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But Valya’s team were not fools.
Another two men kept a post at the door, well away from the flaming lake. They fired after the fleeing pair. The unfortunate problem with alcohol fires was that they burned smokeless, leaving Gray and Seichan still exposed.
But Gray also knew the standard fire suppression for such conflagrations. Plain water would not work. From the hundreds of sprinkler heads, an alcohol-resistant foam sprayed across this level. The thick jets frothed a heavy lather through the air, immediately obscuring the view.
As deafening fire alarm bells rang out, Gray pulled Seichan low andto the side. He ran and skidded over the slippery floor, shading his eyes from the downpour. Gunfire blasted after them, but the rounds found no targets through the thick wall of foam.
Gray struck the far door, shoved through it, and slammed it behind him. He breathed heavily, catching his breath. They had reached the elevator lobby, but with the fire on this floor, no cage would stop here.
Instead, they dashed to the emergency stairs that ran alongside the shaft. They sprinted down, leaping steps. Gray counted on Valya only guarding the main stairwell on the other side, the one she had retreated down. With a limit to her manpower, she would use the last of her resources to protect her back, to aid her escape.
Gray was proven right when they safely reached the bottom of the stairs and exited out onto the main exhibition floor. The space had mostly cleared out. An intercom cut through the bleats of the alarm, warning everyone to evacuate in multiple languages.
Gray and Seichan ducked into the last of the crowd, hiding their weapons.
They hurried outside, where sirens added to the cacophony of shouting and alarm bells. They searched for the others.
Zhuang found them first, shoving through the crowd to join them.
“How’s Kwong?” Gray asked him.
Zhuang stared down at his bloody hands. “I got him to an ambulance. But know no more.”
“And my mother?” Seichan asked.
“I’ve not seen her,” Zhuang answered, his voice sharp with panic.
Seichan looked at Gray.
He had no words to offer her hope. They both knew the truth. Either Valya had her mother, or Guan-yin had died on those stairs.
Gray didn’t know which fate was worse.
13
January 23, 3:20P.M.ICT
Phsar Réam, Cambodia
Standing inside the airlock, Dr. Luo Heng stared into the morgue. Min crowded next to him. Junjie pointed his camera between their shoulders.
A loud klaxon rang out in the hall behind him. Heng had struck the emergency alarm as they fled the morgue. He had also used the phone in the airlock to alert Captain Tse.
“Keep filming,” Heng ordered Junjie when the sublieutenant started to lower his camera. Heng wanted every second to be recorded, not trusting his eyes to take it all in.
Inside the morgue, the length of brain and spinal cord still lay in the saline bath. Only now the cord writhed in the solution. From the brain’s gyri and sulci, hundreds of foot-long tendrils thrashed the air.
The neurological tissue had burst to life after Heng had shot a strong jolt of electricity through it. Heng had immediately driven everyone into the airlock, putting glass and steel between them and the horror inside.
“What’s happening in there?” Min gasped out.
Heng glanced to the portable EEG. It was still operating inside. Its leads remained attached to the implanted electrodes. On the monitor, the waves and troughs of its lines swung wildly. He had never seen such violence, not even in a patient in the midst of an epileptic seizure. Thebrainwaves overlapped and ran roughshod over one another, as if the EEG were registering a legion of readings.
Footsteps pounded out in the hall. Heng looked past his shoulder. Captain Tse appeared in the window behind him, her face stern and reddened. She carried a pistol in her hand. She was flanked by two men, a gray-haired gentleman in a crisp suit and a young man in a PLA uniform with the double stripes and single star of a major.
“What’s wrong?” Tse called to him.
Heng pushed Min aside to open the view into the morgue.
