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Clearing her throat of impending tears, she stomped across the room, gazing hopelessly through the large window, but stopped when she caught sight of movement that had shifted outside of her view. She hurried sideways and pressed her face against the window, then laughed in relief. Pallon was leaning over her desk. It could have been a long day.
“Thank you,” she whispered up to heaven.
She knocked on the window and Pallon looked up, frowning. She smiled, embarrassed at her stupidity and, knowing he couldn’t hear her, she pointed to the door and made a motion for him to unlock it.
He watched her for a second, looking more sad than confused. Surely he wasn’t disappointed in her for her oversight. He, of all people, knew how she often over-focused on her work. He chided her for it now and then, but he knew how necessary that intensity of study was for the work.
He walked slowly over to a panel at the side of the door and pressed the intercom. “I’m sorry, Syd. I am so very sorry.”
A light above the window in the other room started flashing red. She focused on it and stopped breathing. One thing she had tried out when she first arrived was a couple of experiments using the vacuum.
She reached frantically for the intercom, smacking the button with the palm of her hand. “Chris, why have you turned the vacuum on? What are you sorry for? Open the door. What are you doing?”
“I tried, Syd. I tried so hard. But you wouldn’t cooperate. All you had to do was give me access to your work. I didn’t want you to get hurt. I did everything I could. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. “Chris, you can’t do this. Why are you doing this?”
“I need the passcode for the safe.”
“You can’t be serious. You know how dangerous that fungus is.”
“I’m sorry, Syd. But I need it.”
“For who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell me the code to the safe.”
“Please.”
“The code.”
“You won’t get away with it. They’ll find out what you did.”
He shook his head slowly. “What they’ll find is a malfunction in the system. No one was here to help. Tell me the code.”
If she told him, there might still be time to stop him. She was no good dead. She needed to be alive to warn anyone. Fear squeezed her chest.
Please don’t let me make another mistake.
“Okay. I’ll tell you. But you need to turn off the vacuum.”
“Tell me the code first.”
“Four. Seven. Two. Nine. Zero. Three. One. Seven.”
He nodded and went to the safe. She watched as he deposited the glass cylinder into a metal box.
“Is it the money, Chris? Has someone offered you money?”
He walked back to the computer terminal without responding and typed something.
The lights went off but left the eerie, red, flashing light.
She jammed her thumb onto the intercom button. “You got what you wanted. What are you doing?”
He turned and walked to the door.
“Chris. No! Chris!” she screamed into the speaker.
