The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [36]
In the basement, they recovered their discarded flashlights and stood by the metal door leading to the sewers.
“Good stuff.” Raul pinched the dark-gray material of his suit and rubbed it between his fingers.
“Steam disinfecting gear,” Lukas said.
Raul nodded. “But they have no tanks.”
Suddenly Laurel jerked, pivoted, and ran toward the stairs. “The computer!”
She almost collided with Floyd, who was barreling down the steps.
“Where’re you going?” he yelled.
“Forgot the Metapad. We’re fucked without it.”
“We’re fucked anyway, but hurry up!” He squeezed past her and crashed through the basement door.
When Laurel returned, wheezing from the effort—the computer dangling from her neck—the men had already strapped Russo onto the stretcher with stout woven belts.
“Here.” Floyd handed his bag to Lukas, nodded to Raul, then bent over to grab one end of the stretcher.
Sixteen minutes and thirty seconds after discovering the broadcasting implants, they were back in the sewers.
Nikola stood, his back to the security air locks joining the reception area with the underground accesses. Whoever had designed the complex didn’t believe in feng shui but understood human nature. Nyx’s reception area was a hangarlike monstrosity—a domed void rising one hundred feet into the air and spanning a circle of perhaps three hundred feet, with a doughnut-shaped counter in its center. The rest was empty but for clusters of plush seats arranged at the edge of the circle. Like an ancient temple builder, the architect had designed the brutal empty volume to awe visitors into insignificance.
As he waited outside for the arrival of the DHS Fast Deployment Units, Dennis’s voice had crackled in his earpiece. “Signatures gone.” A short sentence that altered the rules of the game.
“All of them?”
No hesitation on Dennis’s reply. “Yes.”
“At the same time?”
“Within seconds of one another, anyhow.”
To destroy the locators required surgical removal, and the fugitives hadn’t had enough time. Besides, if someone had surgically excised the sensors and left them lying around, they would still be live. Yet all three sensors had stopped broadcasting nearly in unison, and unless the fugitives had a large team of surgeons, it was an impossible feat. No. They had neutralized the sensors, and that could only mean the bastards had learned of their dual role as beacons. Nikola sighed and ran a hand over the sleeve of his wool jacket—one of his affectations. Real wool—not the smart synthetic fiber that would change color and texture at its owner’s whim. The wool felt warm to the touch, as if it still remembered the heat of the animal it had come from.
The waning signal left him blind and offered the fugitives two alternatives. They could have holed up in the research building and hoped to remain undetected—but this was a naive assumption, and whoever had planned the operation was anything but naive. On the other hand, they could be in the sewers, ready to surface almost anywhere. And he didn’t have the personnel to scour hundreds of miles of city bowels and seal the city exits. But he could seal the city, and the fugitives would have to come up sooner or later. He stepped forward to a dozen security guards lined up by the FDU lieutenant and eyed a row of frightened faces. “Who’s in charge?”
A young security officer, almost a boy, straightened. “I am.”
Nikola peered into the young man’s eyes, ready to deliver a rebuke that died before it left his tongue. Interrogation was an art where one posed questions and the other delivered answers. Problem was, if the questions were stupid, the answers would be even more so. He had wanted to know who the highest executive