The Sphinx Project (18 page)

"Maybe the water will make it stretch?" Mouse volunteered. "You know, I think I might cut my hair." She was peering at the girl on the front of her box. "I like the way she's wearing hers." Mouse's hair was perfectly straight, falling in a smooth sheet of light brown right to her hips. The girl on the box had a short bob, sleek and smooth.

"I can do that if you want?" I offered. It really couldn't be that difficult. With the scissors from the first aid kit, I lopped off her entire pony tail before making sure the ends were all the same length. It wasn't exactly like the girl on the box, but it was close enough.

We followed the same procedure again, applying the smelly mix to Mouse's hair. This time there seemed to be the right amount. It coated her hair completely with a little left over at the end.

Obeying the instructions, I held my head under the faucet, rinsing the dye from my hair. I watched the water running down the drain change to a murky reddish brown color, eventually fading to almost clear. It took so long that by the time I was done, Mouse's was already nearly ready.

I tipped my head forward and with Mouse's help, scrubbed at it with a towel until it was barely damp. As I flicked the hair back over my head, I immediately saw the dismay on her face. "What?" I asked, not quite wanting to hear the answer.

"I don't think it worked." Before she could say any more, I was in front of the dull metal mirror, rubbing away the fog frosting. I could see that she meant. My hair looked awful. "I think we needed to use more," she suggested.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything to say. The fact that my hair was a mottled greyish pink seemed to stop my brain from functioning.

We had to finish Mouse's hair before we could go anywhere, but it took no time at all. Her short hair rinsed clean effortlessly and the color had stuck well.

Twisting my hair up under a baseball cap, we went back to the store. This time we stopped one of the passing sales assistants. She was about forty with perfectly groomed hair.

"Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help us," Mouse asked as soon as we had her attention.

"Sure," she replied in a sickly sweet tone. "What can I help you with?"

"I came in earlier and bought some hair dye but I don't think it worked," I explained nervously.

"Let me have a look. Then I'll see what I can do to help." She was way too bubbly for me today; it ground against my nerves.

Reluctantly I removed the cap and let my hair fall free. I had expected her to laugh but she actually looked as if she pitied me. "Oh no, honey!" she exclaimed. "What one did you use? Come on, come and show me."

We returned to the dye aisle and there I pointed out the mahogany I'd selected.

"Did you only use one box?" she asked, to which I responded with a nod. "Okay, so I think to fix this, you're going to have to redo it. But you'll need at least three boxes, maybe four. Your hair is really long and thick. One is only enough for hair that's about this long." She indicated a point barely past her shoulder. "Maybe you should take two of these—" she handed me two boxes of the mahogany, "—and two of these." Two more boxes, labeled chocolate brown followed. "It's a bit darker, and when you mix it with the other two it should cover the mistake completely."

While we were there, we decided to pick up some other things to help with our disguise. We found ourselves leaving with a large bag containing the dye and something called bronzer, which promised to give us a sun-kissed complexion. We'd barely ever spent time outside the labs, and our current pale skin confirmed this. We also each had a small package containing a few tubes of make-up and last, I'd found some glasses with plain glass lenses.

We couldn't get different glasses for Mouse. She needed the ones she already had so she could see properly. Something had gone wrong when they'd been fiddling with the genes that controlled Mouse's eyesight. She could see fine at night, but during the day and in brightly lit rooms everything went blurry.

We returned to the station and repeated the entire process again, but this time as we dried my hair, I caught sight of rich, dark strands of hair falling in front of my face.

"I think I need to cut my hair too," I said. At the store I'd been paying more attention than usual to people's hair, and noticed that none of them had any quite so long. "Can you chop it up to here?" I asked, pointing to an area below my shoulders. It seemed to be a more reasonable length.

Gazing in the mirror, a sense of shock washed over me, but in a good way this time. It was striking but then I noticed one minor thing.

"My eyebrows are funny." I peered at them, bringing myself closer to the mirror.

"They're not. You're just not used to it," Mouse explained. "They were always a bit darker than your hair anyway, so it's not too bad... You know, you should really have bangs..."

I cut her off before she got any more ideas.

We stopped at a drive-thru fast food restaurant and ordered some dinner before heading out of town. My stomach twisted oddly and gurgled slightly, unused to the greasy food.

We made our way down a long, narrow track into the forest and parked there to sleep. It was an early night but we wanted to get into the city for the very start of the next day. We were going to find out everything we could about the labs before we put our plan into action tomorrow night.

***

We rose at five, well before the sun, and rooted through the bags of clothing Julie had given us. We both decided on jeans, sneakers and long-sleeved shirts. We layered the leather jackets on top.

The early December air was getting a little chilly. It didn't really affect us, but it would seem strange if we weren't wearing them. Anyway, we needed somewhere to hide our weapons.

Using the tiny mirror in the car's sun visor, we applied the bronzer and makeup. Mouse fixed my eyebrows with a 'brow pencil,' as she called it. Using the eyeliner, I positioned a small beauty mark above my lip and Mouse attached a little plastic gem to the side of her nose using some sort of adhesive. I pushed on my black-rimmed glasses and we were ready. It felt strange having so much goop on my face.

We'd decided we weren't going to take the car with us, so we armed ourselves with everything we could carry discreetly. I tucked a small hand gun into a holster in the back of my pants, under the shirt, and added a shoulder holster below the jacket. A knife hid against my forearm, strapped to my cast. Mouse was similarly armed. We took some cash and tucked it into our pockets, but left almost everything else in the car.

We drove a little closer in and left our car at a station on the outskirts of town. The first bus came at seven-thirty and we arrived a block away from the library at exactly ten past eight, according to the cheap plastic watch that now adorned my wrist. We walked the short distance to the building and waited for its eight-thirty opening time.

As soon as the library opened, we did a quick search for other exits, in case we needed them later. We needed an escape plan if they somehow managed to track us down.

Mouse made a beeline to the bank of computers available for public use. I, on the other hand, settled myself in a small room with what seemed like millions of newspapers. The room smelled musty and dust seemed coated everything.

I paged through one after the other, searching for any mention of the labs. After an hour I'd lost count of how many I'd read, but I was only halfway along the first shelf. There'd been no mention of the labs at all, so I dragged myself to my feet and walked into the maze of books to find Mouse.

"Any luck?" I asked, leaning on the back of her chair.

"A little. I've found planning permissions for the building and blueprints. They're fake, though. There's no mention of the sub-terrain levels whatsoever. The land is owned by Chimaera Pharmaceuticals Limited. They're a privately owned company, but I can't find any record of sales or products. It's a front to hide exactly what they are doing."

"Is there any point in me continuing with the newspapers?" I asked.

"Probably not," she said, shaking her head. "I'll be done here soon. There's pretty much nothing we can use here."

I dragged a large book of photos from a shelf and settled around the corner from the entrance to look at the pictures. It was about fifteen minutes later that I smelled something terrifyingly familiar.

Turning my head carefully, I casually surveyed the room like a bored teen. I wasn't exactly acting. I knew what I was looking for and found it. Two men had walked in, scoping the place out.

They were dressed as builders, or some sort of tradesmen, in work boots, jeans and rough shirts, but as they strolled forwards their eyes flickered around the room with unusual alertness.

When they passed I could see that their tops were bunched at the back, where they concealed their guns. The scent coming off them was unmistakable: gun powder, oil and the slightest hint of blood. Not just any blood, though; the coagulated, infected blood of those creatures. It was old, perhaps a few days, but still it lingered on their skin.

The room was busy now, which worked to our advantage, but I wasn't taking any chances. I met Mouse's eye, giving her a meaningful look over the top of my book.

She pretended to jot something down before walking between two of the tallest shelves, as though browsing for books. There was a window in that direction. It was a little off the floor, which meant that it wasn't alarmed, and the shelves were sturdy enough to climb up to it.

I got to my feet and placed the book on the chair I'd vacated, walking out the entrance the moment they passed. I thanked my lucky stars we'd had the presence of mind to change our appearance. These men would be searching for girls matching our previous description.

As I strolled out of the glass doors, at the front of the building there was a four-wheel drive vehicle, parked on the sidewalk. Sitting at the wheel was a man who definitely looked familiar. He'd been one of our guards at the labs. Sparing him no more than a cursory glance, I kept my pace up. I carried on by foot toward our meeting point, the McDonald's we'd ordered from the night before.

I wound my way through a variety of different blocks, not taking the most direct route. I'd almost reached my destination when my surroundings became suddenly, and unsuspectingly, familiar. Something about the way the tall building on the corner stood next to the shorter structure beside it tugged at some hidden memory.

Coming to a halt, I reviewed my surroundings, turning slowly in a circle. I couldn't say why I remembered this place, but I did. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but I closed my eyes, recreating the crossroads as I seemed to recall them.

Something, I don't know what, drew me to the right. Following my instincts, I altered my course, striding across the busy intersection as soon as the pedestrian light turned green. Mouse wouldn't begin to worry until noon, so I still had plenty of time to kill.

The road was straight, traffic flowing fairly freely after the chaos of the early morning rush hour. The further I went, the more things became recognizable. Certain buildings began to stand out; my brain decided it certainly remembered those.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later I figured out why everything seemed so familiar. A large white building sprawled lazily along the roadside. It contrasted sharply with most of the buildings surrounding it, which seemed to be reaching as high as they could skyward.

A huge sign in front declared the building to be a hospital. A wide driveway split into multiple smaller routes, all with different colored lines drawn down the center. Another sign explained each color reference; there were also signs above each route to reinforce the message.

I was jolted out of my inspection of the building by a blaring siren. An ambulance raced along the road and turned sharply into the lane in front of me. It followed the red line clearly labeled "Emergency vehicles only!" and disappeared around the corner of the building.

I crossed the road, watching out for other vehicles. I walked up the ramp in front of the hospital and the automatic doors swept open. For some reason they had the air conditioning on. It was colder inside than out.

I was almost at a loss for what to do. I hadn't been here for five years and now that I was, strange memories trickled back to me. For some reason it felt like I shouldn't be here.

I followed my instincts and walked past the reception desk, which was bustling with people inquiring after patients, around the corner to the elevators. When I arrived, I was the only person there. I must have missed the last elevator by moments because by the time the little bell sounded, indicating that it had arrived, dozens of people were impatiently milling around.

As the doors swept open they surged in, not paying any heed to those desperately trying to get out. I only managed to squeeze in as the doors swooshed shut again.

It was rotten. An enhanced sense of smell is not often a good thing. It could be rather handy, but being squashed into a small box with over a dozen other people was not a pleasant experience. One of the women standing in front of me stunk of some sort of tacky perfume. It was as if she'd bathed in the stuff. A man, farther back, smelled like garbage cans.

I stepped out of the elevator and onto the fifth floor, glad for the fresh air.

I wandered along the corridor, turning right at the end. The sign on the wall had an arrow pointing declaring it to be the intensive care unit. I continued slowly, hoping the door would open before I got there. The doors in this section of the hospital had small mechanical key pads and electronic locks mounted on the walls that required a pin number or a swipe card.

I was lucky. A woman pushed the door open and happily sailed past me. She didn't even seem to see me; her eyes brimmed with excited tears and there was a bounce in her step. She was completely wrapped up in her own joy, totally oblivious to her surroundings.

I caught the door before it closed and swiftly stepped inside. The hallway reminded me of the labs with its abundance of white. Spaced at even intervals along the wall were big panes of glass, allowing a view into the small intensive care rooms. Between each pane of glass was a white door with a silver handle and a small silver number screwed to the center.