"She is not even half of what we require," Barra said to a woman Beth had never seen before, her voice dripping with contempt, "you may do as you wish with her, Lilith, but I doubt that she will survive. Her sister is the strong one. This one is weak in both mind and body."
The woman approached Beth and forced Beth's chin upwards so that their eyes met. Beth's eyes were open, a steady stream of tears flowing from them following the well marked paths down her cheeks, and her ears remained alert and took in all the sounds in the small, concrete walled, room in which they stood, but her mind was elsewhere.
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? " I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?" she said aloud. "I must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth."
The woman's eyes inspected Beth for a few moments longer before shifting to the tall woman who had just spoken.
"She's about Safiya's age, isn't she?" Lilith asked.
"It is the only thing they have in common," Barra said, "Safiya is nothing like this broken creature."
"I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!"
"You began training Safiya when she was six years old," Lilith said as her eyes returned to Beth, "don't compare your daughter to…which one did you say this one is?"
"Elizabeth."
"And the other one?"
"Katherine. She eluded us. Many men guard her now. There is no practical way for us to obtain her now. This one is useless to us."
Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up onto her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it.
"Well," Mother Lilith said gently as she looked down at Elizabeth Kane and smiled, "we will see what we can make of her."
Beth's face automatically smiled in response to the friendly appearance of the woman in front of her, but mind remained elsewhere.
"BETH!" Julia shouted in her ear, had probably been shouting for several seconds, while Beth''s mind had wandered back more than two decades.
"What?"
"You went away again."
fuck
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not. Get the fuck out of there."
"I said I'm fine. But we have another problem."
Everything had started well enough. Beth had lept upwards, left foot and right foot finding purchase points in alternation until her hands gripped the bottom sash of the open window frame that she used to pull herself up until, her arms straight and her waist was pressed against the frame, and she could simply tilt her upper body downwards to initiate the controlled somersault that ended with her hands gripping the frame behind her head as her feet dangled ten feet above the floor below.
"There's a crate just a few feet beneath you," Julia said as the image from Beth's lenses appeared on her monitor.
"You know, I can see that for myself, right?" Beth whispered as she simply let go of the window frame and bent her knees slightly to absorb the minor impact of the silent landing.
"Still no camera signals," Julia said.
"Wouldn't you have cameras in a place like this?"
"Yes, but I would have them on a secure feed."
"Let's hope none of them are as smart as you are."
"So few people are."
"I said smart, not smartass."
"Toss your drones," Julia said.
"Fucking mother hen," Beth mumbled as she took the four drones from what she still refused to call her utility belt, and cast them into the air.
She was standing in an industrial high bay which stood easily forty feet from floor to ceiling. In the center of the building was a large concrete structure, which was surrounded by floor space, floor space that was about half filled with crates, boxes, shrink wrapped pallets and equipment. Along one section of the outer wall was a series of offices, their interiors dark, and their doors closed. Beth looked upwards to see a series of catwalks at the uppermost levels, the lowest of which led from the top of the center structure to smaller caged-in work areas cluttered with storage cabinets and workbenches.
Beth knew that the micro drones would not stray more than a hundred feet from the receiver on Beth's belt, so it was going to take time to scan the whole interior, and Beth was going to have to change locations frequently.
"Dad was right, this is too big for one person," Julia said as the wireframe scan began to be filled in with interior details.
"Let's just focus on the job," Beth said as she looked at the crate that had cushioned her landing.
SING3-STS-107050-8701-00190A2031400
"Very helpful," Beth said as she removed the bill of lading from the plastic sleeve.
"A company called MTF GmbH, located in Frankfurt, Germany is listed as the shipper. Brock Industries is listed as the exporting carrier. Sandia National Laboratory is the receiver. Albuquerque, New Mexico."
Beth could hear Julia typing.
"Sounds legit," Julia said as Beth folded the sheets of paper and replaced them in the plastic sleeve, "time to move."
"Copy that," Beth said as she began to walk slowly, keeping the drones to her front as she began what would eventually be a counter clockwise circuit around the exterior wall of the building.
"Brock Industries has only existed for two years," Julia said as Beth stopped at the door to a locked office, "so has the company that completely owns it."
"Shell game."
"Looks like."
"So, not entirely legit."
"Nope. Hide your illegal shit in the middle of a bunch of legal shit. Great camouflage."
"Let's see just how good they are at hiding their illegal shit," Beth said.
Beth could not identify a doorway of any kind in the center structure until she was halfway around the exterior wall. It was at that point that a familiar smell triggered a cascade of memories, memories that for the span of ten to fifteen seconds became her entire world.
"Coordination polymers can be synthesized from Hg(CN)2 building blocks," Brother Zohar's voice droned on monotonously to five sets of glassy eyes, "Large single crystals of [(tmeda)Cu-[Hg(CN)2]2][HgCl4] form upon treating CuCl2, the soft Lewis acid Hg(CN)2, and N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine (TMEDA). The migration of two labile chloride ligands from harder Cu(II) to softer Hg(II) drives the formation of the crystal."
"You have strength in you, girl," Master Gao said in his calm tones tinged with Mandarin as he allowed Beth a moment to rest, rub the spot on her chest where his last palm strike had landed, and catch her breath, "but you must learn to master your anger and your pain, and to mold both into something that serves you rather than hinders you."
"Filiae matris devotae sorores," Mother Lilith, her arms outstretched, said to the five women, clad in white robes, who had survived to take their places as Daughters of Lilith.
"Domus nostra unam matrem et multas sorores habet," five voices replied, the last step in their rebirth completed.
"BETH!"
"What problem?" Julia asked.
"There is a chemical lab somewhere close," Beth answered, the smell of hydrochloric acid still clearly present, "my guess is it's in that center structure."
"Why would there be a chemical lab in a warehouse?"
"There wouldn't be," Beth answered, her voice still unsteady from the memories, and from the effort it required to keep Alice in her place.
"Shake it off, sweetie. Finish your sweep," Julia said evenly.
"Yes, momma," Beth answered.
It was on the far end of the building that Beth found what she was looking for.
"That is one big ass roll up door." Julia said as she looked at the image on her monitor.
"That fucking thing is as tall as the building," Beth said as she stared at the metal roll up door that took up a good portion of the exterior wall of the building before turning around.
"There is a roll up door in the center structure on this side too."
they line up perfectly, Beth thought as she looked back and forth between the two extra large doors, why are the doors so fucking tall?
"So, open both doors, and roll your illegal shit right into the center structure, and close them again. Easy Peasy, lemon squeezy." Julia said.
"If they did all their work after hours, and kept that inner building closed and locked during the day, The legit workers out here would never know what was going on."
It took Beth a moment to plot a path between the crates and equipment that placed her near enough to the centerline of the two doors.
"Tire tracks. Wide tires. Double sets."
"Heavy, whatever they were moving."
"I'm calling the drones back," Beth said as she eyed the roll up door in the center structure, and the more modest steel door next to it to accommodate the traffic of mere mortals.
"You don't want to finish scanning the building first?"
"No, your Dad is right, it's too big. And besides, I think we can narrow down our search a bit, don't you?" Beth asked as she pressed the button on the receiver on her belt that told the drones to run home and dock.
The drone images went dark and Beth looked at the final percentage of the building interior that had been mapped before looking at the clock on her computer monitor.
Jesus
"Yes, I do."
In the end, saner heads prevailed and Jessica chose a less risky method of entering 18 Avenue C, though she still chose a point of entry that was less likely to be observed.
People never think to look up, she thought after jumping up onto a landing halfway up the structure before her second leap placed her on the roof.
The roof access on this building was not marked, and proved to be a hatch that was locked from the inside with a simple padlock. It was designed to open and latch in place, probably as a safety precaution so no one got trapped on the roof. The latching mechanism was now just a twisted arrangement of metal, as was most of the hatch, the results of Jessica gripping the external handle and pulling enough to work her other hand underneath the hatch and tearing it almost completely off the hinges.
Not my quietest entrance, she thought as she stepped down onto the ladder and began her descent.
Her leather boots came to rest finally on a metal catwalk that ran clockwise around the exterior wall. Her slow progress passed several locked cages that seemed to be intended for storage and maintenance work. It took Jess only a moment to force the cage doors open on the first two cages but, finding them very similar and very unhelpful, she left the second two alone and proceeded to the metal stairs that led down to the next level catwalk. There was an elevator adjacent to the stair access that must be used to move equipment to the different cages, but it was equipped with an RFID reader.
The second tier of cages were just like the first, but it was as she was about to make her way to the stairs going down that she noticed two doors, one open and one closed. There was sound coming from the open door that was positioned at the end of a short hallway, with the closed door on the right hand wall only a short distance from the open door, which was about two-thirds open, and would hide Jessica from view as long as she hugged the left hand wall. Jessica continued her silent approach towards the open door when the sound of a flushing toilet came from behind the closed door.
Fuck me
Jess was directly opposite the door as it began to open so she simply stepped across the short distance and slammed the door with her right hand just as the occupant was exiting. The double impact of the door hitting him and him hitting the door jam did the trick and Jess caught him as he crumpled to the floor before she caught a whiff of the bathroom.
Dude, what the fuck have you been eating?
She positioned him on the toilet, leaned him against the wall, took the Glock 23 from his holster, and closed the door from the outside before exhaling her breath to fill her lungs with clean air.
Jesus Christ
Jess stuck her head into the other room just long enough to see security camera monitors at a workstation, a short refrigerator, and an automatic weapon in a wall rack.
Guess I am in the right place.
Jess placed the .40 caliber pistol on the workstation counter and was about to leave the room when she saw the card sitting next to a cell phone, and the RFID chip located at one end. It looked just like a credit card, but had nothing other than the number 0012 printed on it. Jessica smiled as she placed the card in the back pocket of her jeans.
Open sesame, assholes
"It's an RFID tap scan reader," Julia said as Beth stared at the small black box with a red indicator light at one end, "put your lock pick up to it and give me a minute."
"Copy," Beth said as she took the small device that was about half the size of her cell phone out of a belt pouch and held it next to the reader.
It took less than thirty seconds before the red light flashed green and Beth heard the door lock click.
"I'm in," Beth said as she slowly opened the door and looked inside.
Directly in front of her was a wall with a chemical shower and eyewash station. To her left was a set of cubbys that held various sizes of white lab coats. It took Beth only a moment to find one lab coat that still had an ID badge attached.
"Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard," Beth said as she slipped the lab coat on and buttoned the front and took a pair of safety glasses from the cubby.
"Do they really not have any cameras in here?" Julia asked.
"If they had them, they'd be on me already," Beth whispered.
Beth peeked around the corner of the short wall to look into the building-within-the-building.
"Traffic."
"Yup," Julia said, "send a drone up. Just one."
"Wilco," Beth whispered before picking one of the tiny drones and tossing it in a arc into the air.
"I love it when you talk dirty," Julia replied.
Even without the drone Beth could see an assortment of people sitting at workstations, monitoring instruments, or walking back and forth with tablets. Some were even standing around drinking from styrofoam cups. But Beth could also see into smaller rooms that were clearly laboratories, the people inside wearing PPE.
No coffee for them. Whatever they are working with looks dangerous.
Her drone returned on it's own, Julia must have sent it the run home signal.
"Sixteen people total, four of them armed with automatic weapons," Julia said.
"Four soldier ants, twelve worker ants."
"But what is that big thing in the center of the room that they are working on?"
Beth checked the doses in the finger syringes of her left hand glove but left the piezoelectric safety on. She took a moment to study the map that Julia popped up on her lenses and showed the positions of the four soldier ants.
"What are you thinking?" Julia asked.
"I'm working backwards from our escape plan, which is pretty simple," Beth said as she looked at the Fire Alarm Pull Station on the wall next to her, "two of the guards are pretty straight forward. The other two will be a problem."
"You're forgetting the bigger problem."
"Which is?"
"You are walking around a facility with only twelve worker ants. Someone is going to realize you don't belong there."
Beth thought about it for a moment before glancing down at the badge on her coat.
"What can you find on Daniel Rasmussen?" Beth asked before turning the badge around so the name and picture was not showing.
"Hang on."
"Not like I have anywhere else to be."
"He is a chemist and microbiologist specializing in virology and toxicology."
"Why do I not like the sound of that?"
"Because they have a big ass device in the center of the room, and he specializes in shit that kills lots of people, and two plus two equals a shitload of trouble for a shitload of people?"
"Yeah, that's probably it," Beth said as she checked the indicator on the compressed air cartridge in the hand held dart gun on her left hip.
"How far backwards have you worked?" Julia asked as Beth pulled an extra large pair of light blue nitrile gloves on over her leather gloves.
"Far enough," Beth answered as she stepped around the corner and began to walk slowly towards what was most likely a big fucking virus and toxin filled bomb, her eyes level and her face painted with a friendly, if false, smile.
The lowest level of catwalks lead to the roof of a large concrete cube in the center of the building. She could not see any sort or door or entrance on the roof except for ductwork that rose straight up at least fifteen feet before meeting a larger section that ran the length of the building.
I am not crawling through any fucking air duct.
Jessica was confident that if anyone was going to spot her they would not be using the security feed that led to the room upstairs, the door to that room now being closed and damaged to the point that only someone as strong as Jessica could open it again. But it seemed that the main structure was totally unoccupied. Not unusual this time of night for any legitimate import/export company, but legitimate import/export companies did not employ lactose intolerant security guards armed with automatic weapons.
May as well see what this card is worth, she thought as she took the card from her pocket. The rectangular black box next to the elevator was only a bit larger than the card she held in her hand. At one end was a steady red light, but there was no slot to insert the card, so Jessica simply held the card next to the flat black surface long enough for the box to emit a beep and for the light to momentarily change to green. The sound of the elevator starting was enough evidence that the card was not totally fucking worthless. It took less than thirty seconds for the doors to open.
Ground floor, sporting goods, household appliances, Jess thought as she pressed the button labeled G and the doors closed, only to open again on the main floor that was cluttered with crates, boxes and equipment of all sorts.
What was that dickhead with the machine gun guarding? Jess thought, as she looked at a few of the invoices, not this crap. Some of these are fucking auto parts.
Jess shook her head as she looked around.
Something is not making sense, she thought after walking three quarters of the outer perimeter before her eyes finally settled on the concrete block structure in the middle of the building, and the door that had a small rectangular black box next to it.
As secret lairs went, this one stood out like a sore thumb.
"Bobby, are you and Susan doing anything special this weekend?" a woman wearing a coat like Beth was wearing asked one of the guards without taking her eyes off of the large, curved, computer monitor in front of her.
"It's our six month anniversary, and we are heading to the Catskills for a few days," the man answered, his eyes still on his phone, "supposed to be nice weather."
"Lucky you, I have to work all weekend."
"Ouch."
Neither the guard or the worker looked up at Beth, and she kept walking, taking the opportunity to grab a clipboard from a nearby plastic wall holder and used it as a shield for her face, inclining her head forward slightly towards the clipboard so her fake hair came forward slightly to cover part of her face.
She was not sure which labs Dr. Rasmussen's card would access, and she did not want to take a chance of setting off an alarm. Besides, she really didn't want to step into one of the working labs and breath in whatever shit they were working with.
"There," Julia said as Beth's contact lenses caught sight of a lab that had no workers, but lots and lots of clear canisters, each about half a liter in size.
"Jackpot," Beth whispered as she tried to look closer without drawing too much attention, "Those canisters are color coded. Looks like three different colors."
Julia was silent for a moment before she spoke.
"There has to be six-hundred canisters in there."
"Holy shit."
"Scan left again."
"God," Beth said as she turned her head slowly and saw what Julia must have seen at the other end of the building, "empty racks for twice that."
"Jesus," Julia said, "OK, we need to wrap this up. Can you..."
"Miss, can I see your identification?" a man's voice asked from behind Beth.
Fuck.
"Fuck," Julia said.
Beth turned around slowly and smiled at the man dressed all in black and carrying an H&K MP5.
"Absolutely," Beth said as she fumbled with the ID badge before dropping it on the floor.
"Is this really necessary?" She asked as she dropped the clipboard and scattered the papers on the floor, "I just had this conversation with Bobby two minutes ago."
"You know Bobby?" he asked as Beth reached for some of the scattered papers and turned off the safety on her left glove with a quick motion.
"Yes, I'm a friend of his girlfriend Susan. He's taking her to the Catskills this weekend."
"Sorry, but I didn't recognize you."
"I'm filling for Dan Rasmussen. He came down with Strep."
"That sucks. My daughter had it last year."
"Sorry for the mess," Beth said as she began to stand before losing her balance and grabbing the man's left leg just above his boot with her left hand and injecting him with the dose from her index finger syringe.
"Sorry, I got a little light headed," she said.
"No prob..."
"Are you OK, you look a little pale," Beth asked him.
"I dnt fll wll..."
"Maybe you are coming down with strep," Beth said as she took his badge and opened the door to the lab that was storing all the canisters, "Come in here and lie down for a minute."
"thks," he said as she helped him lay down.
Beth looked around quickly, before spotting several small cases underneath a benchtop work surface. They were all labeled "MEDICAL SAMPLES" and were lined with foam, clearly designed to hold six canisters.
"We need to hurry," Beth said, "This guy is about to have a bad trip, and I don't want to be here when it happens."
"What? Why?"
"That was a hallucinogen I injected him with."
"A WHAT?"
"A freaky dose. He's going to be tripping in a minute. Not everyone enjoys the experience."
"Fuck," Julia said as Beth reengaged the safety on her glove before moving to the full rack and beginning to transfer canisters to the case.
"OK," Beth said as she looked around for a fire alarm pull station, "escape time."
"YOU!" Beth and Julia both heard, "STOP RIGHT THERE!"
"Fuck me." Beth said.
Jessica used her key card to open the door and step into the giant secret lair that was anything but secret.
Jesus, Jessica thought as she took one look around the corner before taking her phone out of her pocket and start snapping pictures.
Huh, she thought as she looked at the lab coats hanging in the cubbies before taking one and putting it and stepped around the corner.
She had not gone very far before a man dressed all in black and carrying a familiar looking machine gun looked up from his phone and saw her.
"YOU!" the man said as he pointed at Jessica, "STOP RIGHT THERE!"
"Fuck me," Jessica thought.
"Hiiii," she said in a sing-song bimbo voice, "I'm here to fix your printer?"
"What?" the man asked, his weapon at the ready but not pointed at Jess.
"I'm here to fix your printer. Someone called in and said you're having a problem with your printer?"
"Station 1, security breach," the man said as he placed his left hand to his left ear.
"My name is Sara?" Jess said in her best dim wit upspeak, "I'm from TIG IT Services?"
"Base?" the man asked.
He's taking a nap, asshole.
"Any station, respond," he said as his eyes stayed on Jess.
"Sorry," Jess said as she batted her eyes at the bewildered guard, "I only know printers, I can't fix comm headsets."
His face did not lose it's confused look as Jessica quickly stepped forward, placed her hand on his chest and thrust him backwards hard enough for him to leave a considerable dent in the drywall where he struck it before sliding down to the floor and not moving.
"Have a nice daaaay." Jessica said.
"It's not me," Beth said as she looked out the lab window, "He's yelling at someone else."
Beth took her dart gun from it's holster and charged the chamber before opening the lab door.
"Only three guards now," Julia said as two guards passed Beth and moved quickly towards the door that was the only way out.
Beth held the case in her left hand and the gun in her right, the gun that made two quiet popping noises as she shot the two retreating guards in the neck. It was a very fast acting combination of drugs that Beth herself had invented and created. The first portion would immobilize them almost instantly, but would only last about fifteen seconds. The second portion would knock them out.
"Only one guard between us and the door," Beth said as she reholstered her dart gun, right before the scene in front of her stopped her in her tracks.
"Fuck," Julia said.
"Well said," Beth replied just as the woman they had seen in the bar stepped forward and shoved the remaining guard in the chest and sent him flying backwards before impacting the wall behind him and sliding to the floor.
"Son of a bitch." Beth said.
"Don't let her get anywhere near you." Julia said.
"No shit," Beth said as the woman's eyes and hers met.
Almost without thinking Beth reached for the nearby fire alarm pull station and set off the alarm.
The guard lay where he fell, but the reinforcements that Jessica had expected never arrived. All the workers that had witnessed what had occurred were still stunned and Jessica took advantage of the situation and began to move farther into the building before stopping to look at the woman in the lab coat who was carrying a metal case and staring back at her like she recognized Jessica.
Who the fuck are you?
It was at that point that the woman reached out with her right hand and pulled the fire alarm.
What the fuck?
Everyone in the building began to look up in the universal what the fuck is going on reaction to a fire alarm. But some of the workers had come out of labs and were wearing equipment that Jessica had only seen in movies.
Shit, this is not good.
Everyone began to walk or run towards the only exit; everyone, that is, except the woman with the case.
"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Jessica asked the woman as she approached her slowly.
The woman set the case down slowly, and removed her lab coat, letting it drop to the floor behind her.
What the fuck is she wearing?
"No," The woman said as she picked up the case in her left hand and used the thumb of her right hand to flip something small up into the air between them.
The something burst and released a cloud that began to expand and became opaque before cycling through several different colors.
"God dammit," Jessica said as she ran through the cloud only to find when she came out the other side that the woman was gone.
"Fuck."
Jess turned around and headed back through the dissipating cloud towards the door, catching a glimpse of a figure clad in a long leather coat and carrying a metal case in her left hand.
"Stop, asshole!"
The woman kept running.
Why does that never work?
"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" the woman from the bar asked as she approached Beth slowly.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," Julia said.
Beth set the case down on the floor and shed the lab coat, picked up the case, and took a cloudburst pellet from the dispenser on her right hip.
"No," she said as she squeezed the pellet before flicking it into the air.
She was in motion as soon as the initial burst generated a white cloud that rapidly expanded. Her left foot found the outer window frame of the laboratory near her and her right hand grabbed the upper edge of the wall and she used her legs to perform a one-handed kip up to the roof of the single room laboratory before quickly finding her feet and running along the roof and then dropping back to the main floor behind the woman blocking her path.
"Stop, asshole!" came from the woman behind her.
Like fucking hell, Beth thought as she ran for the smaller door, hitting the OPEN button on the large roll up door with her left hand as she was just about the exit into the large exterior building.
"Turn right, and try and lose her," Julia said.
Beth heard the door open behind her as she ran back the way she had originally come.
"It's not a fucking car chase," Beth said.
"Stealth, not speed, dammit," Julia said, "There's enough shit in here to hide an army."
"I don't have all fucking night. That sound that you hear it a fucking fire alarm. This place will be swarming with uniforms in a minute. I need to get the fuck out of here."
"Fifty meters on the left. Open window," Julia said.
"Copy," Beth said as her breath began to become uneven.
Less talking, more running.
She saw it. It wasn't perfect. There were crates nearby, but nothing directly underneath.
"One to the left, one to the right," Beth said, "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe."
"That's racist," Julia said, "one potato, two potato."
"Fuck," Beth said as she scrambled up the right hand crate.
"Close, but no cigar," said a woman's voice as Beth stood up to see the woman from the bar standing on the other crate.
Beth looked at the woman, who seemed to be a couple inches taller than her, and the woman looked back.
"Jesus, she looks even more like a biker up close," Julia said.
Beth's breathing had almost returned to normal, but the woman in front of her did not seem winded at all.
"You could at least pretend that it was an effort to catch up to me," Beth said.
"I don't throw up in front of strangers," the woman replied, "OK, that's a lie, but their has to be a bar involved. I'll puke later, don't you worry."
"We need to go!" Julia said.
"We need to go," Beth said to the woman.
"Just hand over the case and be on your way."
"No can do, doll face," Beth replied as she switched the case to her right hand and drew the dart gun with her left.
"That what you used on that guys buddies?"
"Yup," Beth answered before thinking for a second, "I think."
"You think?"
"You Need to GO!" Julia yelled in Beth's ear.
"I think the next two doses might be freaky doses," Beth said to the woman.
"Freaky doses?"
"You ever do acid, or mushrooms, or any other psychedelic?"
"No fucking way."
"Then this is really going to suck for you," Beth said as she pointed the gun with her left hand.
"Sure you can hit me from there?"
"One way to find out."
"How about you don't try and turn me into an acid head, and I don't try to break you in half."
The sound of sirens grew closer, and the woman from the bar seemed just as worried about them as Beth was.
Shit, Beth thought as her phone vibrated in her pocket and Julia said in her ear, "answer your phone."
"This might sound odd, but I need to take a call."
"You're right, it does sound odd."
Beth kept her dart gun pointed at the woman as she put the case down and pulled her phone from her duster pocket and answered the call.
"Put your phone on speaker," said a voice.
It was a man's voice, but one she did not recognize.
Beth did as he asked.
"You're on speaker."
"Jess, extraction inbound, both of you. Move now," the man's voice said.
The woman's eyes had gotten wider, and her jaw had dropped slightly as the man was talking.
"Kyle?"
"Right fucking now," said the voice before the call ended.
"Shit," the woman said before turning and leaping up to the window frame in one jump.
fucking show off
"You coming?"
"Apparently," Beth said.
The black SUV stopped at the crosswalk just as Jessica made it there, the blonde woman with the case several steps behind her. The back door opened just as Jess was about to reach out for the door handle.
"MOVE!" Kyle's chief of clandestine operations yelled from the front seat.
"Come ON!" Jess yelled at the woman who had somehow managed to get to, and then through, the window while still holding the case.
The door slammed closed and the SUV started to move.
"Left!" the woman called to the driver, "Stop here!" she yelled right outside a parking garage as she started to open the SUV door.
She was out of the SUV in a flash, only to return a second later with what looked like a heavy nylon bag wrapped tightly with a strap.
"OK, GO!"
"What the fuck?" Jess asked as the driver gunned the engine and they were all pressed back into their seats.
"I paid fifteen bucks for that t-shirt," the woman said as she leaned back against the seat to catch her breath, the case and the bag stacked in her lap.
"I'm Ben Anderson," Kyle's chief spook introduced himself as he turned to look at the two women in the back seat, "We'll leave my title out for now. I was ordered to extract you both, but I didn't get your name."
"I'm between names at the moment," the woman said still breathing unevenly.
"Come again?" Jess said.
"Just call me Alice," the woman said.
"Is that your real name?" Ben asked her.
"Is Ben Anderson your real name?" Alice asked him.
"Fair point," he said.
Alice looked at Jess and waited.
"Why does everyone have a fucking secret identity except me?"
"You're clear. Nothing on the air except for the fire alarm. Nothing about either of you, or the SUV."
"We're clear," Beth repeated to everyone in the SUV, "nothing about either of us or the SUV, just the alarm."
There was a moment's silence.
"You have a handler," Jessica said, "you're in contact with someone right now."
Beth was about to answer when a huge light bulb went on in her mind.
"Shit," Beth said to the world in general, but specifically to Julia, "Get word to them not to go inside that fucking bunker. They need HAZMAT, or bomb disposal, or biohazard teams, somebody who won't kill half of New York because they don't know what the fuck they are looking at."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Jessica asked her.
"I can see to that," Bruce's voice said in her ear.
It was Beth's eyes that grew wide now, as her jaw dropped.
"Bruce?"
"Yes. We'll explain later."
"Who's Bruce?" Jessica asked.
The guy who just saved our asses, Beth thought.