CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BEFORE I COULD leave Marisol in Rodriquez’s capable hands, she clutched my sleeve and yanked me close. “Don’t bypass Sandra’s security protocols until I’m able to double check the facility.”

“For what?” I removed her hand from my sleeve, holding it in my own. “Campus security’s on high alert. The admin’s got extra guards en route per your order.”

She shook her head. “Trojan, monitoring devices. Hell, I don’t even know how they got in.”

“Marisol, this could be what we’ve been working for—the lost gene.”

“So let’s make sure we don’t lose it again. Just another few hours. I’ll be the bad guy on this. Tell the others it comes from above.”

I ran my hand through my hair. “What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Find the breach. Assess the damage. Right the lab.” Again she tugged on my sleeve, forcing me to kneel beside the cot where she lay. “You might not want the rest of the staff watching the entire security playback.” She pierced me with skeptical eyes. “You don’t remember how we escaped the mercenaries outside the sequencer room?”

Slowly I shook my head, trying to remember something more than the sting of isopropanol. “You must have been at your best.” I worked up a grin, but it felt phony even to me.

She nodded, laying her head on the pillow. “Give me a couple of hours to stop the world from spinning and make sure we’re ready to protect our discovery. Just think, if you hadn’t have implemented your paranoid protocol, it’d be in the hands of the THS as we speak.”

“Funny.” Since discovering the peripheral violations of the firewall, I’d programmed Sandra to automatically bury any results within 98% certainty among the hundreds of thousands of other assays she held in her databases—a chromosome in a DNA haystack.

Sandra wouldn’t run the final sequencing algorithm without my permission. Chandler had been the one to first dub the added security measure my paranoid protocol. Score one for team psychoses.

“You have your two hours.” I started for the door. “Hell, take your time. You saved my ass today. Thank you.”

“It won’t be the last. Vaya con Dios, Dr. Buckner.” She closed her eyes, the left one still swollen but no longer bleeding.

I nodded toward Rodriquez, who had agreed to keep her horizontal until she’d recovered sufficiently. On the way to the war room I checked to ensure my background mind remained safely analyzing the broken pieces of my memory from the last hour. Satisfied, I formulated assignments for the rest of the team. By the time I arrived, half of the staff had already begun of their own initiative. They knew what to do, even in a crisis.

I needed some space to think, so I volunteered to clean up the mess Marisol and I had made in the freezer room. The tedious task would be perfect for occupying my body in order to free up my mind. Not only was I baffled over how the THS could have known Sandra had flagged a probable for the lost gene, but I couldn’t make sense of their tactics.

I took the long route to the freezers, along the outer ring, just in case the site of Haru’s murder hadn’t been completely cleaned yet. Why would the THS hire mercenaries instead of film cameras? If they meant to destroy the work, they had an odd way about it. And finally, why the bit with The Austin Job revealing the secret passage? A smokescreen? If they had meant to take me hostage, why not use my office in the main building? As Evie would say, simply stealing the lost gene didn’t seem their style. “Evie.”

I stopped outside the freezer room. She should have texted me by now, with one of her annoying inspirational messages about humility and sacrifice or some such attempt to distract me from work. I tapped my finger to my temple before remembering my fried ARGs were still in the elevator. Not that it mattered. None of the lockdown levels would allow an outgoing personal call.

A swelling panic threatened to break off my thus-far-unsuccessful memory-mining routine, so instead I reassigned my background mind to the sour memory of my fight with Evie at the diner. If the attack on the lab had been about forcing my hand or leveraging me to discredit the work, Evie could be in danger. I swore, sprinting for the war room.

Stewing in my own selfishness, I hadn’t seen the threat. I burst into the war room, where a few of the others had continued discussing the events of the past hour. “Tell Miss Cruz I’ve headed to the surface to check on my daughter.” Already flying through the opposite door, I shouted over my shoulder. “I’ll check in as soon as possible, sorry!”