Revolution (Replica) (34 page)

Nate and Nadia both let out sounds of protest, but Belinski spoke right over them.

“Find Colonel Bradford in my contacts, and send him the message I’m about to record,” he said, pulling out his phone. “We
have
to get those missiles flying. It’s the only way we can be sure she can’t seize control of Synchrony—and its military—by Replicating me.”

“Would your man really order a missile strike based on a recording?” Nate asked. Sending missiles against a foreign nation was surely something Bradford would be reluctant to do in the best of circumstances, and considering how easily recordings could be manipulated …

“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Belinski said as someone or something banged on the door again. The edge of the table slipped a tiny bit, despite Belinski’s weight against it. Nate shoved it back into place with his shoulder.

“I’ll make sure he knows it’s from me. I can’t guarantee he’ll act on the orders, but I think he will.”

Belinski opened his phone and pointed it at himself. He looked terrible, sweat beading on his almost gray skin, but there was no sign of fear or despair in his eyes. He looked to Nate like the kind of man people would obey without question.

Belinski identified himself and gave only the briefest explanation of the circumstances. “If any of the witnesses to the board meeting survive, they will be able to confirm my story,” he said. “But even if you can’t confirm what I’ve told you, rest assured that what I am doing is just and right.”

He ordered Colonel Bradford to launch his missiles at the Fortress, giving a long authorization code that must have been a bear to memorize.

“I’ll try to get out,” Belinski finished, “but I don’t like my chances. If I die, know that it’s for a good cause.” He smiled weakly. “And if I don’t make it back, there’s something I have to get off my chest: I was the one who sent Judy Perkins that valentine in your name when we were kids.” The smile faded. “Good-bye, old friend,” he said, then ended the recording.

Nadia cocked her head at Belinski, and his smile came back for a brief curtain call. “When we were ten,” he explained, “there was this beautiful eleven-year-old we both admired. Neither one of us had the guts to talk to her. I made her a Valentine’s Day card but chickened out at the last moment and signed Rob’s name to it. He always thought his older brother did it to humiliate him, and I was too embarrassed by what I’d done to tell the truth. He’ll know the message is genuine.”

Nate took the phone from Belinski’s hand, then gave it to Nadia. “You’ll need my help to get up there,” Nate said, “so you should go first. And whoever goes first should have the phone.”

But he already knew there was no “first” here. He could probably get himself up through the ceiling without a boost by standing on one of the chairs, but that would mean leaving Belinski here by himself. Thea might be keeping the door at the head of the table locked to ensure they didn’t escape, but if they didn’t do something about it, she could just line her men up outside that door and unlock it at her convenience.

Nadia gave him a knowing look, not fooled for a moment by his words. Tears swam in her eyes.

“You know you have to do it,” he said. “And you know I have to stay. The longer we can keep them out, the longer before Thea knows you’re not in the room.” He nodded at the locked door. “I’m going to have to try to block that one.” He suspected the best way to do that was to pile bodies in front of it, but he wasn’t about to mention that part to Nadia. And he didn’t much want to think about it himself.

Nadia shook her head doubtfully. “You think she doesn’t know about the ceiling?”

“Probably,” Nate admitted. “But it’s that or we all sit here together and wait for them to blow the door—or come through the ceiling themselves. And assuming that camera was her only way to see in here, at least if you’re up there, she won’t be sure where you are.”

“Just because I can get out of this room doesn’t mean I can get out of the building.”

“If you can get into the Chairman’s office somehow, there will be an emergency escape route, just like the one in Headquarters. It’ll take you straight outside.” Once she somehow, miraculously, got out of this room and into the office.

The door shuddered under another impact, and this time Belinski couldn’t hold back a cry of pain as he tried with all his might to keep the brace from slipping. The table scraped off some paint from the wall as it skidded over about half an inch. Once again, Nate set his shoulder to it and forced it back into place.

“We’ve got to hurry,” he said. “I know you don’t want to leave us here, but you have to.”

Nadia swallowed hard, and a tear trickled down her cheek. But she dashed it away and nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”

Her face set with fearsome determination, Nadia crouched beside one of the dead Replicas and took the gun he’d been about to draw when his link to Thea had been cut.

Keeping a nervous eye on the locked door’s indicator light, Nate prepared to give Nadia the boost she needed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Even
with Nate’s help, getting up into the crawl space behind the ceiling was something of a challenge. Some of the panels were fixed in place, and the first one they managed to open had some kind of duct running over it so there was no room for Nadia to crawl through.

The whole time they were searching for a way up, Nadia was expecting the door to give way, or for Thea’s men to resort to explosives, but when she finally hoisted herself up, both doors were still closed.

There was no time for an emotional parting from Nate. The moment she was up, he raced to the locked door. He hesitated, meeting her eyes as she watched from her perch. His gaze flicked toward the body of one of the dead Replicas, and her stomach turned over as she realized what he was about to do. Best not to watch, she decided.

Forcing herself not to think about anything except the present moment, Nadia put the ceiling tile back in place, then used Belinski’s phone as a flashlight to look around her.

Unsurprisingly, the crawl space was low and claustrophobic. There were ducts and cables everywhere, and in the dim light of the phone she could only see a few feet ahead of herself. Pointing herself in the direction of the door at the head of the conference room, Nadia started to crawl.

Crawling while holding the phone was no easy feat, but Nadia needed the light. The ductwork and cables made the space into a maze, and it was impossible for her to move in a straight line. She didn’t trust the ceiling panels to hold her weight, so she traveled along whatever beams and supports she could find.

There was, of course, no air conditioning in the crawl space, and within a couple of minutes, Nadia’s whole body was soaked with sweat, and she was covered in dust and cobwebs. Maintenance workers might need access to the equipment on occasion, but it seemed they didn’t take advantage of it very often—and they certainly didn’t clean up when they did.

Nadia wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was. She’d started out heading in the direction of Dorothy’s entrance to the conference room on the assumption that it would lead toward the Chairman’s office, but with all the dodging around she had to do, she had no idea if she was still heading in that direction. If only she had a map, something to help her orient herself.

Nadia had been crawling around for what felt like an eternity when she heard a much muffled bang from somewhere behind her, and the beam she was currently crawling over vibrated beneath her. Surely that had been the sound of the conference room door being blown open. She held her breath, waiting for the sound of renewed gunfire as Thea’s men shot Nate and Belinski down, but it didn’t come. Maybe Nate and Belinski had submitted without a struggle, and Thea’s men hadn’t had specific orders to kill them on sight. Not that Nadia thought the order would be long in coming.

She started forward again, only to freeze when she heard the rumble of hurried footsteps below her. Once more she held her breath, not daring to move an inch in case the men below might hear her.

“They’ve blown the door,” she heard one of the men say. Then, after a few more steps, “The Lake girl isn’t there. They think she’s in the ceiling.”

Someone responded to him, but as they were moving away, Nadia couldn’t hear the response.

They knew she was up here. It was only a matter of time before someone found her. And she had no idea if she was any closer to the Chairman’s office than she had been when she started.

Tears of fear and misery burned her eyes as she braced herself for the effort of continuing forward. She was prepared to fight until the moment all hope was irreparably lost, and no one had captured her yet. Her knees ached from their constant impacts against metal beams, and the heels of her hands weren’t faring much better, but she would keep moving.

She crawled for maybe another five feet or so before a thought struck her so suddenly she almost cried out in surprise.

The guards she’d overheard had known what had happened in the conference room, had known Nadia wasn’t in there. Even though they were nowhere near the conference room, as evidenced by the distant blast.

How were they communicating?

Nadia almost dropped the phone in her haste to check its screen. Sure enough, the phone was receiving a signal. Her hands trembled as she brought up Colonel Bradford’s contact and prepared to send the message from Belinski. But before she managed to attach the recording, the phone lost its connection again.

Nadia wanted to scream in frustration, but if the phone lines had been up once, they’d probably go up again if she just waited. She should have thought of this before! Thea couldn’t control Dorothy if the phone lines were down, and she needed Dorothy to issue orders. No doubt she would keep the lines down as much as possible so no one could call out for help, but she was sure to need Dorothy again.

Tucking herself into the space formed by the juncture of two ducts and hunching over the phone to block its telltale light, Nadia made sure her message was ready to send at the tap of a finger and stared at the signal indicator, willing it to life. In the distance, she heard voices, voices that didn’t seem to be muffled by the ceiling or walls. In all likelihood, it meant the security officers were now combing the crawl space for her. She had to fight a desperate desire to shake the phone, as if that would make the signal come back faster.

How long did she have? On the one hand, the crawl space had to be as much of a maze for the security officers as it had been for her. On the other hand, she’d probably left plenty of tracks in the dust.

Sweat dripped from her forehead onto the phone’s screen. Or maybe it was tears. She had plenty of both. How many people would she be condemning to die if she managed to send her message? The lock-down meant that all the staff who regularly worked in the Fortress were trapped inside, along with all the extra staff who had come with Belinski and the board members.

But even though she didn’t know what Thea’s ultimate goal was, she was sure more people would die if Thea was allowed to live. So if the signal ever reappeared, Nadia knew what she had to do.

The signal indicator suddenly blinked on. Without giving herself even a fraction of a second to think about it, Nadia sent Belinski’s message.

It occurred to her that if she was captured, someone might check her phone and see the message Belinski had recorded. The longer she could keep Thea in ignorance about the missile strike, the better, so Nadia turned the phone off and tucked it in the gap between a beam and an air duct.

Seconds later, a man in combat gear peeked around the edge of one of the ducts and saw her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Nadia
could have gone for her purloined gun, but she wasn’t about to shoot someone in cold blood even if she
had
just doomed him and herself to death. She had accomplished her mission, had sent out Chairman Belinski’s message. Now all that was left to do was wait for the missiles to hit. She just wished there were some way she could get word to all the innocent bystanders in the building—including the security officers who were just following orders—so they could get out. But if Thea got wind of the approaching missile strike, she might be able to launch some kind of countermeasure, so Nadia held her tongue and hoped no one would find her phone.

“Don’t move!” the officer said, pointing his gun.

Nadia held perfectly still as he crawled to her, his gun hand never wavering. She was glad Dorothy hadn’t ordered her men to kill Nadia on sight, but it was hard to feel
too
relieved when the missiles were on their way.

Nadia made no protest when the officer grabbed her arm and forced her to lie on her stomach while he patted her down and confiscated her gun.

A second security officer opened a ceiling panel near where Nadia and her captor were crouching, and she was shoved unceremoniously through it. The man below tried to catch her, but he only softened her fall a bit.

Nadia hit the floor with a cry of pain, the wind momentarily knocked out of her. While she was trying to get her breath back, one of the officers hauled her to her feet and started dragging her down a hallway, his grip on her upper arm brutally tight. The second followed behind, gun in hand, although he didn’t point it at her. She knew if she made one false move, he could aim and shoot in a heartbeat.

She didn’t know where they were taking her, or what they were planning to do with her when they got there. She was trembling and sick to her stomach. Almost everyone she had ever loved—her parents, Gerri, Dante, even Nate—was either dead now or probably soon to be dead, as was she herself. She hoped her little niece and nephew were faring better in whatever foster home the state had sent them to.

The officers steered Nadia around yet another corner, and she saw an elegant reception area. She had never been in this part of the Fortress before, but the quality of the furnishings and the amount of electronics on the doors suggested they were entering VIP territory.