The trio crept along carefully, approaching the large door at the end of the tunnel, followed by Five who occasionally beeped softly.
"Five, quiet," Mac whispered.
Off to his side, Jack snickered. "You sure his name isn't really R2, young Skywalker?"
Mac shook his head. "I knew you were gonna start."
"Yeah well, I'd rather think about getting eaten by Ewoks than like robot zombie clowns or whatever is down here."
"The Ewoks don't eat people, Jack. I don't know how many times I'm gonna have to explain this to you…"
Dr. Stomski pushed between them. "Are you two seriously arguing about Star Wars right now?"
"No!" Jack said, clearly offended. "We're arguing about Return of the Jedi!" Jack launched into an explanation of an argument that went all the way back to Afghanistan.
"Shhh!" Mac interrupted suddenly, holding up a hand. "Do you hear that?"
Once they were quiet, they heard it too. At first when you just listened, it was a low humming. Then you realized you could feel it, too. Kind of vibrating in your chest. It gave a feeling of unease.
"Place sounds haunted," Jack whispered.
Mac frowned. "Do you think your ex might have some kind of wireless charging system down here? For the robots?"
"He might. Why?"
"Jack is right. It sounds haunted. Which probably means a high level of certain types of electromagnetic frequencies. Same sort of stuff so called ghost hunters usually find in supposedly haunted houses."
"You can't prove they aren't really haunted…"
"Jack, you can exactly prove it. That's the whole point of using EMF detectors."
"One of these days, Mac, you're gonna run into something you can't explain and then you'll…"
"Sure, pal." Mac grinned to let him know he was teasing.
"Does it matter?" Alice asked, trying to get the pair back on track.
"Well, if that's what it is, I can probably take out all the bots are once. If I can get in there and access the power unit. Any ideas?"
She paused, thinking about it. "There's the maintenance access. But it's mostly meant for repair robots." She squinted at him. "You might be able to squeeze through."
Jack stepped forward. "Good. So we'll go in through the maintenance whatever and you can guard the door with that cute little pistol of yours if the ex is down here and makes a break for it."
"You're not going to fit through there, big fella. Your partner there might or might not get stuck."
"Well, listen…"
"Jack." It was all Mac had to say. If Mac was almost too big, Jack probably couldn't even get started.
Jack cleared his throat. "So we get Mac access to the wiring junk and when he says go, you and me breach the door?"
Mac tipped him a grin. "And by me saying go, you mean gives you the signal?"
"Yeah, exactly."
"Alright, give me a hand with this access panel."
Jack stepped forward to do just that.
As soon as Mac disappeared into the maintenance access, Alice asked, "What's the signal?"
Jack shrugged. "No idea. I'll know it when I see it."
She rolled her eyes. Based on their banter up to that point, she should have known. "Great."
0-0-0
Mac crawled along through the narrow space. He caught and tore his clothing several times, but did manage not to get stuck. He was estimating the distance in his head, but some the increased vibrating feeling he had in his chest he was pretty confident in his estimate.
He got out his pocket knife and carefully unscrewed the back side of the access panel. He eased it out of his way slowly, wincing at every little whispering scrape it made as he set it aside.
He edged out into the dim, freezing room. He rapped his head on the lab table that was in his way and he almost swore out loud, but he heard a chair scrape across the floor. Mac bit back his irritated, pained exclamation and slid into the shadow of a nearby cabinet.
He watched from his nearly invisible vantage point. A tall, slender man in glasses and a lab coat, who definitely didn't look like the supervillain type, moved around the crowded storage room. For an underground storage space there was a lot of extremely high tech equipment down here. And it was very clean.
But some stuff was just cobbled together the way Mac might have done it himself.
There was a refrigeration apparatus built out of styrofoam, coolers, and an air conditioning unit with the temperature regulator broken off and there were little charging stations under four robots that resembled Five, that seemed to be thrown together out of homemade solenoids, and some radio parts.
That was a relief. He didn't want to use his improvised solution to the robot problem. If he could cause a surge through the power units, he could probably neutralize the drone bots.
He crept from unit to unit, doing just that.
He got around to the last unit, the most dangerous one since it was closest to the desk the man was working at. He accessed the wiring carefully, pulled the critical wire out and moved to snip it. The wire sparked.
And the whole room went dark.
He heard the rogue scientist swear. Then something got knocked over. Then a flashlight was shining directly in his eyes.
Damn.
0-0-0
Outside the room in the tunnel, things went dark.
Jack stiffened.
Alice turned on her phone's flashlight. "Lemme guess. The signal?"
"I guess maybe."
They tried the door.
Locked. And on close inspection it appeared to be an electromagnetic lock.
Alice frowned and tried opening it with something from her pocket.
A gunshot echoed from behind the door.
"Stand back, Doc," Jack said as he pushed her out of the way.
"Don't…"
Jack didn't let her finish the warning, he fired his weapon at the lock.
The round ricocheted off the bulletproof surface.
"Ah!" Jack recoiled and grimaced. The ricochet has grazed his forearm, a pretty deep gouge, too. Then, "Mac!"
0-0-0
Inside the room, Mac struggled with Eric Stomski. He couldn't hear a damn thing over the ringing in his ears from the gun firing in such close quarters. He knew the man was growling things at him, but it's not like anything he said mattered anyway.
Mac managed to knock the gun away. He kept catching brief glimpses of his adversary and the room from half broken flashlight getting kicked around at their feet.
He had just enough time to catch movement out of the corner of his eyes before a painful electric jolt to his thigh caused his leg to buckle.
Welcome to the party, killer robot, he thought, suddenly sympathetic to Jack's dislike of the technology.
He kept his feet, but just barely.
A second zap; his leg went numb and he went sprawling.
Stomski scrambled for his gun in the dark.
The robot rolled toward Mac again and he decided that was the bigger immediate threat. He pulled the improvised electromagnetic pulse device he'd constructed in the storeroom earlier out of his jacket, said a momentary prayer of sorts to Nicola Tesla, and triggered the device.
The machine went still, which was good.
But now Stomski was standing over him with his retrieved weapon. Not great.
Fortunately, his EMP had also disengaged the door lock and Jack and Alice burst in. Without hesitation, Jack fired, and Stomski's gun went flying, as the man dropped to his knees, clutching his bullet-shattered hand.
Alice moved carefully into the dim room, surveying what her ex husband had been up to, as Jack zip tied the man's hands. Her phone light had gone dead when the lock disengaged.
"You okay kid?"
Mac couldn't hear distinct words yet, but knew Jack had spoken. Guessing at the content, Mac grinned. "Never better, pal."
His leg was still pretty numb, but the pins and needles feeling zinging up and down it told him it wouldn't be for very long. He used the table nearest him to pull himself up. Then he fished around in his pockets until he found a lighter. He flicked it to life for some light.
"Jack! You're bleeding!" His own voice still sounded underwater but his hearing was coming back.
"Aw, this? This ain't…"
"Hardly a mosquito bite. I know." He raised an eyebrow. "Hey, doc? Can I get you to part with that lab coat?"
She stripped it off. "Sure. What're you going to do with it?"
"Well, first I'm gonna make a torch with some of the lubricant oil on this table. Then I'm gonna bandage you my partner so we can get outta here and find our analyst." He handed her the lighter and she flicked it back to life so he could see to work.
"Maybe there's signal somewhere down here and we could just call for the cavalry," Jack said hopefully.
Mac shook his head, but kept working. "Even if there were, my EMP device fried our phones."
"Dammit, Mac! You've already wrecked like four of my phones for your little doohickeys on one op or another. Now you've figured out how to do it without even touching it!"
"Sorry, Jack," he said, not especially sounding it. He'd done what he needed to do. And everybody was still alive. He grinned as they got his torch lit. "How about I'll buy you a bottle of whatever the hell hard stuff you want to make it up to you."
"And a new phone!"
"And a new phone … Now, lemme see that arm."
He stepped toward Jack and his leg buckled just a little. Jack jumped to keep him from going over, but Mac had already steadied himself. "What the hell happened to you?" Jack demanded, but let Mac begin bandaging his bullet graze.
"One of Stomski's bots zapped me. A couple of times. That's why I zapped everything else."
Jack was about to respond, but first Alice exclaimed, "Five!" and that was followed almost immediately by Mac swearing a Jack worthy curse. "The containment unit!"
Alice ran and into the hallway and Mac half ran half limped across the room toward the now still and silent cooling unit he'd noticed earlier.
"Great move, Junior," Stomski said snarkily from his position on the floor where Jack had zip tied him to the desk.
Mac tossed a glare at him. "Don't suppose you've got a back up kinetic battery charger floating around down here?"
The man's expression lost some of its defiant angry edge. "If I did I'd tell you. I'm not looking to die down here."
Mac swallowed hard. "Me either. And I'm not looking to let it out either."
"If I help, I want a deal."
Mac wasn't sure what he was going to say but he opened his mouth anyway. Alice strode back in, interrupting. "No deals for you, Eric!" She could barely look at him. She did look at Mac and there was pain in her eyes. "There's liquid nitrogen down here somewhere. I know the surplus is in storage."
"No! You can't destroy my research!" Eric shouted.
Mac ignored him. "Where?"
"One of the two rooms further down the hall. I don't know which."
"I'll be back." He grabbed the torch and took off.
Now Mac's leg was waking up a little. And it didn't feel great. But he could run again halfway decently. He skidded to a stop in the hallway. "Oh, Five. I'm sorry," he said quietly when he saw the dark screen on the little robot's face. Then he took off down the hall.
When he got back about fifteen minutes later, wearing heavy gloves and lugging a surprisingly heavy tank, his torch was burning out, but someone had made a lantern of sorts with some of the oil. Jack was pacing and mumbling about being caught underground with a zombie virus and a chick named Alice and how devil dogs were probably going to chase them any minute, and Alice and her ex were arguing.
Mac did his best to just stay focused. Ideally, he'd introduce the liquid nitrogen without really opening the unit. He looked it over and realized there was no way to do it as safely as he wanted to. "Jack! I need extra hands," he called.
They got a small cover pried open and Mac handled the tank, dumping the contents into the box Eric had been storing his engineered virus. When the vapor poured out as the liquid nitrogen froze everything it touched, Jack yelped and jumped back.
"It's the chemical, Jack, not the virus escaping or whatever."
"You sure? Cuz I don't wanna get home and realize I'm the reason Captain Tripps infects Southern California."
"I don't know what that is, but trust me, you won't go home infected."
"Yeah? You're that sure this'll work?"
Mac shrugged, putting down the tank and peeling off his flannel shirt to make another torch they could use to get out of here. "Well, I'm at least sure that once we get topside and call this in, in addition to cops, Thornton's going to have this place crawling with infectious disease people. We won't get exfil until we're in the clear."
"Aw, man."
"Don't start freaking out. You need a medic anyway. How did you get shot? I didn't think Stomski got a shot off at you."
Alice had stopped lining out her husband and joined them. "Jack tried shooting the lock when he heard a shot from in here."
"Bulletproof?"
"Yup."
"Damn."
"And we're leaving that out of the report."
"Okay by me. So long as you write up the whole thing and I don't have to do any of the paperwork on this one."
"Rock, paper, scissors."
"Not a chance."
"Alright. Let's grab the mad scientist and get the hell out of here."
Mac lit the torch. "The sooner the better."
