With the gun poised against my shoulder, I stepped into the hall of the fourth floor. This one wasn’t lined with doors like a hospital or a simple hotel. It had hardwood floors with oriental runners, and the walls were papered in shiny gold. To the right, all I could see was a small door with a grated window that was probably a utility closet. I headed left, holding the gun out in front of me, my finger twitching on the trigger.
There were only two doors on the entire floor. They each had a fancy handle instead of the more functional knobs in the rooms downstairs. It looked like the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel. I tried the handle, but it was locked. Securing the rifle’s safety and holding the stock in both hands, I raised the gun over my head and brought it down as hard as I could against the handle. The metal dented and pulled away from the wood. I struck it again. This time, the knob split away and fell to the ground.
Holding the rifle close, I threw my body against the door. It banged open. Inside was a huge room with doors leading to other rooms. In the corner was a fully stocked wet bar lined with bottles of whiskey, bourbon, and cognac. There were stylish sand colored sofas and reading chairs, a brown lacquered coffee table, and a large plasma television mounted on the wall. Expensive looking vases filled with fresh-cut flowers had been placed around the room, along with baskets of fruit and bowls of chocolate. In the farthest corner was a workstation with a computer, a printer, and a series of shelves piled with books. A man sat very still at the desk, staring into space.
“Hello?” I called, but the man didn’t turn around.
I approached him carefully, making a wide circle until I could almost see his face. He was a heavy-lidded man with dark skin, short, thinning hair, and a gray-speckled beard. He looked to be in his early fifties. The computer screen before him was black, and yet he stared into it as if deep in thought.
“Hey,” I said.
The man sighed and shifted his tired gaze to take me in. He looked as though there were nothing on earth left to surprise him. But when he saw the sweat-drenched, rifle-wielding teenage girl before him, his eyes crinkled in confusion. “And what, may I ask, are you?”
“Tell me your name,” I said from behind the gun.
“Dr. Saval Patel,” he said, exasperated. “What do you want?”
“What are you doing here?”
He took off his reading glasses and looked more closely at me. “Do you mean, am I part of the hapless cult of the terminally ill who, at some point next January, will lie down with their strychnine cocktails, and await the lunar equivalent of the Hale-Bopp Comet?” He slipped the glasses into the breast pocket of his shirt and leaned back in his chair. “I am a prisoner here. Along with two of my colleagues. We are being employed against our will. I would normally express joy at the sight of a gun, which might suggest that we are saved, but I can’t help noticing that you are a child.”
“Dr. Patel,” I muttered. I lowered the rifle. “You’re the biotech guy.”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “The biotech guy.” He got up from the desk and moved to one of the reading chairs, where he lowered himself gingerly onto the cushions as if he were nursing unseen wounds. “And you are…?”
“I’m looking for my friend Rhodes. Juliana took him away this morning…”
“The boy!” Dr. Patel exclaimed. “It’s unconscionable, bringing a child, however brilliant, into this bizarre…”
“Where is he?”
Dr. Patel nodded at a door across the room. “Still resting. The succubus wore him out, as expected. Though he seems to be recovering faster than the rest of us did.”
Without another word, I hurried through the door and into the adjoining room. It was a beautifully appointed bedroom, with art deco furniture and modern paintings on the wall. The bed was low and wide, with a black lacquered headboard and an ipod hooked up to Bose speakers that piped out soothing Baroque music. Rhodes was sitting in an overstuffed armchair, elbows to knees, his head in his hands. He was still wearing his winter coat.
I hurried over and kneeled down before him. “Rhodes. My god! Are you okay?”
He slowly lifted his head. His face was frighteningly pale and covered in purple spots from burst blood vessels. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his lips were crusted and dry. He squinted as if I were a glaring apparition appearing before him. At first there was no recognition in his eyes. They had the lifelessness of someone in shock.
“Rhodes,” I said firmly. “It’s me. Paulie.”
A glimmer of light flickered in his eyes. He opened his lips as if to speak, but nothing came out. I took his hands and squeezed them hard.
“We have to get out of here right now.”
He nodded vaguely, and then looked around. “What is this place?” His voice was breathy and strained, as if it were painful to talk.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to leave. Can you stand?”
He blinked at me. “Paulie?”
“Yes!”
“Paulie, what happened to me? Paulie, that woman, Julie, she…” He gazed at me, the sluggish cogs in his brain pushing through the impossibilities. “You were telling the truth.”
“And I’m telling the truth right now,” I whispered urgently. “If we don’t get moving, we may never get out of here. Stand up. I’ll help you.”
I held the gun in my left hand and hooked my right arm under Rhodes’s arm. He responded, pushing himself effortfully to his feet. I kept my hold and steadied him as he swayed.
“I’m dizzy,” he muttered.
“I know.”
Then he looked at me again, dazed. “That’s Dr. Patel in there, you know. The scientist I was telling you about. From California. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
Slowly, we made our way to the door. In the front room, Dr. Patel was sitting at the desk again, anxiously watching the open door to the outside hall.
“Come on,” I called to him, as we staggered through the room. “Don’t you want to get out of here? Now is your chance! Come on!”
Dr. Patel shook his head and looked away, ashamed. “I’m sorry, I can’t. It’s been made very clear to me what happens if I break the rules. I’m not keen to experience that again.”
“Please,” I said. “We need your help! Come with us!”
But he shook his head again and turned his back to us. Rhodes looked back at him regretfully as we left the suite and stepped cautiously into the quiet corridor. The only sound was the distant drone of the back stairs ventilation fan. Rhodes stumbled several times as we moved laboriously toward the exit door. My plan was to make it back down to the basement where the daylight edged into the shadows. Rhodes sagged heavily against me, his body pungent with sweat.
“What does she want from me, anyway?” Rhodes muttered. “I just don’t understand what she wants.”
I’d been wondering that since the moment he’d disappeared. Why would she target Rhodes specifically? It wasn’t until I’d seen Dr. Patel that it began to make sense to me. Artificial energy. Biotechnology. The repbods. Juliana wanted to study the repbods. Maybe she wanted to find new ways to keep them going without relying on G. Or maybe she just wanted to make them even stronger and more invincible.
“Am I hallucinating,” Rhodes wheezed. “Or are you carrying a gun?”
When he turned to better see the rifle I was gripping in the other hand, his eyes suddenly went funny. All at once his feet tangled and he crashed heavily to the floor. Almost at the exact same moment, the elevator across the hall went bing and the doors began to open.
I swung around and aimed the muzzle at the doors an instant before a shockingly tall Noir with a military cut stepped into the hall. He was dressed in black trousers and a black shirt, with a black ball cap on his head. In his hands was a room service-style tray of food. It was an impressive spread: steak, salad, French bread, lemon cake, and a bottle of wine. He stared at us for a moment, confusion in his eyes.
“Stay right there,” I said in a low voice, setting my sights squarely on his torso. “Don’t move.”
He snapped into action. With blinding speed, he hurled the tray to the ground and launched himself at me with an animal growl. He was airborne just above me when I pulled the trigger. The crack rang out, and I felt the jolting thud of the kickback against my bones. Then the Noir came crashing down on top of me, howling in pain. I crumpled to the floor beneath him and nearly lost my grip on the rifle. But I managed to squirm out from under him and crawl over to wear Rhodes was recoiled on the ground.
The Noir rolled over and gaped at the hole in his stomach, which oozed a silvery substance like liquid metal, opening his mouth wide in disbelief. He pressed a hand against it, and I saw it come away covered in a silver patina of goo. The smell of smoke and sulfur hung in the air.
“Come on,” I barked at Rhodes. “Get your ass off the ground! We have to get to that door!”
I pulled at Rhodes’s arm until he somehow found his feet again. He steadied himself against the wall and blundered frantically for the exit door. I held the gun at the ready, shuffling backward, eyes fixed on the injured Noir. But he made no attempt to follow. We pushed through the door and stumbled our way down the steps. Rhodes struggled to keep his balance, holding onto the railing as if it were the lifeline out of an underwater cave. We passed the door marked 3, and were rounding the landing to the second floor when a blaring alarm began to sound. Red strobe lights flickered in the stairwell.
“Hurry!” I yelled. “To the basement!”
The sound of the alarm infused Rhodes with a new vigor. He held fast to the handrail and sailed down stairs, his long legs stretching over three or four at a time. I held the rifle at the ready each time we passed a door, but no one came. Finally, we reached the basement.
“We’re home free!” I called.
Rhodes’s face lifted with hope as he reached for the handle and pulled. When it didn’t budge he tried yanking it with both hands, leaning against it with all his weight. But it was no use. The door was locked.