The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [15]
Clunk. The door slides open and I realize at the same instant that I should have leapt for the lift control panel and the emergency stop button. “Shit,” I add—the traditional last word—just as the flashing red dial on my phone screen whisks counterclockwise and turns green: green for safety, green for normal, green to show that the reality excursion has left the building.
“Zum Teufel!”
I glance up stupidly at a pair of feet encased in bulletproof-looking, brown leather hiking boots, then further up at the corduroy trousers and beige jacket of an elderly German tourist. “Trying to get a signal,” I mutter, and scramble out of the lift on all fours, feeling extremely stupid.
I tiptoe along the beige-carpeted corridor to my room, racking my brains for an explanation. This whole set-up stinks like a week-old haddock: what’s going on? Ramona, whoever the hell she is—I’d put hard money on her being mixed in with it. And that entropy blip was big. But it’s gone now. Someone gating in? I wonder. Or a proximal invocation? I pause in front of my door and hold my hand above the door handle for a few seconds.
The handle is cold. Not just metal-at-ambient cold, but frigid and smoking-liquid-nitrogen cold.
“Oops,” I say very quietly, and keep on walking down the corridor until I arrive at the next room door. Then I pull out my phone and speed-dial Angleton.
“Bob, Sitrep.”
I lick my lips. “I’m still alive. While I was in the elevator my tertiary proximity alarm redlined then dropped back. I got to my room and the door handle feels like it’s measuring room temperature in single-digit Kelvins. I’m now outside the adjacent door. I figure it’s a hit and unless you tell me otherwise I’m calling a Code Blue.”
“This isn’t the Code Blue you’re here to deal with.” Angleton sounds dryly amused, which is pretty much what I expect from him. “But you might want to make a note that your activation key is double-oh-seven. Just in case you need it later.”
“You what?” I glare at the phone in disbelief, then punch the number into the keypad. “Jesus, Angleton, someday let me explain this concept called password security to you. I’m not meant to be able to hack my own action locks and start shooting on a whim—”
“But you didn’t, did you?” He sounds even more amused as my phone beeps twice and makes a metallic clicking noise. “You may not have time to ask when the shit hits the fan. That’s why I kept it simple. Now give me a Sitrep,” he adds crisply.
“I’m going live.” I frantically punch a couple of buttons and invisible moths flutter up and down my spine; when they fade away the corridor looks darker, somehow, and more threatening. “Half-live. My terminal is active.” I fumble around in my pocket and pull out a small webcam, click it into place in the expansion slot on top of my phone. Now my phone has got two cameras. “Okay, SCORPION STARE loaded. I’m armed. What can I expect?”
There’s a buzzing noise from the door lock next to me and the green LED flashes. “Hopefully nothing right now, but . . . open the door and go inside. Your backup team should be in place to give you your briefing, unless something’s gone very wrong in the last five minutes.”
“Jesus, Angleton.”
“That is my name. You shouldn’t swear so much: the walls have ears.” He still sounds amused, the omniscient bastard. I don’t know how he does it—I’m not cleared for that shit—but I always have a feeling that he can see over my shoulder. “Go inside. That’s an order.”
I take a deep breath, raise my phone, and open the door.
“Hiya, Bob!” Pinky looks up from the battered instrument case, his hands hovering over a compact computer keyboard. He’s wearing a fetching batik sarong, a bushy handlebar moustache, and not much else: I’m not going to give him the pleasure of knowing just how much this disturbs me, or how relieved I am to see him.
“Where’s Brains?” I ask, closing the door behind me and exhaling slowly.
“In the closet. Don’t worry, he’ll be coming out soon enough.” Pinky points a digit at the row of storage doors fronting the