Protocol 7 - By Armen Gharabegian Page 0,47

sprinting toward the back door. I can’t risk being captured, he thought as he ran. I can’t.

He had never felt such fear before. His body trembled uncontrollably as he filled his arms with a bulky tangle of hardware and ran.

Four min—

He was fifteen feet from the escape hatch when the lights went out.

Damn it, he thought in the middle of the darkness. They were even faster than I thought.

There was a hum and a clank as the emergency lights switched themselves on. Suddenly the ghostly shapes of the Spectors were illuminated by harsh white beams that sliced up from the floor. The outer skin of the vessels, which automatically mimicked the environment, made the vehicles almost invisible. Hayden, short of breath, skidded to a stop and shoved what he had collected into a small duffel bag. He forced himself to keep going, moving very slowly and, in absolute silence, toward the secret escape route.

He was starting to panic.

There were footsteps coming from above. He could hear them. He looked up to see a ceiling hatch directly above Spector I slowly unlock and open. The black ops team lowered themselves through the opening, like spiders dropping in on their prey, holding laser-guided weapons mounted with lethal-looking canisters.

Hayden recognized the attachments to the weapons. Immobilization gas, he told himself. No intruder would have a chance once the gas had reached their system. And this time, I’m the intruder.

He had only one chance, and he decided to take it. He crouched down close to the floor and kept going. Just a few steps, he told himself. Just get out this door; they don’t even know it exists. It’s not on any of the schematics. I made sure of that. Just slip outside, into the tunnel, get to Simon and the others and—

He heard the hissing when he was less than ten feet from the exit.

* * *

The surveillance team released the immobilization gas as they carefully scanned the entire facility for intruders. There was no reason to wait; the facility was supposed to be empty. If anyone was there, they deserved to be gassed; if no one was there, the only cost was a few ounces of antipersonnel aerosol. Either way the Counterforce Team members were already masked. That was standard operating procedure.

It took only seconds for the scanning AI to locate the intruder. It spoke to the team members through the earpieces in their helmets, describing him in detail, feeding them his location as seen through the security cameras.

They spread out into a wide crescent and moved slowly across the bay, following directions, using the equipment as cover, staying quiet. They were in no hurry. Their intruder had nowhere to go.

He was trapped.

Hayden barely made it to the door, duffel bag in hand, before his body started reacting to the gas. His vision distorted as he watched his own hand reaching for the doorknob. He felt his knees weaken as if his joints had suddenly turned to rubber.

He heard a sound behind him, the clack-clack of a weapon being cocked. He didn’t want to turn around—his turn had come, he told himself irrationally—but his body was beyond his control. He spun slowly, like a disoriented swimmer underwater, and saw a man with a gas mask and goggles, dressed in black, pointing a large rifle toward him.

At me, he thought.

He was beginning to lose feeling in his body. He knew it was over.

But he could still sense, just a little, a strong set of hands grabbing him from behind, dragging him back toward the door.

The voice was familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it. A small but effective dose of the immobilization gas had penetrated his system, and he was falling into semi-consciousness. He felt bodiless, but was still strangely aware of everything around him.

“You grab the module case, and I’ll lift him,” the voice said.

Seconds later, everything went black.

NORTH OXFORD, ENGLAND

The Hidden Entrance

“So I guess this all makes sense to you somehow,” Samantha said, her voice dripping with weary sarcasm.

Jonathan was sitting in the front seat of the Rover. Samantha on the far side of the back seat, watching the empty road and waiting. Waiting for Ryan to finally arrive, waiting for Simon and Andrew to return from the underground tunnel with Hayden in tow, waiting for the world to just return to normal.

Neither of them was very good at waiting. They sniped at each other instead.

“Sam,” Jonathan started, knowing he didn’t want to get into it with her—

“Sam?” she asked. “You

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