Vick is locked in.
“WHAT’S THE situation?” I ask, channeling my inner Vick. All heads turn away from the locked exterior door, eyes narrowing as I hobble up to the gathered medical personnel and the maintenance guy working on the lock. I swipe away more blood from my split lip, place my hands on my hips, and glare right back at them.
One of the doctors approaches. I don’t recognize him, but he holds out his hands in a placating gesture. “We’re locked out, some kind of system failure, but we’ll get you inside as soon as we can. Why don’t you have a seat and let me look at your injuries. Who’s your therapist?”
I stifle a semi-hysterical laugh that won’t help my situation. They think I’m a patient here. “I’m Kelly LaSalle, with the Fighting Storm group.”
The doctor lowers his hands but doesn’t stop his approach. From a pocket of his coat, he removes a small first aid kit and passes me a sealed packet of gauze and a disinfectant wipe for my lip. “These should help. We’ve got techs working on both the exterior and interior access doors to this wing, but so far, we haven’t gotten inside.”
“Don’t go in without a security backup, preferably some of my team.” I pause. “Did any of them make it outside before the lockdown?”
“A few of us were having a late lunch in the central cafeteria,” comes a familiar voice from behind me. I turn to find Carl and two of our people, a man and a woman in orderly uniforms. One is an OWL. The other I recognize from the Storm. “I’ve got two more guards outside the entrance to the nurses’ hub in Vick’s section, waiting for the doors to be removed from the frame.”
The technician looks over his shoulder again. “That’s what I’m thinking here too. I haven’t been able to find another way. I even tried shutting down the entire system, but it came back online almost instantly with the scramblers still in place.”
“What about cutting off access to the wireless?” I venture. I know nothing about tech, but I do know that’s how Vick makes her connections to external systems.
Carl shakes his head and lowers his voice so only I can hear him. “This is Earth. We’re literally blanketed in wireless access systems, as are most of the heavily settled worlds. Even if they are locked down, the implants are programmed to hack into them and make use of whatever they can access. And they can connect one system to another, route information between them. One World has no idea what VC1 and VC2 are really capable of, and we have no intention of telling them. If they knew, they’d shut both clones down, not just the crazy one. I don’t even think Vick fully comprehends it herself.” He pauses, then raises his voice. “Get on the door removal.”
The maintenance tech waits for a confirmation nod from the doctor and then pulls a drill from his kit, going to work on the hinges themselves.
Moving closer to me, Carl leans close to my ear. “Where are they?”
I’m assuming he means VC2 and Vick. “Inside,” I say, equally quietly. I give him a quick rundown of what happened to me, ending with “VC2 can lock and unlock the doors at will, trapping anyone anywhere in the facility, at least in this section. And she’s killed Robert and Dr. Nuzzi.” My voice catches on that last bit.
His face clouds when I mention the losses, but he hides the emotion quickly. He lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I suspect it’s a lot more than two fatalities. We can’t reach anyone inside this wing. My only contacts are my people outside the hub doors. Most of the cameras are on a feedback loop, and the ones we can access show a lot of unmoving bodies. We thought we saw movement at the nurses’ station but lost control of that camera a few seconds later. Central comms are shut down, but private ones should work. So far no one is respon—” He breaks off, pressing one hand to his ear where his own comm pickup is inserted. A small smile curls at the corners of his lips. “Scratch that,” Carl adds after a moment. “Vick is at the interior doors. She’s got Cynthia with her. The Klenar staff are working to get them out, with my guys ready to go in when they do.”
Relief floods through me. I knew she was alive but had no idea of her condition. If she’s talking, she isn’t terribly hurt. I’m about to head around to the front of the main building when our tech announces, “Got it!”
Everyone jumps as the side door swings out, unlocked.
Carl frowns. “You found a workaround?”
“Actually, no,” the technician admits, sliding tools back into their carry case. “The signal scrambling the entry code just stopped. I had my reader sending the code on repeat just in case.” He holds up a small box with numbers scrolling across a tiny screen. “This time it worked.” He shrugs massive shoulders.
“That… might not be a good thing,” I whisper. A trickle of apprehension works its way through my shields, followed by a sudden increase in anxiety and an involuntary tension in my muscles. My gaze snaps to Carl’s. “The door unlocked because VC2 has her mind elsewhere. Vick’s under attack.”
“Or we’re being lured in. Or both. Dammit.” Carl gestures to the OWL guard to follow him, draws his weapon, and heads inside, ordering everyone else to stay out. I ignore the command, trailing them a few steps behind. He shoots me a brief glare over his shoulder, opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and nods. “You’re with us. We might need your skills to deal with VC2, but stay behind Kenneth here.”
I nod back, willing to agree to that order, for now. Unlike Vick, I’m not under any sort of compulsion to obey his commands to the letter. I step behind the burly redheaded OWL and follow them both into the short hallway containing the stairs to the second floor.
“Blood trail,” Carl says, having produced a flashlight from a cargo pants pocket. He shines the beam along the brownish smear to where it disappears under the stairs. Kenneth moves forward to check it out.
“I’ve got Robert, not dead. Close, though,” he calls to us.
“Get the doctors outside to help. Make sure he’s secure, then follow us.” Carl pushes open the interior door to the central hallway. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to do that instead,” he says to me.
I fold my arms over my chest. “No chance in hell.”
Carl mutters something rude-sounding under his breath and moves forward. His light finds Dr. Nuzzi, also moved from where I last saw her, but he doesn’t pause. She’s clearly dead. We proceed along the hall, Carl stopping at intervals to peer into patient windows, then shaking his head and moving on. When I step up to one of the panes myself, he catches my arm and pulls me away. “Don’t. VC2 is thorough. And… enthusiastic… with her victims. You don’t need to see the evidence.”
I tug my arm from his grasp but step from the window without looking through it. This experience is going to give me enough nightmares without adding additional fuel to them.
Lowering my empathic walls a little farther, I focus on the blue line that connects me to Vick, thicker and brighter than what I saw in the storage building and leading deeper into the facility. My heart pounds and my breathing picks up. “They’re fighting,” I say.
Carl doesn’t question my pronouncement but increases his pace.
We pass more bodies of staff, some dragged into side corridors, one half in and half out of a maintenance closet, one beneath an overturned cart bearing food trays, their contents splattered across the tile and mixed with the victim’s draining blood. I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow hard.
Sounds of battle carry to our ears: dull thuds, shouts of pain and anger, shattering glass, a gunshot. “You realize if you stay with me, you’re going to be onsite for at least one and possibly more deaths,” Carl says as the arch into the nurses’ station hub comes into view. Something flies past the opening—a potted plant, maybe—and crashes against an unseen wall. My guide stops a dozen feet away. “In a battle between VC1 and VC2, only one of them is coming out alive.”
I meet his eyes while I strengthen the walls around my empathic abilities. “I’m well aware of that. And her name isn’t VC-anything. It’s Vick.”