Chapter #21An Unwanted Chaperone by: imaj   The lights in the corridor outside the conference room are flickering, leaving it almost in complete darkness between the flashes. The pattern matches exactly the one in the conference room - on then off, three quick flashes and brief period of darkness. Further proof, if you needed any, of Hal Swann's presence nearby. The guard flicks on a flashlight under the barrel of his rifle. It helps with the flickering lights, keeping the corridor illuminated when the lights go off.
"This way doctor," says the guard, pointing along the corridor. Pendleton called him Jenkins, you recall.
"What's wrong with the lift," you ask, peering over your glasses at him. There's a certain forgettable quality to his face, as if he would slip from your memories the moment you stopped looking at him. You suppose that's something Fane would appreciate in their mercenaries.
He looks up at the flickering lights. At least someone seems to have finally worked out how to silence all the alarms in the building now. "Not sure I trust the lifts right now."
Jenkins has a point. With all the chaos that Hal must be inflicting on the buildings control system right now, it would surprise you if he'd managed to overlook the elevators. It's all too easy to imagine some luckless occupants plunging to their doom when the power and emergency brakes failed simultaneously. That would be impossibly unlucky, of course, but that's exactly what happens around Catilindrians like Hal.
"The stairs then," you sigh. The Ishtar labs are hidden underground, in the sub basement. It's a long climb down, made worse by the fact that the only stairs that lead to that level are in the emergency exit stairwell at the back of the building. "After you," you add gesturing in the direction of the stairs.
Jenkins takes the lead. This isn't ideal: You want to find Bea, not follow the guard. Ideally you'd knock him out with your sigil, but this part of the complex is all administrative offices and the commotion has already brought some of the workers out into the corridor. Some run anxiously in the direction of the front doors, others look to the guard as if hoping for an explanation from him.
"What's going on here," demands a middle aged man in a pinstriped suit as he pokes his head out of a side door.
"Just remain calm sir," states Jenkins flatly. "Someone will be along to evacuate you shortly."
"The hell I will," complains the man, but the guard is already walking onwards.
You glance at Jenkins, his back is turned to you and you sense an opportunity. As the man in the suit makes to chase after Jenkins and demand an explanation, you tap him lightly on the back of the neck and send him to sleep for a few hours with your knockout sigil. He hits the floor with a dull thump.
"Jenkins," you call out. Your voice, it seems, is enough to make the guard turn round. "He's fainted. We should at least get him back into his office and make him comfortable."
"I was ordered to evacuate you Doctor," replies.
"You can't just leave him here." It's out of character for the doctor to suddenly seem so concerned about another person's wellbeing, but you're hoping that the guard doesn't know her very well. You can't judge if that's actually the case from the doctor's imago, because she regards the security detachment in the complex as little more than mobile furniture and knows very little about them. With any luck, the reports that 'Prescott' is elsewhere in the building will encourage him to overlook your odd behaviour too.
The guard sighs unhappily and backtracks to where the man lies on the floor. Jenkins hauls the unconscious man up, hooking his arms under the man's armpits. You hold the door open for Jenkins to drag the man back into his office. It's empty inside, just a desk, chair, some shelves and view of the parking lot through the window. Perfect.
The knockout sigil glimmers on the tips of your fingers again as Jenkins pulls the man onto his chair. The guard is far too busy to notice your approach. He only turns once you are right next to him, and by then it is far too late to stop you. Jenkins gasps something, an inaudible half word, as you tap him on the forehead. You catch him and lower him to the floor gently as you absorb his imago.
Immediately you start rifling through Jenkins' memories, looking for the clues you need to find Bea. He has what you need! Bea is a holding cell on the sub-basement level, near the labs. At least that's where she was earlier. Terry Kipper - the Diana agent that impersonated Hilda Gunnarson - must be making his way to Bea already. You've got to get to her before Kipper can spirit her away again.
You don't have the time to switch to Jenkins' imago and put on his uniform and armour, not if you want to get to Bea quickly. His rifle might be useful though, so you carefully lift the strap over his head and pick it up. If nothing else, you'll need the flashlight under the barrel to help you in the sub basement if Hal's managed to affect the lights down there too.
You'll also be able to call on his mental imago and be just as good a shot with it as he is. A thought from Jenkin's mental imago tells you that the digital camera taped onto the gun plays hell with the balance though. Since you don't need it, and since the guard's imago also tells you that firing the gun with the doctor's body is going to be awkward enough, you unwrap the tape and drop the camera carelessly to the floor. Then you pull the strap on over your own shoulder, adjusting it so the rifle sits just above your waist.
You grab Jenkin's ID badge. It also serves as a keycard. Since the doctor left hers in the lab, you'll need it to get through some locked doors. You wish he still had his radio. You'd have liked to listen in on the progress of 'Prescott' through the building, but Jenkins gave that to Pendleton.
You step back out into the corridor. A few people are still hurrying in the direction of the exit. If any of them think it's odd that the project's lead researcher is carrying a security guard's gun, none of them say anything about it. Everyone is probably more concerned with getting themselves out than anything else - the memories of Cabinda will still linger for some of them. The corridors grow quieter as you approach the back of the building. The people in the offices here must already have ran away.
The lights in the emergency exit stairwell are suffering from the glitch that Hal has introduced to the rest of the building. But at least here the emergency lighting has come on as well. The dull red lights are probably too low-tech to be affected by Hal's trickery. You flip the gun flashlight off to save power and make your way carefully down to the basement.
You turn at the bottom, heading round to the space under the stairs. The door that leads down to the sub basement is here, protected by a numeric keypad and keycard lock. You know the combination from the doctor's imago and the guards.
The door is busted though. The keypad housing is cracked open and the keycard slot hangs on a ribbon of wires. You test the door and it opens easily. That's worrying - the doctor's memories tell you that access to the laboratory level is very carefully controlled. It's one of the few things she care about. The hairs on the back of your neck prickle and the shadows in the stairwell seem to flicker and lengthen. Something isn't right here.
A very cold and very hard object presses into the back of your head. There is an ominous clicking sound.
"Don't move Doctor Fitzgerald," says a woman's voice from behind you. "I'm supposed to try to capture you alive, but after what I've seen and heard over the last week, I don't think anyone will complain if you turn up with a hole in the back of the head." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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