Brain Storm (US Edition) (18 page)

Sara made sure the pistols were securely in place and stepped up to the door leading out of the guards' room. "Oh, one last thing, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. If you
hear or see anything I want to know about it. But don't whisper to me. Tap me on my shoulder if you see anything and then either point out to me where it is or put your mouth up against my ear and speak softly. Do you have all that? If you can't manage it you can go back to your cell to wait for them to come for you."

Carla nodded. "I've got it."

Sara gave her a once over. The bright orange uniform could be a problem but there was nothing to be done about that, none of the guards had left a spare uniform lying around. Other than that she looked pretty good.

"Let's get out of here then."

Sara listened at the door before sliding the key card through the lock to make sure there wasn't a whole bunch of people waiting just on the other side. The door opened inwards. Sara stood just off to the side, out of a direct line of fire with the opening, with her hand on the grip of the pistol down her front. Carla was tucked in behind her.

The corridor was nothing more than a tunnel. The walls and floor were smooth and the same
color as the walls and floor of the cells. The bar lights built into the ceiling were flickering to life, activated by the same mechanism that opened the door. The corridor stretched out for a number of meters moving upwards at a steady incline. About twenty or thirty meters in the corridor turned to the right. The angle of the corner wasn't sharp but the corridor turned far enough around it to cut off the view. Again there weren't any obvious cameras and it would still have been odd for them to be hidden in the light fittings. Even if there were cameras there it didn't matter, this was their only way out.

"Follow me." Sara set off moving reasonably quickly but using her training to keep her noise close to silence. Carla was trying to keep up behind her and as a
result her prison overalls were rustling loudly. Sara slowed down to allow Carla to do the same and the noise was drastically reduced. But it still wasn't fully eliminated. Sara pressed on. It couldn't be helped and there wasn't time to teach Carla all the intricacies of silent movement. If they came to obviously populated areas she might have to re-evaluate but for now it would do.

They came up to the bend and Sara slowed further. She motioned for Carla to wait where she was. She waited until she got a nod in return to be sure that the other woman knew what Sara was telling her to do and moved off.

Sara didn't bother keeping her back to one of the walls or any of that. There was no point if there was anybody to see her she would be seen. Moving like that would just make her look suspicious. While she never expected to look like she was meant to be here if she was walking like she belonged it could make whoever saw her hesitate long enough for her to deal with them.

The bend continued until it straightened out with the corridor continuing at a course approximately ninety degrees from the original one. It kept on going upwards at the same angle until it came to another door. The door looked basically the same as the others Sara had encountered in wherever it was she was being held. But this time there was a rectangle of plastic or glass in the door to act as a small sort of window. That would have been useful for Sara to get a look through at the room that lay behind it if the door wasn't already half open giving her an even better view.

Sara moved up closer to the door. This time she did press herself back against the wall and used the door for cover. When she had closed up quite close she could see that the room was unoccupied. She turned back to go and get Carla before investigating any further.

Sara rushed around the corner back to where she had left Carla and almost ran into a stun-stick in the face. The other woman was stood there brandishing the stun-stick in front of her. She was stood on the exact same spot that Sara had left her. "Sorry," she mouthed following Sara's instructions not to whisper.

Sara didn't waste words on telling her that it was all right. It was good that she was ready in case it wasn't Sara that came for her. "Come on."

Once they were inside the room Sara sat Carla on a chair in the corner so that she was out of the way, then she had a look around. They were inside a room much larger than any they had seen so far, admittedly that was only a couple of cells and
a guard room. It reminded her of any number of identical room that could be found in any modern office building. There were eight desks in two rows of four. Each had a single chair behind it and an old fashioned filing cabinet beside it. Sara took a look inside a few of the cabinets but they were all empty. It was unusual to need such cabinets now that most information was stored electronically. The only reason to keep information in hard copy only was to make sure whoever was in control of the information knew exactly where it was at all times.

It wasn't surprising that the cabinets were empty. The whole room had an unused feel to it. All equipment like computer or communication terminals had been removed leaving gaps on the walls and wires trailing from connection points around the desks.

There were three doors out of the room. The one which they had entered by. Another of the same style on the adjacent wall. The third was on the wall opposite but had been half welded over.

Sara went to the functional door and looked out through the small window space. The corridor beyond looked just like all the other corridors in this place. She couldn't see all the way to  the end of the corridor, it was straight but went up at a slightly steeper angle than the corridor from the cells to here. A quick study of the ceiling made Sara decide that this wasn't going to be her first choice of a way out. There was a camera between two of the bar lights that was pointing away from her up the corridor. That meant there was probably a camera up above the door pointing in the same direction.

Sara crossed the room giving Carla another smile to try and keep her spirits up. She couldn't spend too much time trying to keep her feeling okay but it wasn't a problem to give her a smile every so often. The corridor beyond the welded door was identical to that on the other side only dark. Sara couldn't make out whether there were cameras in the corridor but given the fact that it was sealed off and clearly not in use it was a good bet that any cameras wouldn't be active. Besides it was either the risk of cameras that way, the certainty of cameras the other way, or give up on the escape attempt.

She went to fetch Carla and got her to help with removing the welded sheet from in front of the door. It was going to be obvious to anyone who came looking for them which way they had gone, but like so many other things it couldn't be helped. Escape scenarios by their very nature had to be a lot less planned than a proper
operation would be. Operating on a severely restricted time scale meant that necessity sometimes demanded action be taken that wasn't always the ideal thing to do.

Carla wasn't actually much help getting the cover out of the way of the door. But having something to do, being able to contribute to the escape, should make her feel less nervous. At least that's what Sara's trainers had told her. She wasn't actually all that concerned about the other woman's mental or physical state for the long term but in the short term having her fit and able would reduce the chances of her screwing something up and landing them in trouble.

They got the cover loose and Sara let Carla hold it when she tried the key card in the lock. She swiped it through twice without a result. Blowing in the readers slot in case it had been clogged with dust Sara checked the lock and then tried the card twice more with the same lack of results.

"Damn." Sara immediately regretted the outburst.

"What? What is it?" Carla was chirping in her ear hovering around behind her like a mother hen.

"Nothing, it's nothing. Don't worry about it." She had to keep sounding confident to keep the other woman's own confidence up. "It's just going to take a little longer than I thought while I bypass this lock."

She tried to make it sound like it was a simple procedure although the lack of proper equipment would make it into quite a difficult one. With an electronic lock pick or bypass device it would have taken seconds. Without them that time could stretch to a number of minutes. Minutes that they might not have to spare. Eventually someone was going to miss those guards and realize that the two women were loose.

Sara was just starting to work on the cover of the card reader when Carla spoke up. "Are you sure it's locked?"

Sara glanced back over her shoulder. "What?"

Carla shrugged and couldn't maintain eye contact. "The door. Did they lock it before they covered it over? I mean with the cover on no-one was going to be going through were they? So perhaps it isn't locked."

Sara didn't think the door would have been left open before they welded the cover over it but it wouldn't take long to check and could end up saving them a lot of time. She got her hand on the small handle of the door and pulled it towards her. There was a moment’s resistance and then the door started to move smoothly. Carla smiled proudly her confidence boosted immensely by that one moment of usefulness. Now she really felt like a contributor to the escape rather than just someone who was tagging along for the ride.

Sara gave her a nod of recognition and Carla's smile beamed even more. "Same as before. You follow my lead."

They followed the corridor steadily upwards. There were a number of doors leading off the corridor at either side. Sara checked every one to make sure there was nobody inside. At the glance she got through the door's windows it didn't look like any of the rooms provided access to a way out. As far as she could make out in the gloom none of the rooms had another way out. Most of the rooms had been stripped of equipment like the larger room they had come from. Later on the doors to the rooms were left open but the rooms had been scorched by fire. The corridor as well bore the scars of fire damage gradually growing as they progressed upwards.

The source of the fire appeared to be the large two-tiered chamber that formed the terminus of the corridor. Sara knew roughly how to interpret burn patterns and the thick black marks reaching up one wall of the chamber and out along the ceiling indicated where the seat of the fire had been. At that point the second level of the chamber, a ringed balcony extending inwards five or so
meters from the wall of the room and with a trio of walkways that met the top of the thick support column in the middle of the room, had collapsed. The wide column in the centre of the room contained an elevator for access up to the higher level. All around the circumference of the room underneath the upper level balcony, there were openings for pipes and cables and sometimes the remains of brackets on the walls or the floor. There was a slag heap of melted equipment in the place where Sara judged the fire to have started but it was so badly damaged that she hadn't a clue what it could have been. Fire damage had scorched any trace of other equipment from the floor of the chamber.

Sara looked around for another exit from the chamber but didn't see one. "We have to go back."

She started to turn to head back the way they had came but Carla grabbed her hand.

Sara whirled around to stare at the younger woman. "We have to go."

She started to pull her hand out of the grip but the other woman held on. "No. This way."

Chapter
Fifteen

She was shaken back to consciousness and, as always, pain. This time she felt something else as well. Heat. She opened her eyes to the world. They had finally revealed themselves truly to be demons. They had taken away the false facade and shown her where she truly was; in hell. Flames licked the air all around her. Writhing in their deadly dance of heat and light. Thick black smoke curled up from the tips of the flames forming a blanket over the ceiling and choking the life out of the room.

The orange glow made the face in front of her an unnatural mixture of light and shadow. The smoke was stinging her eyes so she couldn't see clearly who it was that was shaking her.

"We have to go." The voice wasn't cold and clinical like she was used it. It wavered as it spoke but there was something else there as well that she had never heard before.

She was lifted out of the chamber. The liquid that was coating her provided little protection from the heat of the flames. It rose off her in plumes of steam. Her skin felt stretched and tight. She was lifted over the shoulder of the figure
that had wakened her and carried into the middle of the room. The flames were chasing her.

She was put back down onto her own feet and pushed inside a small room the other figure entered immediately behind her and pressed some controls. She felt tired and weak. Her vision swam and then she was being lifted up again.

"I'm going to make it right. I'll get you out of here."

She was carried out of the room and across a walkway over the tops of the flames. The flames leapt up hungrily eager to capture the prey that tried to evade them. The smoke was thinker here and she started to cough as it pervaded her lungs. The figure carrying her joined in. They came to a doorway and the figure started pressing more controls. She couldn't keep it up any longer and, still coughing, she fell back asleep.

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