Immortally Embraced (14 page)

My mouth was dry, my head light. Please let it be from fear and not from some twisted chemical compound.

This was so screwed up. I should have stayed home, not gotten involved. What did I think I was? Some kind of superhero? I didn’t have any business traipsing around haunted underground labs. Or hiding in a biohazard cabinet. I mean, who does that?

Truly?

I was terrified of a vent, let alone this.

My teeth began to chatter. We couldn’t stay in here much longer. I couldn’t take it. I began to shake all over as footsteps echoed just outside the flimsy metal doors.

This was it. The end of the road. There was nowhere else to hide, no way to fight.

Nothing else we could do.

Heart hammering, I squeezed my eyes shut.

Please God, let them keep going.

They stopped.

I found Marc’s hand and squeezed it tight. Fiercely, silently, he pulled me into a bear hug. I clung to his warm body, his flak jacket rough against my cheek. This was it. He cradled my head protectively with his hand and rested his lips on the top of my head as we waited for the end.

Static broke through as the soldier hit his radio button. “The lab is clear.”

I gripped Marc tighter.

Footsteps echoed outside. “What about the closet?” a soldier asked.

“I took care of it personally,” the guard responded.

A beep sounded from the radio. “Understood. Seal it back up.”

“Head out,” our guy said to the room at large. “We’ve done our spook check for the night.”

I pulled away from Marc, shaky, never so relieved in all my life. He stood at my back as I pressed my hands against the cool metal of the doors and listened to the soldiers lock us back into the lab.

“Easy.” Marc’s voice tickled my ear and I realized my hand had wandered down to the door handle.

I knew. We had to play this right. But I couldn’t wait to get out of the toxic storage vault.

Yes, I was glad Marc saved us. I was relieved and grateful and fall-down ecstatic not to be caught in the web of old army justice.

But at what cost?

We waited three full minutes—exactly 180 seconds—after the last soldier left.

At last, we popped the door.

I staggered out as fast as my bruised body would allow. Marc caught me around the shoulders. “I’ve got you,” he whispered as I lurched sideways.

The lab was dark, except for dim security lights on the tables. I tried to check my arms, my legs. “What was in that closet?” I hissed.

“Nothing.” He gripped my good shoulder as he smoothed the hair out of my eyes with his other hand. “I’m sorry I scared you. There wasn’t time to explain.”

“I don’t get it.” Just past him, I could see the toxic storage vault.

My mouth fell open.

Empty.

“What is it?” I whispered, “some kind of radioactive isotope?”

“Dr. Keller and I put up that warning to keep the old army out of our paperwork. As much as we could, at least.”

I blinked, trying to absorb it all. “So we weren’t getting eaten alive in there?”

He held me steady. “No.”

I grabbed him, hugged him, so glad to be whole and healthy, even if we were locked in a secret lab with a poltergeist.

“That guard,” I said, glancing at the sealed door to the lab, “was he a friend of yours?”

“No,” Marc said, “just someone smart enough to be afraid of biohazard signs.”

I grinned despite myself.

“Okay, hotshot,” I said, wiping my nose, trying to recover, “let’s get down to business.”

Marc was all too happy to oblige. “Keller is here somewhere,” he said low, scanning the room as if he had a chance of seeing the ghost.

“Dr. Keller?” I murmured, starting down the first of two rows of lab tables.

Wonder upon wonders, there was still some equipment intact. Glass cases with specimen samples lined the tables. I was taking it slow, my knees and hips aching with every step. The samples glowed green in the dim light of the room.

Bulky thermal generators and other lab equipment crowded the tables along the walls, casting eerie shadows. Most of it was torn apart.

Marc was a step behind, watching as if something was going to pop out of nowhere. Then again, maybe it might.

“When was the last time you called a spirit?”

I started down the second row. “Never.” I usually tried to avoid them.

I focused my mind on Dr. Keller with his round spectacles and easy manner. We’d thought he was so old, but the last time I saw him, he had to be only in his mid-forties.

He was quick to laugh, a vegetarian who rode his bike to work every day.

“We know you’re here,” I whispered, focusing my thoughts out onto the room.

Worry churned in my gut, along with a fair dose of anger at the dead man. We needed to talk to him and then run like hell.

Of course, I had no idea how we’d make it out of the locked compound. We were underground, and there was no way we were going to be able to go the other way up that vent.

I rubbed at my temples.

“What are you picking up?” Marc asked.

Other than the fact that this was a bad idea? “Nothing,” I said, starting down the dimly lit row of lab tables again. My gaze darted across the room for some trace of a sign. There was only darkness and shadows.

“Is there anything else that would catch his attention on this floor?”

“Only 18F,” he said, “but there’s never been a disturbance there.”

I touched my fingers to the cool metal of a smashed optic microscope. “What’s in 18F?”

“Live testing,” Marc said, his voice full of contempt.

I stopped. “You use animals?”

“I don’t,” he said, his expression grim. “The old army does. Hell, they use people.”

I gaped at him, knowing instantly that he wasn’t kidding.

“We have to stop this war,” I told him. Somehow. Some way. This had to end.

Marc didn’t respond.

I focused once again on the young professor. “Dr. Keller,” I said under my breath. “It’s Petra Robichaud. You remember me.” He had to remember me. “We can talk if you show yourself.”

“Talk?” a voice echoed as the temperature in the room plummeted. “I don’t have time to talk.” A frigid wind burst through the lab, scattering what was left on the tables.

“Jesus,” Marc muttered under his breath.

My heart skipped a beat as the ghost of Dr. Keller materialized at his desk, directly behind us. He rooted through file cabinets that had already been spilling their guts.

“You see this?” He fisted a wad of papers. His chest had been torn open. I could see his rib bones working as he shredded the paper with his bare hands, desperate and shaking. “All of this has to go.”

“Why, Dr. Keller?” I asked, voice even, approaching him slowly. He was older than I remembered. His face had taken on hard angles on the cheeks and softened in the jaw. He was thinner than before, skeletal. Goose bumps trickled down my arms. “Tell me what you have to hide. I can help you.”

He rushed me. Before I had time to react, he was on me. “Do you have matches?” he asked, his face inches from mine.

“No,” I said, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. He was hovering parallel to the floor.

His eyes narrowed, and the temperature of the room iced to a bone-chilling freeze. I could see my breath puff between us as he stared me down.

He whipped around and toppled the lab table next to me. Glass and petri dishes flew in a hundred different directions. “They took mine!” He threw his hands up in the air. “They stole my matches. Heat kills it.”

“Heat kills what?” I asked, keeping my voice steady, trying to stand straight when every instinct screamed for me to duck. “Teach me,” I said. He was an academic. And he certainly had my full attention.

“Take these,” he said, handing me a sample tray with two dozen test tubes filled with glowing green liquid. “Destroy them.”

I exchanged glances with Marc. “Do you have a neutralizing station?”

“Here. Like this.” Dr. Keller grabbed a test tube and shattered it on the floor. Then another. And another.

Marc recoiled with every shot. “What the hell are you doing?”

Hurling toxic chemicals. What did it look like?

I had to gain Keller’s trust, get him talking. “Here,” I said to the ghost, fingers shaking as I smashed the tubes, one by one. “I’m doing it. I’m helping.”

Marc watched, wide-eyed. “And you call me crazy.”

“Good. Good!” Keller reached for another tray. That one was empty, but he didn’t seem to notice. “We must destroy the compound and every shred of research. It’s not a medicine,” he said, the fear plain on his face. “It’s a biological weapon. One hundred percent fatal to humans.”

I froze. “This?”

“Yes. They’re working on a pathway. They haven’t found it yet. We must be faster!”

“This could kill me,” I said, voice cracking. Marc grabbed the tray from my hands.

Dr. Keller didn’t even notice. “It will only kill you if it is airborne,” he lectured. “And it has a one-hundred-percent kill rate.”

“They’re going for one hundred percent casualties?” I could hardly believe it. “But they’re still working on the pathway,” I said, just to be clear. I rubbed my hands on my pants as I watched Marc slide the tray into a biohazard can. “Are you sure?”

I had to get a clear answer. A pathway basically offered the means for a bioweapon to enter the human system. If they hadn’t finalized a way to get it to the general population, then we still had time.

Dr. Keller was growing frantic again. “You see why we must destroy the lab.”

I hated to break it to him, but there were a lot of other labs.

“It’s a biological weapon,” Marc said, shocked. He was looking about two feet off from where Dr. Keller was. “Ask him why they need one hundred percent casualties.”

“Because they’re twisted,” I said. But he had a point. If we knew why, maybe we’d find a how. “Why everyone?” I asked the ghost. It didn’t make sense for them to wipe out the human race. We worked for them; we lived among their soldiers.

Dr. Keller shrank down upon himself, his eyes glazed with abject horror. “They want to eliminate the competition,” he said simply. “The new army has more humans in it. Kill them and you cripple the enemy.”

He began to cry. “Kill the humans on Earth and that way, the gods have more room to play. It’s a win–win for them. Besides, they said the humans suffer too much anyway. They believe this weapon is the humane solution.” Tears rolled freely down his cheeks now. “My wife is topside. My kids. They don’t deserve this.”

“None of us does.” God almighty. How were we going to fix this?

chapter twelve

The lower half of Dr. Keller’s body faded in and out as he rooted through the debris on the nearest lab table. “I need a working burner plate,” he said, eyes wild. He found two flat, analog hot plates and sent them tumbling across the table. “These won’t plug in.”

Yes they would. The ghost just couldn’t grip them. He could only shove them.

Marc and I stood on the other side of the table, which was covered in yellowish sand that reeked of garlic. There was a metallic powder in there, too.

That animal part of me, the instinct that warned me of danger that I couldn’t possibly control, told me to run.

Now.

But there was nowhere to go. Our only way out was locked, and chained, courtesy of the old army.

Marc and I exchanged a glance. “Please tell me you have a brilliant idea.”

Dr. Keller swiped at the fluorescent lights above us, sending them crashing to the floor. Bulbs exploded around us.

Marc examined the chains on the doors. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“How?” I asked. They were thick, wound through the door handles and locked on the other side.

A frigid wind tore at us, toppling the lab table. “You will not leave. You will stay and help me!”

“We brought scientists,” Marc hollered over the gale. “They’re right outside. We can work together.”

My hair whipped my face. What was he, nuts? A poltergeist could kill you. You didn’t want to lie and piss him off.

The ghost ripped the doors open. “Where?” he demanded.

“Now.” Marc grabbed my hand and we took off in a dead run down a narrow cinder-block hallway.

Holy mother. We were so dead.

The lights from the lab surged and crackled, illuminating the path in front of us like lightning strikes. The rest of the doors along the hallway were dark—abandoned, or at least closed for the night.

We ran hard. “Wait,” Marc said. We skidded to a stop as the hallway cornered off. He planted his back to the wall and snuck a glance ahead. I looked behind.

An electric storm poured from Dr. Keller’s lab. The doors hung drunkenly off their frames as the good doctor’s howl echoed off the cinder-block prison. But he hadn’t pursued us. Maybe he didn’t know how.

It was a wonder we didn’t have an entire squad on top of us. Then again, I wasn’t so sure I’d be running toward this place if I were in charge of security.

A purple cloud poured from the lab.

“Quickly,” Marc said.

We took a hard right around the corner and faced an even narrower hallway. Gaslights flickered above.

My stomach fluttered. I could get lost in here so easily. “How do we get out?”

“Quietly,” he said, our footsteps a whisper as we hurried down the corridor.

My breath sounded loud in my ears. Shadows danced off the walls. I tried to forget that we were underground.

It felt like some kind of macabre dungeon. “This place had to be creepy before the ghost.”

Marc huffed. “Welcome to my world. We’re on the lowest level. Three stories underground.”

Anxiety wormed through me. I felt both exposed and trapped at the same time. We could be discovered at any moment, yet we had no choice but to follow the elaborate underground network of tunnels.

We hurried past a series of gray-painted doors with the word
CONTAINMENT
written in red block letters.

I stiffened as I heard a shuffling on the other side.

Marc walked at my side, his hand on his gun. “They’re locked,” he said, as if that was supposed to make me feel better. “Almost everyone on this floor has gone home for the night.”