Jay sat with his head propped up on one arm, the flesh on his face becoming gradually molded to the shape of his fist as he gazed up at a dozen different screens of surveillance feed. Nothing exciting. Surprise, surprise. He was losing his vision for nothing.
He tapped his key and brought its holographic interface to life. He rotated his arm slightly, found the clock, and groaned.
The door beeped and Jay turned in his seat to see a young doctor with a face screwed into a permanent "concerned frown" come in with his breakfast.
"Berin. My hero. What do you have for me? . . . OH, yes!" He accepted, with reverence, a plate of fried grange-meats with a side of hot, greasy chips.
"You're welcome."
"What makes today so special?"
"We were told we could take off a shift." He didn't look especially pleased about it. Jay might have been curious, except that Berin never looked happy anyway and the scent off the chips was delightfully overwhelming.
"That's great, great . . ."
Berin looked about to say something when the door beeped again, opening a crack as a smiling face peered inside. ". . . Hi! John Smith, health inspector!" He flashed a badge. "Can I come in?"
"Uh . . . sure . . ."
"Thank you!" Smith didn't exactly fit the health inspector type, stepping out from behind the door in a trench coat and pinstripe suit, but Jay lost interest in the man when he saw the girl that came in after him. Not so much because she looked even weirder—probably trying to make some punk statement with that hair—as because of how she looked in general.
He smiled. She smiled back.
"You need anything from me?"
Smith donned a pair of glasses and leaned forward to scrutinize the security feed. "Yeah, maybe . . . Tell me, how many cameras link to this room?"
"About forty," said Jay, still looking at the girl.
"Forty! Are they all for different rooms?"
"What?"
Smith removed the glasses. "I said, do all the cameras cover a different room?"
"What, you mean one per room?"
"Yes."
"No."
Smith was about to say something when Berin interrupted. "Excuse me, if you're a health inspector, what are you doing in here?"
"Just . . . mandatory." Smith shrugged. "I know it's a bit weird, but . . . no stone unturned, that sort of thing."
"It wouldn't be the first security room to house suspicious activity," said the girl, and winked at Jay. He shot a triumphant glance at Berin, who left in the room in disgust.
Smith, oblivious, peered intently at the screens through his glasses and wondered aloud: "Top floor! I notice there's no footage of the top floor in any of the surveillance rooms, is there a reason for that?"
"Oh, we've got the top floor. Here!" Jay tapped the screen.
Smith blinked. "Right! But—I meant floor 14."
"That is floor 14."
"Is it?!" Now he looked really surprised. He leaned in close to examine the screen. Jay glanced back at his assistant, who shrugged helplessly.
He noticed her eyes dart to the side. She was looking at something—his chips. Ahhh. She was hungry? Jay smiled and popped one into his mouth. Her eyes followed it ravenously. He smiled again and ignored her. Best to keep her in the defensive position, right?
Smith still had his eyes on the screens. ". . . Ahhh, yes, I see. Well, that still leaves us with one floor missing."
"Ohhh. You mean the executive rooms? We don't really think of that as being the 'top floor' here."
The girl frowned. "Why not?"
"It's not complete. There's just a few rooms located on the south side of the hospital. We call it the tower."
"Ahh."
". . . And that's where the chancellor's son is, then?" asked Smith.
Jay frowned. "Yes, how did you know?"
He shrugged. "Well, we're not allowed up there; seemed to make sense. I thought it'd be a good idea to check for any footage of the area, just in case."
"Ah."
"There isn't any, is there?"
"Nah. I'm pretty sure the tower has its own security."
"Right! Good to know! Thanks for everything—sorry, what was your name?"
Idiot, it was on his nametag. "Jay."
"Jay! Thanks, Jay!" He turned and made for the door.
"See you around . . . ?" Jay shot a meaningful glance at the girl.
". . . Maybe." She smirked coquettishly and shut the door behind her.
Jay grinned. He rotated the chair back round to the desk to finish eating—only to find his plate gone.
"Jerk." Camelia crammed another grange-meat into her mouth. "Probably picked that up from some stupid manual. You don't starve a mark, you offer her your food before she swipes it off you! Seriously, do you not want any of this?"
"Floor 14 . . . How could he mean floor 14?"
"Look, I'm fine if you want to let me have it, but you couldn't have eaten since we left the club."
"I had a lot of shuttle food. Did you see fourteen floors before we came in?"
"No. Which is so odd. Because normally I keep a journal of all the floor counts of buildings I enter. Guess I must have left it in my other coat." She devoured a mouthful of chips. "You were right, though, the chancellor's son is off-limits even to health inspectors. —Hey, where are you going?"
"Downstairs."
"Why? I thought the whole point was to go upstairs and spy on—hi!" she greeted a passing nurse. The Doctor urged her into the stairwell. "But I thought," she repeated, in a lower voice, "the whole point was to go upstairs and spy on Barkhoff."
"That was before."
"Before what?"
He paused halfway down the steps. "Do you remember that man, the Hecatian, who left the hospital in a panic?"
"Yes . . ."
"Didn't you wonder if he might be able to explain what made him so upset?"
"I might have if you hadn't run off so fast."
"I decided to stay in the hospital because I didn't think we'd be able to catch up to him. Now it looks like we may not have to."
"What do you mean?"
He took a deep breath. "Because, on one of the screens, I saw him being taken down this hallway."
Her eyes widened. "Are you sure it was him?"
"Absolutely."
"Was he conscious?"
"No. He was taken on a stretcher."
"So . . . why are we going downstairs? You know where he's at?"
"I think I do . . ." he said, and fled down the steps.
They covered four flights of stairs and stopped in front of a set of gray doors. "What's this?" asked Camelia.
"The basement above the basement. There are only thirteen ground floors but the security says there's fourteen because there's obviously something down there they've got to keep track of. Look: No label, no windows."
"And you think that means it's a secret floor?"
"No—" He tried the handle. "—That's why I think it's a secret floor: Locked."
"Of course it's locked, they're not going to let just anyone barge through. Doesn't mean there's anything weird going on."
"Good! Then they won't mind if we look around." He slipped out the psychic paper and pressed it against the key pad. The door beeped open and the doctor stepped through. Camelia swallowed her last chip and set the plate down as quietly as possible before following.
They were in a small concrete room, barely furnished, with two doors leading out from it. The Doctor went to the door on the right and peered inside.
"Some kind of office," he thought aloud as he stepped in. Camelia was close at his heels, but the office turned out to be too small to hold two, it was so crammed full of file cabinets. All of which were locked.
"Huh." She was looking at the office computer. "Does that look like it's been used to you?"
"Yes. Why?"
"It has to be at least ten years old. They don't even make computers with monitors anymore."
"Really!" He pulled out the screwdriver and aimed it at the console. "Ach! Deadlocked." He put it away. "Why would they use an old computer, then?"
"I don't know. Why would they use file cabinets?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I dunno; why wouldn't they use file cabinets?"
"Because there's virtually no limit to the data you can store on your wrist. And it's certainly faster."
"But not as secure . . ."
"Hm?"
"Any computer network in the world can be hacked. But paper, if you can't get it physically in your hand, is completely safe."
She nodded slowly. ". . . And . . . the computer . . . it's not hooked up to the network, then . . ."
"What do you mean?"
"All the new computers are automatically linked directly to the sphere. Government cryptographers can, in theory, retrieve data from anywhere in the world—you know, if they have the time and the energy."
He frowned, thinking, and made his way back through the bare reception area to the other door. "So, a room filled with information utterly inaccessible to the outside world . . . I think I'd like to know what's behind this door, wouldn't you?" His companion just folded her arms uncomfortably and watched in silence as he applied the screwdriver to the door's lock.
It gave way easily, opening onto pitch black. Camelia stuck her head out into it.
"Ever read a Gorvian horror novel?" she whispered.
"Can't say as I have . . ."
"Excellent! Then you can go first."
He peered a moment longer, lost in thought, then finally blinked. "Right. Yes. Have you got a torch?"
She wrinkled her nose. "You've got a magic all-purpose badge and screwdriver but you don't carry a torch in that ridiculous coat?" He opened his mouth to protest but she'd already pulled one out of her pocket and handed it to him.
He tapped it on and directed the beam into the darkness. Bars, there were bars on the side—and movement. Camelia nearly jumped. The light had fallen on a monkey, sitting quietly in a cage, that glanced up placidly into the light and then down at its toes. The Doctor flicked the light to the other side: More cages. There were cats, mice, rats, fish, dogs that stood up and wagged their tails when they saw the light, and even an assortment of reptiles.
The Doctor swept the light around the room till he found a switch and turned on the overhead lights. "That's better, hullo!"
"Thank you," said Camelia. "What is this place?"
"A laboratory?"
"They have to use a secret floor in a general hospital to experiment on animals?"
The Doctor gave her back her torch and walked further into the lab. It wasn't a particularly large room, but there were specimens from almost every class in the animal kingdom. Small species, of course, but still—very thorough. About half of the animals had red marks painted on them, presumably to separate the experiments from the control groups.
He narrowed his eyes. Something was missing. "Camelia, come here a moment? . . . Tell me, does anything seem odd to you?"
She gave him a look. "I think we're standing in it."
"No, no . . . Not just that. Something else . . ."
She folded her arms again and glanced behind her nervously. "No. Just tell me, what is it? . . . Is it the lack of staff?"
"No . . . Already thought of that, they don't have to be here to watch the animals, they've got cameras." He pointed one out.
"We're on camera?!"
"Oi! only for the scientific record. I doubt they send the feed to the main video room."
"Good point. . . What were you saying was odd, though?"
"I dunno . . ."
"Well, when you figure it out be sure and tell me, because you're giving me the shivers!"
"Right . . ." He took a few more steps into the room, Camelia following tentatively behind, eyes darting round the room. The dogs went on plaintively wagging their tails and some birds cocked their heads in their direction. There were cabinets full of vials and more ancient computer monitors lying around on big countertops. Suddenly it occurred to him. "OH!" he burst, grabbing his forehead.
Camelia fell over backwards. "ACH!"
"OH, what's this! . . . They're fine, they're all FINE! That's what's wrong!" He noticed Camelia, who'd propped herself up on her hands and was gasping for breath. "Oh! you alright?" he asked, offering a hand.
She ignored it and got up on her own. "If you do that again, I will shoot you. Phew!" She put a hand to her still-pounding heart. "What did you notice? What's 'fine'?"
"The animals. Didn't you notice? They're all fine, they're all healthy. You'd think a few would look like they'd be suffering from some toxic chemical or other, wouldn't you? No! All of them, even the ones that have been marked."
"Maybe the marks don't have to do with experiments? Maybe they just came like . . . ach, no, ignore me." She rolled her eyes. "They couldn't have all come like that, obviously."
"Exactly. So why keep them down here? Here, in a human hospital. Plenty of other places to keep a bunch of lab rats, surely." He eyed a door across the room. "I think . . . we've got more exploring to do."
"Oof."
"And put that gun away, don't think I didn't notice!"
She sighed and holstered her weapon reluctantly. "Alright, but if we run into any infected, you're not going to stop me."
He didn't argue, but he didn't answer, either. Instead he turned his attention to the door. Biohazard, it read. He'd heard that one before. He peered through the window.
"Hey! What are you two doing in here?"
They both jumped. A woman, the dark-haired nurse from before, stood in the lab entrance. "You heard me," she barked. "What are you doing?"