Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [54]
A second later, the emergency lights came on.
Squatting down, Kaplan started opening up the CPU access to the motherboard.
Sounding confused, Alice said, "I thought you were here to shut her down."
"So I can retrieve her operating systems. The corporation has to find out what went on down here. They wouldn't want her destroyed."
"I'm sure. Must be quite an investment."
Kaplan said nothing. Right now he'd be the first to pull the plug—or take a really big hammer—to the computer that killed not only the five hundred people down here, but his entire team. On the other hand, they did need to know what happened.
So, rather than answer the question directly, he took his usual tack of plunging into technobabble. "That pulse forces the circuit breaker to shut down her mainframe for thirty seconds. After that, if I don't have her motherboard, she can reboot."
He eased the motherboard out.
"But since I have the board, this won't be a problem."
Forcing a smile, he stood up, dropping the motherboard into the duffel.
"Come on, let's get back."
Seventeen
RAIN WAS BORED.
When One told her and J.D. to keep an eye on the dumb cop while they went to shut down the little-kid computer, she didn't say anything, 'cause she didn't do that. One was the boss. Shit, One was the guy who got her the job. She'd take point heading into the gates of hell if that was the order he gave.
But that didn't make this babysitting shit any less boring.
"So what the fuck you doing here?" she asked Addison, who was sitting on one of the crates.
The asshole tried to shrug while wearing cuffs, then winced in pain. J.D. grinned when he did that.
"We got a call—some kind of disturbance at the big mansion in Foxwood Heights. My sergeant told me that I had to check it out."
Rain laughed.
"What's so funny?" Addison sounded all defensive.
"Fuckin' rookie." Rain shook her head. "You believe this? RCPD pulls this shit all the time."
"What do you mean, 'fuckin' rookie'?"
J.D. pulled out his Smith & Wesson and checked the clip. "You said you just transferred, right?"
"Yeah, so? I've been a cop for ten years."
"I was a cop, too, asswipe," Rain said, "and I know that new in town means rookie. Don't matter how far into your pension you are from some other burg."
Putting the clip back into his pistol, J.D. said, "You, my friend, got hazed. Nobody's supposed to go to the mansion. They don't get calls. All the locals know that."
Rain grinned. " 'Cept you."
Then the lights went out. The only thing Rain could see were the display lights on the crates.
J.D.'s voice sounded in the darkness. "Guess Kaplan found the off button."
The emergency lights came on. "Yeah, well, sun shines on a dog's ass every once in a while." Kaplan wasn't that bad a guy, really, but he was a geek who didn't really belong in the field. Sure, he could hold his own in a firefight, but he was about the last person Rain wanted covering her ass. She trained a kid just like Kaplan when she was a cop, all eager-fucking-beaver with lots of brains but no sense.
For this kind of work, you needed cojones of steel. Kaplan's were made of tin.
Rain noticed that the indicators on the crates went from environment stable in green to environment unstable in red.
Pulling out her knife, she started to scrape dirt out from her thumbnail. She was bored again.
"They're late," J.D. said.
Rain checked her watch—they had one hour, twenty-seven minutes left before the Hive'd be sealed off.
Then she heard a noise, like metal clanging on the floor.
She put away the knife and pulled out her MP5K.
"I'm on it."
Of all the weapons she'd wielded both as a cop and as Umbrella security, nothing felt more comfortable in Rain's hands than the MP5K.
Stepping over the thick tubes that went from the crates into the floor or to other crates, Rain moved around, trying to find out where the noise came from.
She heard it again, and turned right, moving toward it.
The third time she heard the noise, she saw the metal cylinder rolling on the floor. Holding the rifle up, ready to blow