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Of course it would.

Kleinman ran for the stairwell door.

__________

“G
OT A RUNNER,”
Sealy said over comm.

On the roof, the man who’d been standing near the landing pad was now running toward the only visible doorway. Ash knew the guy had realized something was wrong.

“Take him out.”

A single shot, most of its sound lost in the open sky.

The running man was flung forward onto the deck and skidded several feet before coming to a stop.

Sealy fired again.

The man’s body lifted briefly as the second shot entered his back.

“Target terminated,” Sealy said.

“Set us down,” Ash ordered.

__________

C
ELESTE JAMMED HER
hand against the scanner next to the stairwell entrance. As soon as the lock disengaged, she shoved the door open and headed up.

She wasn’t the first to arrive. She could hear several others above her, nearing the top. When they opened the door, the
whoop-whoop-whoop
of the helicopter flooded in. A few seconds later, she heard someone yell.

The stairs switchbacked halfway up. As Celeste made the turn, she was surprised to see two people heading down. The moment they saw her, one of them shouted and pointed back at the twenty-second floor. The beat of the helicopter was too loud for her to understand what he was saying, but she could see the fear on this face.

Trusting her instincts, she retraced her steps and pulled the door open. Immediately, several people who’d been in the hallway tried to push into the stairwell.

“Goddammit!” Celeste shouted. “Get back! All of you!”

As soon as they realized who she was, they moved out of the way.

Celeste pushed through them and grabbed one of the men who’d been on the stairs with her. “What the hell is going on?”

“When we came out on the roof, someone in the helicopter started shooting at us.”

“What?” she said in disbelief.

“Michaels was hit, but there was another body already there. We just barely got back inside.”

A boom rocked the stairwell, the shockwave rattling the door.

Everyone panicked.

From beyond the door came the sound of boots pounding down the steps.

“Out of my way!” Celeste commanded. “Move! Move!”

Shoving her bag in front of her, she pushed her way through the crowd. She had to get to the safe room. It was her only chance.

__________

T
HE HELICOPTER WAS
still descending when the door the dead man had been running toward opened and three people emerged. When the one in the lead saw the body, he stopped and yelled at his friends.

Sealy’s rifle cracked again. The closest man dropped to the ground, but his two companions had already ducked back through the door before Sealy could get off another shot.

Twenty seconds later, the helicopter touched down and everyone jumped out.

Chloe reached the door a moment before Ash did. She yanked it but it didn’t open.

“Back pouch,” Ash said to Chloe, turning so she could get into his backpack.

He heard her unzip the pocket and remove a small chunk of plastic explosive. She slapped it against the door next to the handle and shoved in the timer-based detonator.

“Everyone back,” she warned.

After she set the timer to five seconds, she and Ash hustled around the side of the raised landing pad and knelt down.

Most of the explosion was focused inward, but a few pieces of the metal frame whipped through the air and landed near them. The moment the blast ended, they shot to their feet and ran into the stairwell.

Chloe repeated her explosives act on the locked door at the bottom, using less than she had before. After they moved halfway back up the stairs, the door ripped from its hinges and flew into the space beyond.

Sealy went first and turned right. Ash followed, turning left.

“Clear,” Sealy said.

“Clear,” Ash echoed.

The rest of the team entered the hallway and split in two.

“We’ll take right this time,” Chloe said.

“Be my guest,” Ash replied.

Like they’d done on the lower floors, they cleared each room they came to. Most were empty but they did find several people, all terrified. Ash’s team quickly restrained them before leaving them where they were.

“Ash?” Chloe said over the radio.

Ash clicked on his mic. “Go for Ash.”

“Found the mother lode,” she said. “Some kind of nerve center. We’ve got twenty-three people here, lots of computers, communications gear, display screens.”

“The director?”

“No,” she said, disappointed. “Listen, if you can spare Bobby, we could really use him.”

“Copy that,” Ash said. “Send someone over to get him and he’s all yours. We’ll check the rest of the floor while you guys see what you can figure out there.”

“Copy,” she said.

After Langenberg came for Bobby, Ash’s team finished the south side of the floor and started on the west. As had become the routine, Sealy opened the door and then he and Ramirez moved in, quickly assessing the room.

“Whoa,” Ramirez said as Ash and the others came in. “This one’s different.”

They had come across other offices that had all been functional and well equipped but nothing special. This office, however, was magnificent—hardwood floors; built-in bookcases and cabinets; a sitting area; a bar; a large, sleek desk; and a gorgeous view of the city.

Director Johnson’s office, Ash thought. It had to be.

“Check those,” he said, pointing at the three other doors leading out of the room.

Ramirez, Sealy, and Yates took one each.

“Closet,” Yates reported.

“I’ve got a bathroom here,” Sealy said.

Ramirez had disappeared through his doorway.

“Ramirez?” Ash called to him.

“Captain, can you come in here?” Ramirez asked.

Ash jogged over and found Ramirez standing in the living room of an apartment that was as high end and stylish as the office.

He directed Ramirez to check the hall at the other end.

When the man returned, he said, “Bedroom and bathroom.”

“No sign of anyone?”

“None.”

“All right. Let’s keep going.”

__________

T
HE SAFE ROOM
was smaller than the walk-in closet in Celeste’s apartment. It had been built for one of the members of the original directorate, and kept small because no one had really believed it would ever be used.

The room was equipped with a chair, a tabletop that folded out from the wall, a small sink, and a mini-refrigerator. Unfortunately, the latter required the director to restock it, something Celeste had never done.

Celeste’s hands were shaking so much that she had to try twice to enter the code into the storage-room computer that would slide open the false wall at the back.

The second it opened, she rushed inside and slapped the
CLOSE
button by the sink. It wasn’t until the wall started to move back into place that she realized she’d left her bag on the floor by the maintenance desk. There was no way she could retrieve it and get back inside before the wall closed. And she certainly didn’t want to be caught on the other side because once the room was sealed, it couldn’t be opened again for two hours. And even then only from the inside.

So all she could do as she watched the wall shut her in was tell herself that no one would notice the bag.

__________

B
Y THE TIME
Ash and his team finished the floor, they had found thirty-six people. With those Chloe had discovered in the control center, the total came to fifty-nine. None matched the picture of Director Johnson they had found in the base computer.

“Either she jumped off the building or we missed her somewhere,” Ash said to Chloe. They were standing at the back of the control center.

“I don’t think she jumped. We’re not that lucky.”

“I don’t think she did, either,” he said. “We need to tear this place apart until we find her. How many can help us?”

“We need to leave four on the rooms we’ve got the captives in,” she said. “And, of course, there’s Bobby and Curtis in here. The rest are free.”

While she gathered them together, Ash went over to check in with Bobby and Wicks. With the help of Caleb and his team back at Ward Mountain, they’d been assigned the task of figuring out the control center. “What have we got?”

Bobby looked up from the computer he’d been using, and smiled. “A lot.”

“Meaning…?”

“Give us a little time and we can give you a better answer. Twenty minutes should be enough.”

“Twenty minutes. Then we talk.”

__________

A
SH HAD BEEN
sure they’d find the director hiding somewhere either in her office or her apartment, but their search turned up nothing. They continued through the floor, but room after room provided no more answers than the woman’s apartment had.

“What’s that doing there?” Chloe asked.

She and Ash had just entered a storage room on the west side of the building.

“That bag?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” She walked over to it and picked it up. “Was it here when you checked this room before?”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Kind of an odd place to leave a Versace bag, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t even know it was Versace. Expensive?”

“Uh, yeah.” She set it on the desk and looked inside. “I can tell you one thing—I don’t think the person who owns this works in maintenance.” She pulled out an elegant box covered in dark red leather and opened it. “See?”

Inside was a diamond-earrings-and-necklace set that would have set someone in the old world back tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Chloe pulled out a couple more boxes of expensive jewelry and some clothes and then said, “What do we have here?”

She reached in and pulled out three computer drives and a framed photograph.

In the picture were three of the men Ash and Chloe had seen at Bluebird when Olivia Silva had activated the release of the virus. All three men had been members of the Project Eden directorate and had died when the base was destroyed. There was a fourth person in the picture who hadn’t been at Bluebird. The only woman.

Director Johnson.

“She’s here somewhere,” he whispered.

Both he and Chloe scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls to the left and right, but while the desk took up half of the back wall, the rest of the back wall was clear of any obstruction.

Ash pointed at it and looked at Chloe.

She nodded.

He placed his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear anything. If there was some sort of hiding place on the other side, it had been soundproofed.

He looked around for the switch or lock that would open the wall, but spotted nothing.

“Maybe we’re overthinking,” he whispered. “Could be just a wall.”

“One way to find out,” Chloe said.

__________

C
ELESTE PLACED HER
elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. She was so exhausted she couldn’t even think straight anymore. She knew she should be planning what she needed to do once she got out of there, but she couldn’t concentrate. She should sleep, she thought. Just a few hours. Then she could think about—

Celeste slammed into the wall behind her and fell to the floor, her forehead whacking against her toppled chair.

Dazed, she tried to sit up, but her body screamed at her from everywhere so she stayed where she was, her eyelids half opened.

She didn’t notice the hole in the wall until someone stepped through it, but even then she couldn’t understand how it got there.

The chair silently lifted off her and passed through the hole. No, not silently. She could hear ringing. In fact,
all
she could hear was ringing.

Hands grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her out of the safe room. She could see now there were two of them—a man and a woman. Their lips were moving but she had no idea what they were saying.

She wanted to ask what had happened. She wanted to know why she hurt so much. She tried to speak but her mouth felt like it was full of rocks.

Her eyes closed for what she thought was a second, but when she opened them again, she was surrounded by four new men who seemed to be carrying her. It was surprisingly comfortable, almost better than lying in bed. And she was…

…so…

…tired...

__________

A
SH AND CHLOE
returned to the control center and let Omar, Sealy, Ramirez, and Langenberg deal with Johnson.

“Tell me something good, Bobby,” Ash said as they entered the room.

Bobby looked up, surprised. “Has it been twenty minutes already?”

“A little more.”

“Oh. Um, well, I think it would be fair to say this is the nerve center of the Project.” He looked at Wicks. “Right?”

“Definitely,” Wicks said. “This place has access to priority channels that can reach all the bases. No one else has that. Even better, this place has the capability to shut down the whole communications system.”

“You mean for the entire Project?” Chloe asked.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“And it’s not just communications that can be cut,” Bobby said. “I’m pretty sure all essential services to any base can be turned off from here. We’d have to find our way around their security codes first but Caleb’s working on that right now.”

“Check these out,” Ash said, handing the flash drives to Bobby. “There might be something here that can help.”

“What are those?” Wicks asked.

“A few items Director Johnson felt important enough not to leave behind.”

“You found her?”

“We found her,” Chloe said.

A silence fell over the four of them.

After a few stunned seconds, Bobby said, “Did we, I mean, is it possible we just, you know…”

“Matt should be here for this,” Wicks said. “He deserved to be here.”