With a final push, Maine Parker shoved the elevator doors open far enough to slip though. Panting, he saw by the flashlight that he was in a long passage — the ventilator ducts that ran above an office floor and below the core processing room of the LA Geo-Span center. He breathed a sigh of relief that they were as tall and wide as DeJenna and Pauli had promised — service ducts designed to pump air through the entire building, large enough he could walk freely. He pressed his lips together and took a last look at the crowbar before dropping it down the shaft.
A long time later, he heard it impact the pile below.
Then he made his way forward, stepping cautiously through the darkness, unable to miss the grimy sensation that came as his feet slid with each step.
The run back would be treacherous.
He blocked that thought for now, though.
Focused instead on simply putting one foot in front of the next. Focused instead on the processing room that ran above him and that connected the center to the rest of the world.
There, the central radio receivers and entanglement relays existed. There, the very few direct-line security paths that needed to exist were wired. There, too, memory resided — or, perhaps better said, prisons existed. There, inside the room that Maine Parker found himself walking under were the security computers — high-speed processors that ran code the CIO used to watch over other code, other blocks of memory stored in machines on the opposite side of the room.
Those code blocks were the cortical processes, the synaptic memory patterns, and the knowledge bases that mapped together to represent the base operating systems of millions of human beings.
Full systems saved away, memory systems intact and well preserved.
The passage was long and seemed even longer as Maine walked it with a slow, even gait, pausing to take in both places where the ductwork turned. He pressed the soles of his shoes over the flooring. Slick. He imagined blueprints as he went, Pedrigo pointing out important places.
There would be two cores.
He would have to do this right.
When he arrived at what he thought was the right place, Maine reached into his belt and extracted the brick of plasta. His hands shook as he cradled it. The lighting and the fact that his arms hurt made it hard to work, but he split the explosive along the crease like Pedrigo had shown him, then pressed one handful to the ceiling, and then the next.
He connected the two with a small controller, again just as he had practiced with Pedrigo.
Finished with the preparation, he glanced down the ductwork hallway.
Five hundred meters, and his muscles were flayed.
I’m not going to make it, he thought.
For an instant he considered leaving. Taking it all down and walking away, retracing his steps and leaving everything just as it was. It was possible the system wouldn’t work, right? Possible that DeJenna and Pauli didn’t know what they were doing, possible the system would fail.
Then the image came.
Beatrice again.
Flying in the sky above the reservoir.
Swallowing down fear, Maine Parker set the timer and waited for the green cycle to finish before pressing the actuator.
Then he ran.
His feet were light on the floor, but pounding, the sound of his steps echoing in the closed space. His eyes focused into the darkness ahead, his body aching but his discipline holding, his gait stretching, his chest rising with exertion, holding his hands at waist level, the light from his forehead making the scene jostle ahead.
The first corner loomed.
He edged to the side of the passage, then slowed a bit and twisted his body to lean in. The planting foot slid, and his body flinched as he crashed into the far wall, staggering, hands smashing into the flooring as he stumbled but still managed to press forward.
His legs pumped. Thighs burned.
He didn’t bother to slow down at the second turn, and merely threw the meat of his shoulder into the wall, then bounced off in stride.
Running.
Still running.
He wanted to check his optical timer, but it was a casualty of the shield DeJenna had laid.
It crossed his mind that a minute would pass, and the explosion would burn his shape into the elevator shaft. That this would be the only thing that would exist to let anyone know he’d been here.
Out of the darkness came the finish line, vertical this time, the dark gap between the decrepit elevator doors.
Maine strained to lengthen his stride.
Pictured Lucifer Jones.
Twenty meters away.
Ten.
Five.
Behind him, the world ripped itself apart.