Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.
“What did you say?” Richards said, and then he heard—both of them heard—the sound of the alarm. The one that was never, ever supposed to ring, a great, atonal buzzing that ricocheted across the open compound so that it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Security breach. Subject Containment, Level 4.
Richards turned quickly to look toward the Chalet. A quick decision: he swung around to point his gun at the spot where Doyle had stood.
Doyle was gone.
Goddamn, he thought, and then he said it: “Goddamn!” Now there were two of them on the loose. He quickly scanned the parking lot, hoping for a shot. Lights came on everywhere, bathing the compound in a harsh, artificial daylight; he heard shouts from the barracks, soldiers running.
No time to deal with Doyle now.
He raced up the steps of the Chalet, past the sentry who was yelling at him, something about the elevator, and took the stairs to L2, his feet barely touching the steps. The door to his office was open. He quickly scanned the monitors.
Zero’s chamber was empty.
Babcock’s chamber was empty.
All of the chambers were empty.
He hit the audio feed. “Sentries, Level Four, this is Richards. Report.”
Nothing, not a word in reply.
“Main Lab, report. Somebody tell me what the fuck is going on down there.”
A terrified voice came through: Fortes? “They let them out!”
“Who? Who let them out?”
A blast of static, and Richards heard the first screams coming over the audio, and gunshots, and more screams—the screams men made when they died.
“Holy fuck!” Another blast of static. “They’re all loose down here! The fucking sweeps let them all go!”
Quickly Richards called up the monitor for the sentry post on L3. A broad mural of blood was on the wall; the sentry, Davis, was slumped on the floor below it, his face pressed to the tiles, as if he were probing the ground for a lost contact. A second soldier stepped into view and Richards saw that it was Paulson, holding a .45. Behind him, the doors to the elevator stood open. Paulson looked straight into the camera as he holstered the gun and removed the grenade from his pocket, then two more. He pulled the pins, using his teeth, and rolled them into the elevator. Then he took one more look at Richards, who saw his empty eyes, drew the .45, raised it to the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.
Richards reached for the switch to seal the level, but it was too late. He heard the explosion, ripping through the elevator shaft, and then a second blast of sound as what was left of the car went sailing to the bottom, and all the lights went out.
At first Wolgast didn’t know what he was hearing; the sound of the alarm was so sudden, so completely alien, that for a moment it obliterated all thought. He rose from his chair beside Amy’s bed and tried the door, but of course it wouldn’t open; they were sealed inside. The alarm rang and rang. A fire? No, he reasoned, over the din in his ears, it was something else, something worse. He looked up at the camera where it hung in the corner.
“Fortes! Sykes, goddamnit! Open this door!”
He heard the pop of automatic-weapon fire, muffled by its passage through the thick walls. For an instant he thought hopefully of rescue. But of course that was out of the question; who would rescue them?
And then, before he could generate another thought, there was a great concussive bang, and a terrible roar that ended in a second bang, louder than the first, bringing with it a deep, sonorous trembling, like an earthquake, and the room plunged into darkness.
Wolgast froze. The blackness was total, an overwhelming absence of light, completely disorienting. The alarms had stopped. He felt a blind urge to run, but there was nowhere to go. The room seemed to expand and to be closing in upon him, all at once.
“Amy, where are you? Help me find you!”
Silence. Wolgast drew a deep breath and held it. “Amy, say something. Say anything.”
He heard, behind him, a soft moan.
“That’s it.” He turned, listening hard, trying to calibrate the distance and direction. “Do it again. I’ll find you.”
His mind began to focus, his initial panic giving way to a sense of purpose, the task at hand. Cautiously Wolgast took a step forward toward her voice, then another. A second moan, barely audible. The room was small,