I crawl several ceiling panels from the vent and turn off Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt's display. I lay still on my side along the center of the duct—which seems the quietest part, least likely to bend with my weight and pop when I shift away. With my ear against the metal, I hear quite a bit of what's happening.
The gang from Elite slams doors and rips drawers out of file cabinets. They're either pounding the walls directly or throwing furniture against them. They shout at each other. They curse in frustration.
The screws in this nearest vent begin scraping, twisting in their holes. I'm a goner, I think, and have a strong instinct to begin frantically knee-clomping in the opposite direction...then remember what Graham said, that their men can't maneuver up here.
I decide to keep quiet and hold my position. With a clang, the vent is pushed up into the duct, then nudged aside, then the top of a man's head appears. Again, it takes all my gumption not to scamper off.
There's no light here, he can't see. He can only hear.
The man glances left, glances right, and sinks back down. I hear him perform a similar check of the next vent in this hall, and the vent after that.
Faintly I hear, "Where exactly did you see her last?"
Though soft, the voice is lashing: Oleg's. They must be in the adjacent hallway. I miss the next words, presumably from Graham.
Oleg's voice returns, "And why do you think that?"
This time, I do hear Graham's answer. "Because I looked everywhere. Keep wasting time up here if you like—your prerogative. The manpower's better spent on Eleven."
"I had men there. No one saw her."
"Were they good men? I don't know what to tell you. She's a slippery one."
For a while, I hear nothing. I wonder if Oleg is all purple-faced and mashing that stressball, grilling Graham. Maybe he's threatening to resurrect that bloody knife from Vegas if Graham doesn't come up with a more convincing story. What was that Graham said—"he has a way of bending people?"
Maybe Graham has already caved. Maybe he's whispering right now, gesturing for Oleg to keep quiet, to send someone up ahead, I'm just around the corner.
I curl into a ball around Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt and hope.
In another minute, the door to Twelve clicks open. I hear noise from the stairwell. There are no floors above me, so Elite must be heading down to Eleven.
I roll onto my back, exhaling, sprawling out what little I can in this cramped duct. In the pitch black, it feels like the inside of a coffin.
I try focusing on my next move, most likely escape or some kind of telecommunications wizardry using Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt. My eyelids have different ideas. One moment, I'm muttering about ghosting packets through Elite's outgoing email headers; the next, I'm snoring softly. I dig my nails into my palms and bite my lip, but lying prone like this, I just can't do it. I can't stay awake.
I am thinking my way through the ductwork...must move down...am lying on a cot needing a tampon...really needing one, badly...Oleg has a box of them, a big cardboard crate of the super-absorbent orange ones...but there's an electric fence and I'm wearing this bulky collar...must send Raven, she could swoop in and pluck...
Wait.
Raven got blown up.
I jolt awake, my heel banging the duct spastically. I grab for Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt and check the time. Whew—I was only out fifteen minutes.
I press my ear to the duct again and concentrate. I hear nothing. I risk crawling back to listen at the vent, whose open slats should allow more sound.
Still nothing.
Oleg has probably given up and headed back down to Three, where the rest of the engineers are. What is the status of Blackquest 40 now? Will they forge ahead without me? Who'll fill in for me? Is Prisha being pressured to step up? Will Paul shift back into a programming role, revive his former code-ninja persona?
I need to know what's happening—whether they're giving it whirl or packing up, planning to cut bait and blow us all to smithereens on their way out the door.
Unfortunately, Raven is no longer an option, and I get the feeling if one my dragonflies shows her pointy face to a Yellow Shirts, she'll be squashed with the nearest heavy item.
The only workable option is my droid-Hot Wheels. They do have audio, micro-electro-mechanical microphones that're part of our Hot Wheels of the Future prototype for Mattel. I begged Paul for this project. Hot Wheels had been my favorite toy growing up; I used to keep a plastic bag hung off Mom's cart, a dedicated receptacle of found cars, and stage epic races down overpass concrete.
I love those guys and the tech is cash-money, but I haven't tested their hearing range. If Oleg is addressing the engineering team, will they pick it up?
Depends.
On where he is. Possibly on how their bin is oriented.
I sit up, Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt on my crossed legs. When I check HOTWHEELS_FLEET, the expected number, fifty-seven, report for duty. I activate number sixteen at random and tap into her audio feed. The sounds are so faint I wonder if her mic is malfunctioning, or she's buried in the middle of the bin.
I try a few other Hot Wheels. Their feeds are no better.
Grime is gathering between my toes—feeling it, I use the cuff of my sleeve to clear it. What to do? Should I sneak around through the ductwork and disable all those charges? Though I dabble in it for robotics, electrical engineering isn't my forte—and disarming explosives is not a thing you wing it on.
I really need ears downstairs.
I think I have to knock over the bin of droid-Hot Wheels. If I can land one right-side-up on the ground, I can drive it within range of the action on Three.
When I considered this option before, I kinda tossed it off—oh yeah, theoretically I could dump the bin—but now I have to make it work. The sides of the bin aren't that high, maybe a half-inch taller than the pile of Hot Wheels. It's even possible, with all of them revving and spinning their tiny rubber wheels like banshees, one could whiz its way up and out, tumbling to the carpet without toppling the whole bin.
I write a simple script instructing all to accelerate to infinity for ten seconds, beam it to the fleet, then EXECUTE.
Listening on number sixteen's audio, I hear the high whinny of many three-volt motors, metal knocking, and much static.
The feed returns to its former nothingness after ten seconds.
I tap out a command asking number sixteen for her position history. Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt belches out a series of latitude-longitude-altitude numbers, all of which are identical out ten decimal places.
So she went nowhere.
Did any of them? Is the bin simply too heavy?
I write a script to loop through and find the lowest-altitude Hot Wheel, to see whether any managed to escape. I am not wildly hopeful kicking it off...but the script finishes with intriguing news: a few Hot Wheels do show altitudes about four feet lower. I grab the first, nine, and give its audio a whirl.
I hear something. The hum of a hard drive? A faraway voice? It's better than sixteen, but still not that helpful.
She'll have to go for a ride.
This will not be easy. I can't cut her loose with path-finding; she may zip right into Oleg's boot. I'll need to control her manually, and Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt is no Nintendo Game Boy. Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt has no steering wheel, no buttons. I'll have to turn, accelerate, and decelerate by text command, all blind, guided only by lat-long coordinates. I'll need to get my Hot Wheel close to the large open areas of Three, where Oleg might be talking, but not so close as to arouse suspicion.
I inch her forward, ACCELERATE, 2—two being a scalar value between one and ten. I listen closely to her audio.
A soft bump.
She's hit a cubicle border or a wall, I'm guessing. I send the command SPIN_BACKWARDS, 5, 2, then ACCELERATE, 2 again. She goes another few seconds before crashing again.
Driving like this is maddening. For five minutes, I tap out commands and the souped-up Hot Wheel dutifully executes them. Finally, a dull tone in the audio feed rises out of the background to a discernible level.
A male voice.
Oleg's.
"...challenging, but achievable," he is saying. "Now you are rested. Great obstacles lay before us, but that is good. Great teams arise out of great obstacles."
A voice I can't identify asks, "What were all those noises? I—we thought we heard a gunshot. Or maybe a car backfiring?"
"Not a car," Oleg responds soberly. "It was a gun."
This causes an uproar. Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt's speaker explodes in gasps, shrieks, exhortations.
Paul's voice breaks through, his monotone gone wild. "Is Deb dead, did your men kill her? We all have eyes—we see she isn't here!"
The feed goes silent. I imagine Oleg looming over the collective anxiety, drinking it in, feeding off it.
"Miss Bollinger tried another escape," he says. "When a facilitator confronted her, she took his weapon and used it to kill him."
"Deb? Deb shot the gun?"
"A subset of our personnel carry firearms as a precaution, but under no circumstances do their rules of engagement permit them to discharge the weapon."
Confused murmurs meet this complete and total heap of donkey dung. Where is Susan? There's no way she could have slept through that racket of Raven's demise, the pursuit of me, the gunshot. Did she try to put her foot down Have they locked her in some kitchenette?
And Carter? He was shaken last night—I think he has remorse about this horror show he punched our ticket for—but if it came to a bare-knuckle brawl between Susan and the Russians, which way would he tip?
Oleg continues, "Loose talk in the workplace can be as dangerous as on a battlefield. Rumors take us further from our shared goals. This is why I have told you all about Miss Bollinger—to remove any need to speculate. The project becomes more difficult without her. No question. With this in mind, we have reconsidered our previous decision to forego injections..."
He outlines a series of draconian measures. Now I'm thinking Susan has to be detained; her previous concessions—the outside emails, the showers and clean undies—are out the window. All meals will be taken at workstations. Not only are forfeited stock options possible; now, any team member who fails to fulfill his or her module role risks demotion.
On the upside, Elite facilitators will now be working alongside Codewise. Their full-throated assistance will simulate the missed presence of Miss Bollinger.
Stunned, I lose my grip on Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt. The noise knocks about the ducts, and I miss several seconds of the droid-Hot Wheel's audio.
When it comes back, the third floor is in revolt. Paul demands to see Susan. Prisha, with fervor I've never heard in her voice, wants to know who will define "fails to fulfill."
Oleg provides neutral, dispassionate answers. "Much of this would be unnecessary were Miss Bollinger present. Despite her actions, we would accept her back if she returned. If any of you had information...information that might be used to, eh, persuade Miss Bollinger...the reward would be handsome."
What crap is this? I am trying to puzzle out what the creep has in mind when I hear new shuffling. I think it originates closer to the mic—big, honky noises subsume the feed, then fade just as quickly. Someone sneers. Someone else gasps.
A single pair of footsteps becomes audible.
Prisha calls, "Don't! You pig, what are you doing?"
Oleg waits out the commotion, then says, "You have information for us?"
The voice that answers is nasal, aggressively bored. Now I think I recognize those footsteps too—slow, draggy.
"I know what'll bring Deb in."
Jared: the irredeemable human phlegm-ball himself.
I bend near Hedgehog Eleanor Roosevelt's speaker to hear, wondering what he could possibly claim to have on me. Will he threaten to reveal some inflammatory comment? I did one time say I would sneak cyanide into all the bags of T.G.I. Friday's Cheddar & Bacon Potato Skins in the vending machine—he's the only purchaser—if he made one more suggestive groan about Susan's attire at a town hall.
The protests become louder, though, and now I can make out nothing but galled, generalized anger toward Jared.
Oleg's voice cuts through. "Perhaps we need to step into the command center."
I can just see that preening look on Jared's face, glancing back at the other engineers with relish, acting like he's just scored big-time when in fact he's entering the worst vipers' nest any of us have known.
They must disappear together because in the next moment, the droid-Hot Wheel's audio loses them completely.