the door. "By law we have to have them. It doesn't mean they should always be used."
"Glad I don't work in your labs."
He glanced at me, dark eyes suddenly amused. "I'm glad, too. I have a no fraternizing with my employees rule."
"We're not exactly fraternizing now." Not in a physical, one-on-one sense, anyway. Well, except for our brief session in my kitchen, and later in the barn - but that hardly counted.
"No." He grasped the lever and hauled the huge door open. Air rushed out, brushing my skin with its musty, ancient scent. "But I intend to remedy that."
I arched an eyebrow at the certainty - even arrogance - in his voice and reached for the psi-link between us. Given we had no idea how close the labs were or how far our voices might carry, it was better not to talk aloud. Especially when we had another option. And just how do you intend to remedy the situation when you're never around and never in Melbourne?
He didn't answer - no surprise there - just edged around the corner. Another corridor and door ahead.
No guards? Which was a dumb question, really, when he was already walking forward.
Not yet. They might be on the other side of the door, though.
You know, something about the lack of security in this place just doesn't sit right. Surely the first places Starr would send troops to would be his research areas and labs...
I broke off suddenly.
What if he had sent his troops to his labs and research areas? What if he was protecting them?
Maybe the guards Quinn had spotted in the forest were heading in there for that very reason - to guard the exit or entrance to the one place Starr had to protect above everything else.
A large leap? Maybe. Except that Iktar had said that when he and his people were transferred, they didn't seem to be out of it for very long. I'd taken that he meant only a few hours, but maybe he really did mean minutes.
Maybe the reason it had seemed that way was because the labs that made the creatures just like him was here, right under our very feet.
Of course, that would also mean there was an entrance somewhere in these hills large enough to take trucks, and surely the Directorate, with all its scanning equipment and satellites, would have spotted it by now.
Maybe not. Quinn had stopped at the next door.
Why not? An entrance big enough to take trucks needs roads heavy enough to take them. Not an easy thing to conceal in a forest.
It is if it is disguised as something else. Are there any quarries or logging camps nearby, perhaps?
I have no idea.
But Jack will.
Yeah.
I keyed the code into the door then stepped back to give him access to the thumb coder. The labs being underground would certainly explain why Jack and the Directorate have been unable to discover any suspect buildings with their satellites. But how could Starr do that much excavating without anyone taking note?
The only thing new about these tunnels are the doors. The concrete surrounding us is old. Decades old.
The cartel has been playing around in the DNA pool for forty years.
This place is older than that. Much older.
The light above the sensors clicked from red to green. Quinn grasped the door handle and hauled it open.
