The room’s occupants—including me—exploded the instant the counterintuitive instruction left his mouth. Except Nuñez.
He merely let out an agonized groan.
Doctor Laura screeched the loudest. “What do you mean, stay here? Didn’t you say five seconds ago they’re coming back?”
I threw my own redundant opinion into the mix. “That doesn’t sound like a good plan. That sounds like a bad plan.”
“I don’t like it!” said Kyle. His voice cracked like an overheated mug in a high-powered microwave.
“Neither do I.” Doctor Laura continued. “Are you out of your damn mind? You want us to sit here and wait for—”
Brannon stood up straighter, gathering every inch of his height. “Enough! All of you. Listen to me.” His command subdued the crowd. “Laura, I know you’re scared. I understand, but you’ve got to think rationally. This is the safest place in the city for all of you. Until we take stock of what’s missing and clean this place up, there’s no telling what they might’ve found on documents lying around. That includes where we live. Kyle, I want you to stay, too. Even though your file doesn’t have an address. The rest of us are sitting ducks if we go home and they want to make a clean sweep.”
No one said it, but everyone agreed with him.
“There are only two ways in and out of here, and the one they know about is easy to guard. D—”
The modern warlock looked up from his virtual cauldron.
“I want you to take first watch when you’re done with the traffic cameras. You’ll alternate shifts of five hours each. I’m going to set you up with a defense wall, and a truckload of artillery in front of the main door. In the meantime, I’ll keep listening for trouble on the radio and call if I hear anything. Laura, you and Kyle need to gather the remaining vials of completed serum and any samples you’ve taken from Holly. You have to be ready to run. Lock them in one of my mobile gun safes and put it in the back. I’ll take the key with me as an extra precaution.”
Kyle squawked in disbelief. “That means you’re leaving!”
“We’ll cover more ground working with an away team,” Brannon insisted. “You three will stay here. Once activated, the emergency system should work well enough to lock you in and keep them out. And I trust everyone here with a gun. Except you.” His pointed look made my neighbor slink back, but he continued with a hint of optimism. “Keep in mind, if they assumed Kyle was dead, they’d have to have known someone would find him. It only makes sense we’d redouble our security. Even if they nab the mutant in the next five seconds, it’ll take at least another twenty-four hours for them to come up with a better plan for a second assault. It should be a quiet evening for all of you.”
“Where are you going, then?” Doctor Laura glanced at me. “And what about her?”
“From what we know so far, our missing subject is headed north. I’m taking Holly with me to set up a second base at her apartment. If I’m wrong—and it all goes to shit here—we can’t risk letting them have her, too.”
My ecstatic reply didn’t fit the general mood. “That means I get to go home!”
“Looks like it.” Brannon was nowhere near as relieved as me. “The rest of you, get ready for a slumber party nobody asked for. This one won’t be much fun.”
Returning to the warmth of my pastel sanctuary thrilled me, but I didn’t want him tagging along. I cultivated the comforts of my home for one, and the idea of cohabitating with the bossy stranger made me incredibly uneasy. Only Chi Ho ever visited, and she usually stayed in my kitchen, restocking my refrigerator with the few foods she knew I couldn’t resist.
The notebook and pencil slid out of my lap as I went for the purse at my feet.
Brannon summoned the others to his side. He didn’t notice that I stayed behind while they shuffled out. I turned my phone on and braced myself for an onslaught of missed calls and messages.
As they walked down the hall, Doctor Laura whispered her misgivings again.
“You’re sure this is our best course of action?”
“It’s all I’ve got,” said Brannon, “but we’ll find him, Laura. We’ll get the people who did this. I’ll fix this mess. I promise you.”
Small pats putting her faith in him landed softer than the next thud. Nuñez yelped.
“And what the hell were you thinking, being so reckless?” She scolded him. “Cutting her open? If you died, it’d kill me.”
They slipped out of earshot.
I didn’t bother to look for any texts from my best friend before I sent her one. I hoped getting a response from me would keep her from calling the police like I’d asked. She hadn’t already, as far as I knew. I doubted she would, unless our options ran out. Chi Ho trusted them even less than I did.
None of the voices chatting over the frequency of Brannon’s radio had said anything to make me believe otherwise.
I’m okay. I wrote simply. Headed home now. I’ll call you and explain better in like, an hour. Maybe two. Tops.
That wasn’t good enough.
I hit send and rushed to type a new message. One with a personal touch to reassure her it was really me.
By the way, I should have gone through the alleyway. Your grandma is a wrinkly old fraud.
An icon flashed in the top corner of my screen, a pyramid stacked with empty gray bars. No service. I groaned. What kind of signal did I expect to get several stories underground? Texting Chi Ho would have to wait. I put the device back as Doctor Laura reentered the room.
“Holly, honey, can you come with me? I need to run an MRI while the machine is still on. I’m not sure how long we’ll have before it craps out again. Let’s find out what’s going on inside your body.”
I retrieved my purse and my list, and followed her into the main space. We skirted around the mess and made our way toward the door at the back of the lab. Brannon and Nuñez huddled around a computer near it—one of the only ones spared during the break-in. When they shifted, I saw a fuzzy mug shot of the dead man in the deli. They didn’t notice us stop to hover behind them.
“I can’t believe you lifted his wallet,” said Brannon, eyeing Nuñez. “I didn’t see you do it.”
He shrugged. “I thought we might need it. He doesn’t.”
The screen pinged. Brannon read from the boxes that popped up.
“Three charges of aggravated battery, one for arson, domestic assault, soliciting a minor. He was in and out of jail for years.” He took the mouse and scrolled down. “Plus the hospital. Look at all those corresponding injuries.”
A flash of the burglar’s backwards head made me flinch, but I exiled the image with reason. Maybe I’d done a public service by dispatching the menace no one else could. Doctor Laura studied the blood in my hair with more interest than before—but no fear or judgment. My neck muscles tensed.
I still didn’t feel like a hero.
“I can’t say I blame whoever shanked him,” said Nuñez. “The universe was really trying to get rid of this guy.”
Another picture joined the first. This one showed him younger, clean-shaven, and grinning as employee of the month in his In-N-Out Burger hat.
Nuñez tilted his chin, examining the photograph. “Too bad he was such a scumbag. He used to be kind of hot.”
“You think?” Brannon squinted at the screen. “I guess I can see it.”
Doctor Laura pulled the door open with one hand and placed the other on Nuñez’s shoulder. She chuckled when he didn’t move, except to reach for her touch. It was a warm, soft, quiet sound—a familiar tone a piece of my broken heart remembered all too well. It stabbed me as I ducked beneath her arm. Without looking, I could hear the smile in her voice as she followed me into the cavern of shadows.
“Y’all ain’t never gonna be the kinds of gays they put on billboards.”
I had a millisecond to wonder if she meant they were together. Did that explain why Brannon and Nuñez seemed so comfortable with each other despite their differences in rank? All speculation fizzled when Doctor Laura turned on the lights.
The hallway we stood in would’ve looked like a TV set—if NASA sponsored Grey’s Anatomy.
Small rooms with clear plastic walls flanked the long corridor in front of us. Uneven coatings of dust covered forgotten counters and surgical tools that lost their sterile shine eons ago. Large pieces of medical equipment—some I recognized and some I didn’t—lived in pods to my left. Doctor Laura led me to the door of the third. She deposited me on a platform attached to a giant white tube after a quick jaunt through an antechamber with a desk and an ancient computer.
When she left to locate a paper gown, I scanned the alcove across the hall. Novelty lamps duct-taped to the ceiling illuminated hospital beds stacked upright in a corner, and the battered ping-pong table that took their place. This had to be the boys’ secret lair. They even had their own board. Blueprints for a Rube Goldberg machine designed to feed Kyle crackers with a dart gun sat underneath bold letters spelling Days Since Last Accident scribbled over with anarchy symbols.
A bowling set made from two-liter bottles filled with crushed soda caps sat in the empty bay to my left. Bright green toy guns and Styrofoam darts littered the ground. An old wooden desk buckled beneath the weight of a half-finished papier-mâché dinosaur skull.
Doctor Laura returned with the gown and busied herself with inspecting the machine while I put it on. I laid on the platform and let the world fall away, visualizing Brannon and Nuñez shooting each other as they stalked around their childlike war zone.
The MRI circled my head, clicking like a hoard of cicadas, as we made small talk about the weather and recent Netflix shows over the speaker system. I pretended I didn’t hear her more personal questions, and Doctor Laura kindly skipped past them.
An hour or two passed before I finally got permission to redress. We were about to join the others when Kyle appeared in the doorway, lugging a heavy black case in both hands. His boss rubbed his shoulder and took the container to the end of the hallway. She placed it beside the tall vent that blew with the tarry smell of the street above. This had to be the lab’s second exit, hidden in plain sight.
I followed them back into the main hall to find a new fixture—a barrier of broken glass and bags of gravel with a window in the center—sitting in the tidied spot in front of the door. Brannon and Nuñez dropped a final sack onto the base. Doctor Laura sighed when she saw the enormous trail of sand coming from a supply closet.
Brannon ground his teeth and shook his bandaged hand, trying to banish the pain emanating from it. As he disappeared into the storage room again, Nuñez looked up. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and reached for the paper in my hand.
“That’s the list? Let me see.”
I hesitated. “It’s not done. There’s more, but—”
Guilt pricked me when he took it. He’d be busy enough without worrying about my demands, sifting through mountains of traffic footage and tagged photos on social media between stints guarding the front door.
Brannon brought forth an enormous gun. The piece of artillery wobbled as he balanced its spare parts and a ground mount in his arms. Nuñez helped him maneuver it into place behind the hole it was meant for.
“I’ll finish your program as soon as I can,” he assured me, assembling the rifle’s barrel without looking. “It might be a day or two, but I’ll get it done. For right now, just concentrate on staying safe out there. Okay?”
I mumbled that I would, but couldn’t quite shake the shame of burdening him.
Brannon replaced the robber’s handgun in the waistband of his pants with a new one attached to a matching black holster. Once done, he waved to Kyle who brought him the set of silver keys that belonged to the case that contained my blood and the rest of Doctor Laura’s serum. My temporary guardian pocketed them, picked up the leather duffle bag by the door, and slid it onto his elbow.
“Let’s go.”
He placed his good hand on my shoulder and his body heat sizzled through the thin fabric of my dress. I shuddered, overcome with an odd blend of disgust and—something else. Brannon wasn’t shy about pushing people around where he needed them to go.
I didn’t like it.
Kyle had one more question before we left. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? In case Holly gets mad and wants to hit someone?”
Brannon shook his head and pulled him into a careful hug. He reached for Doctor Laura and gave her a few more instructions while she held him tight.
I caught what she whispered near his ear.
“Keep her happy. She’s more volatile than she seems.”
I didn’t mention what I’d heard, though it made me nervous. I didn’t feel unstable. Brannon gave her the slightest nod before he finished saying goodbye.
“You know where to find the rest of the guns and more ammunition. We’ll be in constant contact. Stay near the phone. If nothing changes, you can expect us back sometime tomorrow.”
He added the word hopefully under his breath.
“Until then, keep this place on lockdown. No one goes in or out. There’s plenty of food and leftovers in the kitchen. Try to relax, but stay alert.” He stepped up to Nuñez. “Let me know what you find on those tapes or online, and keep a close eye on all ingoing and outgoing communications on our network. They might’ve left a bug.”
Their embrace lasted the longest.
“You got it,” said the tall man when he let go. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Brannon gave them one last piece of advice. “This should go without saying—but if anyone else tries to come through that door that isn’t me or Holly, you shoot them.”
Everyone hugged me, too, before I followed him out into the laboratory’s lobby. Three sets of concerned eyes vanished as the door shut behind us with a finite thud. He removed the grate covering the speaker system and input a code on a hidden number pad. The wall hummed as a dozen bolts slid into place.
In silence, we crossed to the elevator, pressed the button, and stepped inside—ready to ascend to the hilly landscape above undoubtedly fraught with peril.