Instead of stepping out into the hall, I swipe Mom’s badge over the reader and return to the center of the elevator. When the door closes, I turn and take a step toward the back.
The rear panel of the elevator slides open, revealing a dimly lit concrete space and a winding staircase. The staircase doesn’t go up, like an emergency stairwell might. It goes down. To what I can only imagine is secret sub-level three.
Chapter 7
My ears strain for sounds of movement or danger. I don’t hear anything, so after a minute, I step out into the stairwell. It’s a circular staircase—which is weird enough in a lab—so I can’t see the bottom. I close my eyes, take a couple deep breaths, and start down one slow step at a time.
I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this. How can there be a secret level? Why is there a secret level?
I’m confused, worried, more than a little scared. And annoyed, really annoyed. My mother lied to me. She looked me straight in the eye and lied. She made me doubt Rebel, made me doubt myself, and that pisses me off. It also makes me wonder what else she’s lied about. And why.
At the bottom of the staircase there is a door. It’s locked, requiring a security pass. I swipe my mother’s badge and the light changes to green. Proof that she not only knows about this level, but she has authorization to be here.
Before I open the door, I look through the narrow, rectangular window just above the doorknob. Two cameras hang on the opposite wall, scanning the length of the hallway, one on each side. The whole thing is monitored at all times.
Which pretty much sucks for me. My mom might have clearance, but I certainly don’t. If they catch me on camera, I can’t even begin to imagine how much trouble I’ll be in.
But I’m close, so close, to finding out what’s going on down here. I came back to the lab against my mother’s specific orders because I have to know. I have to prove to myself that the crazy thoughts I’ve been considering for the last eighteen hours are as nuts as they seem. Villains aren’t victims. They’re liars. I can’t walk away. Not now.
So I wait and I watch the cameras sweep the hallway again and again and again. I track the arc. I memorize the pattern, rendering the data as a 3-D image in my mind. And I notice a blind spot. A couple of them, actually.
There are exactly four seconds when neither of the cameras picks up the hallway right outside the door. Two seconds when they meet in the middle and can’t see directly beneath each other, and then another four seconds when the second camera can’t see the end of the hallway.
It’s a long distance, but if I time it precisely right—and run like hell—I can make it. I hope.
I wait a little longer, count the seconds again as I watch the cameras run through one, two, three more sweeps. I know if I don’t go now, I never will. I’ll lose my nerve and I’ll never know what’s down here.
Taking a deep breath, I wait for the camera to get into position and launch into motion, running full-speed down the hallway. I get to the first true blind spot, where the cameras cross, and wait, breath held, always counting. Then I book it again.
I’m terrified I’m not going to make it, but I do. I turn the corner, breathing heavily and praying there aren’t more cameras on this hallway.
My hope is in vain, because of course there’s another camera. But thankfully only one, which gives me a lot more time to walk down the hall without getting caught.
I make it down this hallway and another using that same technique. I’m not sure where I’m going, or even what I’m looking for. But I figure I’ll know it when I see it.
There are labs on either side of me, dark rooms that look empty. And while there’s a part of me that wants to know what’s behind every single door, there isn’t time. What I’m looking for—what I need to see—will be wherever Mr. Malone and the gray suits went. Which means I need to keep moving.
I turn the corner again, expecting to have to dodge yet another camera. But in this hallway there are no cameras, at least none that I can see. This only makes me more nervous. After all that security, all that surveillance, why would this area be unwatched? Unless there’s something going on here that Mr. Malone and the Superhero Collective don’t want anyone to see.
Fear rockets down my spine. It’s not fear of getting caught that paralyzes me. It’s fear of what I’ll find. Of what I’ll see. I don’t want my faith in the superheroes to be misplaced.
But I’ve gotten this far and I’m not going back until I know. Squaring my shoulders, I keep going. Most of the rooms are dark, but fluorescent lighting pours under one of the doorways. Someone is in there.