Chapter 19
"Will the crank in the elevator work!?" Pierce was yelling at a technician as hoards of people buzzed about trying to find a way out of F-Level. Parts of the ceiling had caved in in places, leaving most of F-Level clouded in smoke and panic, and the access stairs were a dangerous option—The 72 would certainly be watching them on the floor above.
It had actually been ingenious, however heinous it was. Khan's medical emergency had required the presence of nearly every active-duty technician, and Pierce himself… trapping all of them in the lowest level of Rowen while The 72 staged an uprising and probably a riot on every other level.
"We can try, sir," the tech said, looking in at Mara, who was one of three people who hadn't abandoned the effort to save Khan. Most of the others were more worried about how they were going to escape from 6 stories below ground.
"Don't try, get it done!" Pierce yelled. "Until then, we can try the emergency access stairs. Brian!"
"Sir!" one of the techs who had stayed with Mara responded.
"I don't care if he lives or dies, get him to A-Level," Pierce growled, and Brian nodded.
"What are you… are you mad?!" Mara yelled at Pierce as Brian stepped forward. "This is your prodigy, and you don't care if he lives!"
"Shoulda thought of that before he tried to destroy me," Pierce snarled, staring at Khan.
Khan was still choking, but he was able to stand as Brian yanked him to his feet and cuffed him.
"Resist much, obey little," Khan said, spitting a mouthful of blood toward Pierce.
Pierce narrowed his eyes. Mara tried to resist the grin that crept to her face as she recognized it as another of Khan's famous lines. She subconsciously wondered who it was.
Khan stumbled as he let the techs drag him toward what looked like a ventilator shaft.
Everything within Mara screamed to run after him, but she knew better. She would simply have to find him later.
She turned in time to hear Pierce addressing another tech… who now carried a weapon. Mara began wondering if all of them doubled as guards and mercenaries.
"If you can't capture or subdue them, orders are…" Pierce paused, rubbing his temples in disappointment. "Shoot to kill."
"What!" Mara cried, running forward. "These people are your creations, your life's work! You can't just destroy them!"
"In fact I can," Pierce snarled back, a vicious and ugly expression drowning his features. "You've seen how militarized they are in here. I can't let seventy-three vicious, trained killers loose on this world…"
"So that is what you were training them for?" Mara spat back. "They weren't here to create peace or bring global solutions. They were the next era of soldier, that's why you created so many."
"You bet your fine American ass they were!" he yelled back, all ferocity and anger. "And I'm not about to let loose 73 of the most highly-trained and skilled murderers in the world just because you want to protect your precious sex toy!"
Mara couldn't speak. She tried, but nothing would pass the shock.
"What? Don't think I haven't seen the way he looked at you," Pierce growled, stepping closer and causing her to take a step back. "Tell me… did you actually like the little lab rat, or did you just want a go on the world's most superior fuck?"
Before she could stop herself, she had slapped him harder than she'd ever hit anyone or anything in her lifetime. Her palm and fingers burned as Pierce looked away, the rage mixing with the mark to make his face redden.
Pierce was positively shaking with rage as he turned back to her. "Jacob, see Ms. McGivers out of my facility before I do something I regret."
A young technician stepped forward, a gun in his hand as he grabbed her upper arm harshly, walking her to the access stairwell.
Mara began to understand why she was constantly seeing new technicians—more than half of them did double as guards and soldiers.
Jacob practically dragged her into the access stairway, pulling her up the stairs. Most of the lights were out in the stairwell from the explosions, and most of the landing were littered with debris, so she stumbled every few steps when the bright yellow 'Emergency' lights weren't illuminating them. Jacob was silent as he escorted her.
Mara couldn't help but notice that there was no A-Level landing, meaning that the emergency stairwell didn't directly access it. She paused for a moment, wondering how they had gotten Khan in, and if that was even where they had taken him. And… they were offices, weren't they?
"Come on," Jacob growled, pulling her up the last flight of stairs and pushing the door open.
To Mara's surprise, the access stairs opened into a hidden stone door in the gardens. It had been right in front of her this whole time. They were dark, the only light coming from the underwater lighting in the fountain.
Jacob shoved her forward, keeping the gun trained on her. He reached in her front pants' pocket, despite her objections, taking her key card.
"How can you live with yourself?" she snapped as he turned to go back down the stairs. "They're human beings!"
"No," he barked, spinning around in the doorway. "They're not. They're robotic, drone-like scum that's been infesting this planet since the day we woke them. They're not remotely close to human, and even if they were, they just bombed this facility, probably killing hundreds. They're terrorists. And I will have no problem taking every last one of them out."
With that, he spun around, closing the handle-less door behind him.
Mara cursed into the eerily quiet night, listening for the screams and gunshots to come from below, but hearing nothing. She wracked her brain, pacing frantically across the stone path of the garden that she had walked too many times before… with him.
They couldn't have gotten him into A-Level using the staircase… if that's even where they took him. But they wouldn't dare risk taking him anywhere above ground. Pierce mentioned something about a crank capability in the elevator. They could have gone through B-Level…
But Jacob had just taken her key card. Something told her they would have a self-sustained backup generator solely for the elevator's personnel clearance.
Pierce's key card!
Khan had somehow managed to copy it… just once… and given it to her.
She ran through the gardens, throwing open the doors to the main level. The lights were out here, too, and the panic had spread. People were running, and their yelling was echoing through the massive atrium. Parts of the floor had collapsed downward with the blasts, bending and breaking the water mains and sending massive sprays into the foyer.
Mara ran past all of them, on a mission. She disregarded the upper-level elevator, assuming that it was probably out too, and went for the stairs. She took them three at a time, bumping and shoving past people who were hysterically descending the darkened stairs. She halfheartedly cursed that bitchy receptionist for putting her on the fifth floor as she breached the last flight of stairs, turning the corner like a madwoman and rocketing to her door.
Panic flooded her as she realized that she would need her key card to get into her room, but she began to notice that the small red dot was out that signified that a key card was needed on the locking mechanism.
With a fleeting hope, she tried the door, and cursed aloud again when it opened. The security on the upper levels must not have been as important. She smiled wide, flying into her room and using what ambient light there was to shuffle through her clothes.
Where did I put it… where did I put it!
She jumped as another terrifying boom echoed through the entire facility, and this time the foundation shook. Mara did her best to swallow her fear and think back.
He kissed me… handed it to me… and said 'just in case.' Where did I put it!
The images came flooding in—him standing inches from her as he held the folders out. She had slipped it…
The back pocket of my work pants!
The foundation shook again, and Mara ignored it as she found the pants, ripping the key card from the pocket.
"Khan, you really are a genius," she whispered, kissing it and leaping to her feet.
She practically jumped every set of stairs on her way down, only taking long strides on the landings to ensure good footing before jumping nine or ten more. It made five stories go by much faster, but it also caused for a twisted ankle and knee… neither of which she remotely cared about at the moment.
Luckily, the panic in the building helped to hide her presence. She was sure that, if there weren't an attack in progress, Pierce would have done all he could to see that everyone knew to keep her out. As it were, the word was going to be a bit hard to spread.
She ran to the elevator, manually pulling the doors open. Apparently they had gotten it running again.
With a sinking pit in her stomach, she slid Pierce's card into the reader, and pressed 'A.'
With a jolt, the elevator began to drop in jumpy, haphazard motions. Definitely a crank…
It stopped at A-Level, and she wrenched the doors open as hard as she could.