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Alice shot them both in the head.

Then she ran after Isaacs.

Just as she turned a corner, she saw him disappear into an elevator. Undaunted, Alice ran up to the closed doors, put her fingers at the seam where the doors joined, took a deep breath, and started to pry them apart.

It was no effort at all. With the grinding sound of stressed metal, the doors separated. Looking up, she saw that the elevator was rising.

She smiled.

She crouched and leapt into the air, her fingers clasping one of the bars on the elevator’s undercarriage.

Pausing for a second to solidify her grip, she started to swing back and forth. Just as the elevator came to a halt, she built up enough momentum to swing upward, the soles of her boots slamming into the bottom of the elevator.

It took a few more of those to make a hole wide enough for her to crawl through. Once she clambered up into the elevator, she saw that it was empty. Whirling around, she saw Isaacs standing with two more security thugs by his side with MP5s aimed at Alice.

Before she could raise her own weapon, Isaacs said, “Stop.”

And she did.

“Come with me.” He turned around and walked down the corridor.

Obediently, Alice followed.

She tried to fight it, but she couldn’t stop walking down the corridor after Isaacs. Her legs would not obey instructions.

Her arms, however, did, as she tried to raise them and surprised herself by succeeding.

Immediately, she shot one of the guards, then the other.

But when she tried to aim the weapon’s muzzle at Isaacs, she couldn’t.

At the sound of the shot, Isaacs turned around. “Fascinating,” he said, showing no concern for his fallen employees. “Lower your weapon. Take no action without my express instruction.”

Alice lowered her weapon. She couldn’t raise it again.

Whatever the fucker had done to her had a more limited control than Isaacs had thought, obviously, but it also seemed to be tied directly into instructions from him.

Then an alarm went off. “Security breach,” said a voice over the speakers. “All security personnel to front entrance.”

Isaacs pulled a phone out of his lab coat. “What’s going on?”

“Intruders, sir,” said the same voice, now sounding tinny over the phone’s small speaker. “They followed Project Alice through the cordon. Sir—one of them is Olivera.”

“Dammit,” Isaacs muttered. He looked at Alice, then said into the phone, “Stop them, whatever it takes.”

Alice turned and ran.

She hadn’t intended to, and she couldn’t stop. She heard Isaacs make a noise, as if starting to speak, but then nothing else came from him. He hadn’t intended that instruction to be for her, but her now-literal-minded nervous system had responded anyhow. Apparently, he saw the benefits to that, so he let her go.

Alice tried to make herself stop, and failed.

Her only exposure to the Detroit facility had been a cursory examination of the floorplan one afternoon when she was bored while working at the mansion—the place where they’d assigned her and Spence for several months to head up security for the Hive. Despite that, she unerringly ran toward the front entrance.

She arrived to see a limping Molina, an angry Carlos, and a lot of bodies on the floor, one of which was King’s. Of Briscoe and L.J. there was no sign.

“Alice!” Carlos cried upon sighting her. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Carlos, you’ve got to get out of here!” Her arms rose, pointing her weapon right at Carlos’s face.

She lowered it a second later. Isaacs’s programming was wearing off.

At least for now, absent any direct instructions from the bastard.

“Get out of here, Carlos!” she said. Looking at Molina, she added, “Get him some medical help, but leave here now.”

“Not without you.”

“Yes, without me. Just trust me, okay? If you don’t leave now, more than King and Angie will be dead.”

Carlos’s eyes widened. “Angie’s dead?”

“Yes! They killed her.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. “And they’ll kill you, too. Get out of here!”

Footfalls could be heard from down the hall. “Go, now!