Countdown (6 page)

Trilon Laboratories
Delaware

Nellie Gomez sat in her small office, pretending to read research reports on the genetic effects of radiation on rats. She was waiting for her coworkers — that is, her employees, sort of, since she was the manager of this particular department — to leave.
Go home already, drones!
she thought. She stared at the last two research chemists left in the lab — Gerry Wentworth and Brent Beckelheimer — willing them with her brainpower to leave. It wasn't working.

So much for my psychic abilities,
she thought, hiding a copy of
Punk Rock Confidential
behind
The Journal of Genetic Research
. It still shocked her when she woke up in the morning to realize she'd be spending her day as the head of a sterile lab in a corporate pharmaceutical complex in Delaware. She wasn't quite sure how she — a punk-rocker-slash-aspiring-chef from Boston — became Dr. Nadine Gormey, the boss of a bunch of brainy chemists with PhDs from Hopkins and MIT, but it was lucky that she was. Because something dangerous and very secret was happening in this lab, and the fate of the world depended on her stopping it.

Beckelheimer stuck his head into Nellie's office. “Uh, excuse me, Dr. Gormey, I guess Dr. Wentworth and I will be going now.”

“All right, Dr. Beckelheimer. I suppose you can't work twenty-four hours a day. You're only human after all, right? Of course, I'll be staying late as usual.” Nellie waved the scientific journal she was pretending to read at him, just catching the music magazine before it slipped out and revealed how seriously she was goofing off. “Got to burn the midnight oil again tonight. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Dr. Gormey.” The two scientists finally left. Now Nellie could start her real work: snooping.

She waited awhile, listening to the sounds of the building, waiting for that level of absolute quiet that meant everyone had gone. Then she crept through the dark hallways, lit now only by emergency lights, and up to the fourth floor, until she came to a vending machine. She took a special “A” ID she'd stolen from a sales rep, a more trusted worker (and rightly so, she thought with a snicker), from a chain hooked to her pants pocket and slipped it into the machine. The machine opened like a door. In fact, it
was
a door — a secret door that led to the basement labs where the serious research was being done. If the regular work of Trilon Labs was top secret, the basement lab work was on the level of
If I told you, I'd have to kill you
.

The door slid shut behind her as she descended the stairs, keeping an eye out for the heavily armed guards who could be lurking around every corner. She was looking for Sammy Mourad.

Sammy was a brilliant young grad student, a Cahill cousin of Dan and Amy's, with a genius for bio­chemistry. He'd been working at Columbia University when Dan asked him to make a sample of the Cahill serum for him. The formula had gotten into the wrongest of wrong hands — Pierce's hands, to be specific. And of course, Pierce wasn't about to let such a useful researcher get away so easily.

Nellie had stumbled upon these secret basement labs and found Sammy working there. He was being held prisoner, but he refused to be rescued.

“Don't you see,” he'd told Nellie. “I'm in the perfect position to stop him. You and I both are. We're inside.”

“I know that,” Nellie had said. “But he's holding you captive . . . .”

“Believe me, I'd love to get out of here,” Sammy had said. “But I can sabotage his work from the inside, or try to, at least.”

Nellie sighed a funny kind of shivery, happy/sad sigh. He was so brave, risking his life for the good of the world, and for her kiddos, too. Courage plus dark good looks and nerdy charm — that made for irresistible Nellie-bait. Of course, Nellie was risking her life, too, but she was used to that.

They hadn't figured out a secure way to communicate yet, so Nellie sneaked downstairs to check on him every chance she got. The basement was a white labyrinth, hallways branching off hallways and circling back on themselves in a way that seemed deliberately confusing. Crouching under windows, flattening herself against walls to avoid cameras, Nellie made her way through the maze to Sammy's lab. She took a left through an unfamiliar door and wandered past a row of one-way windows. She peeked carefully inside and saw lab after lab, each more sophisticated than the last, with one or two white-coated scientists working doggedly around the clock, blind to anything happening outside the tiny world of the lab they were locked in.

She paused outside the lab where she'd last seen Sammy and peered through the window. A shade had been drawn over it, but she could just barely see through a crack left open at the bottom. . . .

The lab was empty. Lights out. Sammy wasn't there. And it looked like nobody was working in that lab at the moment.

She panicked. A shot of adrenaline burst through her bloodstream and raised her pulse. Where was he? Was he all right?

Nellie heard footsteps — heavy, booted footsteps — coming in her direction. Frantically, she tried a door. It was locked. She tried another. They were all locked. She spotted a swinging door at the end of the corridor and pushed through it. She waited, holding her breath, until the footsteps stomped by, fading as they went down the corridor.

She looked around. She seemed to be in a men's room.
Better get out of here,
she thought. Then she noticed another door beyond the last toilet stall. Probably just a janitor's closet. But if a soda machine could lead to a secret basement, who knew what lay behind a janitor's closet door?

She tried the knob and, miraculously, it opened. It was a closet, holding a rolling bucket and a mop. But the mop, she noticed, was dry and bleach white. It hadn't been used. Maybe it was new. Or maybe it was a decoy.

She pressed against the back wall of the closet. It didn't move.

Okay, so maybe it was just a janitor's closet after all.

Dr. Nadine Gormey doesn't give up that easily
.

She lifted the mop and put it down. She rolled the bucket out of the closet. Nothing. She picked up a dust pan and a brush, then tried brushing the back of the wall. She said, “Open Sesame!” It was a long shot, but you never knew what might work.

In this case, however, nothing worked.

She took a moment to look around the men's room. It wasn't as if she'd never been in a men's room before — the bathroom line at the Rat in Boston got so long that girls took over the men's room all the time, shouting, “Revolution!” in true punk-rock fashion. And this one didn't hold anything unusual that she could see. Toilet stalls. Urinals. Sinks. Soap. Paper towel dispensers
and
hand dryers. Nice that they gave the guys a choice.

She pressed on the soap dispensers, pulled out paper towels, pressed on the hand dryer. Nothing but soap and hot air.

Back to the closet. She stared into it as if it were a mysterious cave holding a secret. Something was not right about that closet.

Then she noticed a hook with a broom hanging from it. Some instinct, honed after two years of wild adventures with Amy and Dan, told her to tug on the hook. Sure enough, the back wall of the closet slid open to reveal yet another hallway.

Nellie stepped over the bucket into this new, even more secret area. Trilon Labs had more layers than an Indonesian thousand-layer cake. All in the service of hiding stuff.

The place had a lot of secrets.

At the end of the short corridor was a windowed door. She walked toward it and peered through the window.

There he was. All alone, dropping a chemical onto a slide and peering at it through a microscope, his handsome features stern and serious with work. Sammy.

The door was locked. Nellie tapped on the window. Sammy looked over. He lit up, his face transformed by happy surprise.

Open the door, dummy!
Nellie thought. He ran to the door and opened it, pulling her inside.

“I was hoping you would find me,” Sammy said. “Sometimes even the guards can't find me here. They forget to bring my meals.”

“Are you okay?” Nellie asked.

“I'm okay. Any news from the outside world?”

“Amy and Dan are in Guatemala — one step closer to making the antidote, I hope.”

“When they find it, we're going to need it,” Sammy said. “I just got crystal clear orders to speed things up. Pierce wants a safe, mass-produced serum ready to go in the next week.”

“Before he announces his candidacy.” Nellie shuddered at the thought of all those Patriotist idiots in their tricorne hats . . . enhanced and superpowerful. Ruling the world.

“And the people who are against him . . .” She didn't have to finish the sentence. It would be impossible to oppose him. He would have absolute power.

“Yeah.” Sammy nodded sadly. “I've been working as slowly as I can. I've managed to bluff and stall so far, but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. If I don't come up with some results soon . . .” Sammy swallowed. “I'm trying to find a way to sabotage the research without anyone noticing right away,” Sammy explained. “But it's tricky. I want you safely out of here before they figure out what we're up to.”

“Don't worry about me,” Nellie said. “Just stop Pierce.”

There was a noise outside the room. “Someone's coming!” Sammy whispered. “Get out of here, quick!”

Nellie ran to the door. She peered through the window and heard the sound of boots in the corridor. “Too late! I've got to hide somewhere in here.”

Sammy set a rack of lab coats near the door. “When they open the door, hide behind it, using the coats for cover.”

“This is the first place they'll look!”

“Shhh!” The footsteps stopped just outside the door. There was a sound of keys rattling.

Nellie threw herself against the wall and wriggled behind the coats as the key turned in the lock and the door flung open. A guard dressed in a dark khaki combat uniform and armed with a machine gun stepped into the lab. “Everything okay in here?”

“Everything's fine,” Sammy said. “But, oh, do you think I could get more nacho chips with my lunch tomorrow? And maybe a spicier flavor, like Mexican Fiesta?”

The guard grunted. “I'm not in charge of your lunch.”

“Oh. Sorry. I just thought maybe you could convey the message to the kitchen, or wherever the slop you feed me comes from. It gets pretty boring down here all by myself, and food's just about the only thing I have to look forward to.”

He likes food,
she thought. She was holding her breath and praying that this huge, muscular, armed guard wouldn't catch her, but that didn't stop her from melting a little over Sammy.
He doesn't just like it, he's particular about it. Like me. Maybe someday, if we ever get out of this mess, I'll cook a meal for him that will make his taste buds fall in love.

“Look,” the guard said. “I don't want to know anything about your food or how bored you are. I'm just supposed to make sure everything's okay, and to see if you made any progress today.”

“Progress? Hmm, let's see . . . .” Through the screen of coats Nellie could see Sammy pick up his microscope and move it to a table facing the back wall of the lab, away from the door.
Good thinking, Mourad
, she thought. If he could distract the guard for long enough, maybe she could slip through the door.

Sammy peered into the scope. “Oh, my gosh!”

“What? What is it?” The guard hurried over to him.

“I've just made the most amazing discovery!” Sammy cried.

That's my cue.
Nellie slipped out of the room, leaving the door ajar so it wouldn't be heard. She crept down the short corridor and through the false wall of the janitor's closet. As she was closing the wall-door behind her, she heard Sammy say, “Whoops. Sorry. False alarm.”

Sammy was her kind of guy. They'd find a way to stop Pierce, between the two of them. But it had to be soon, before Pierce realized Sammy was not cooperating — and made him pay.