looking around through the hazmat suit’s plastic visor.
But like they’d put a sticky note with the combination on the side of a cabinet?
If she turned around now and left, at least she had a chance of not getting into trouble. No alarms were going off, and maybe if security saw her on any of their monitors, they’d assume she had proper clearance—
Sarah looked down at the credentials. Then turned the laminated card over.
On the back, written in permanent marker, were those seven digits she’d assumed were a telephone number.
Leaning down to the keypad, she entered them one by one, the bulky glove camouflaging how badly her hand was trembling.
Nothing happened.
As she waited, heart pounding and throat choked, sweat dripped into her eye, and she went to wipe it away, batting at the hood with the glove, making things worse—
Pound key.
When she punched the pound key, the little light turned from red to green and an air lock released.
A door-sized panel disappeared into the wall itself, revealing a shallow stainless steel room that was about ten feet long and five feet wide. Egg crates lined the floor and they were full of a disorderly supply of nonperishables: canned soup, boxes of pasta, cereals, bags of Doritos and pretzels. Shallow shelves mounted on the vertical held shampoo, soap, toilet paper, Kleenex.
The sliding door began to shut behind her and she caught it with her hand. There was another keypad on the inside, and although she considered propping things open, she was worried that an alarm would go off. She just had to take the chance the code would work on the exit.
Releasing the air intake connected at the back of the hazmat suit, she let the hose fall free and then she was closed in.
The second the door she’d come through relocked, another panel opposite from it slid back, revealing a bright white light.
Swallowing hard, she took two steps forward and then stopped in the doorway.
The wave of revulsion and indignation was so great, she nearly vomited.
Across a clinical space, in a large cage that had some kind of mesh around it, there was a figure dressed in what appeared to be a hospital johnny, lying on a pallet facing away from her. Some kind of water source was off to the side, hanging from a hook, and a tray of empty plates had been pushed out onto the floor through a trapdoor. Behind the cage, medical monitoring equipment beeped and whirred.
Sarah reached out blindly for the wall as the world listed on her—
What the hell? The walls and ceiling were covered by the same mesh as the cage. And the floor … oddly, the floor was stainless steel.
The patient in the cage sat up and turned toward her—and Sarah lost her breath as if struck in the chest.
It was a child. A frail, thin little boy.
Overcome with horror, Sarah stumbled forward. Fell to her knees. Slumped as the inner door slid back into place and locked them in together.
With hands that shook so badly it was as if she were having a seizure, she tore off the gloves. Ripped the hazmat suit’s hood off. Gasped for air.
As she looked up, she found that the child was staring across at her with wary eyes. But he didn’t make any sounds of protest, and he didn’t move from his spot on that pallet.
He had obviously learned that nothing he could do would stop what was being done to him. He was helpless. Trapped. At the mercy of those who had so much more power than he.
Minutes ticked by and the two of them continued to stare at each other, though the mesh made it hard to see him with total clarity.
“Are you here to give me my next shot?” he finally asked in a thin voice. “They said it would be at midnight. But it’s only ten.”
Two years since Gerry died. And they’d been experimenting back then. How long had they been torturing this child?
“Hello?” he said. “Are you okay? You’re not my normal technician.”
Sarah swallowed hard. The implications were so enormous they were incomprehensible. But rather than waste time sorting through the morass, she focused on the immediate issue.
“Sweetheart, I … I need to get you out of here. Right now.”
The child bolted to his feet. “Did my mother send you? Is she alive?”
At that moment, alarms started going off.
Murhder had done this mission before, and he was glad his practice run from twenty years ago had stuck with him even though