Taking her hand, he pulled her through the door and into the corridor. They jogged at a fast clip, their boots muffling their steps on the tile. At the end of the hall, Emily started toward the elevator, but Zack pulled her into the stairwell, and they went down the stairs to the lower level.
The basement was cold and dimly lit. A sign on the wall read: Infirmary. An arrow beneath the word pointed to the right. They were three-quarters down the hall when a scream stopped them dead in their tracks. It was a sound of terror and agony rolled into a single horrific sound. A man reduced to an animal.
“Oh, no.” Emily glanced at Zack. “My God, what are they doing to him?”
His face was filled with disgust. “The bastards are testing their poison on some convict because he’s bloody convenient and free of charge.”
Another scream shattered the silence. A high-pitched wail. “My God, Zack, we have to help him.”
She started down the hall. An instant later Zack’s fingers bit into her shoulder. Knowing he was going to try to stop her, Emily spun on him, ready to fight.
The look in his eyes took the fight right out of her. “We can’t let them torture a human being to death,” she said.
“We’re not going to be any help to him if we’re dead,” Zack said firmly.
Another agonizing scream punctuated his words. Unable to keep herself from it, Emily put her hands over her ears. “I can’t stand it.”
“You rush in there unarmed and with some half-baked idea of saving that poor bastard and you’ll end up strapped to a gurney yourself.”
Zack squeezed her arms. “Listen to me. We need to stick to our plan. It’s the only way to help these men.”
Blinking back tears, she concentrated on pulling herself together.
“We need to get into Underwood’s or Carpenter’s office,” Zack said. “We don’t have much time.”
Giving herself a hard mental shake, Emily stepped away from him and pointed down the long hall. “Dr. Lionel’s office is one level up.”
“Let’s start there.”
IT TOOK ZACK LESS THAN thirty seconds to pick the lock. Once inside Dr. Lionel’s office, he went directly to the desk and began to ransack it. He could hear Emily paging through the files in a nearby cabinet. In the last drawer he searched, he found what he was looking for.
“Look at this,” he said, pulling a bound notebook from its nest.
Emily left the file cabinet and crossed to him. “What is it?”
“Diary of a madman,” he said dryly.
She leaned close to read the handwritten notes of how each individual convict had reacted to the RZ-902.
Patient A-4922B, thirty-six-year-old male, 180 lbs., 5’11”. Patient was placed in the chamber at approximately 3:03. By 3:04, the RZ-902 had begun to work. Intense discomfort was observed, followed by skin lesions, bleeding from the nose and mouth and eyes. Four minutes into the treatment the patient suffered respiratory arrest and was rendered unconscious. Death occurred one minute later….
Zack had seen a lot of terrible things in the years he had been an agent. Not much bothered him anymore. But the cold-blooded premeditation of what was happening here made him feel sick inside, made him furious.
“My God, Zack, this is incredibly…vile.”
She was standing so close he could smell the sweet scent of her hair. He could feel the goodness and warmth coming off her. And suddenly he needed to be reassured that those things still existed. Putting his arms around her, he pulled her close and closed his eyes tightly.
For several heartbeats neither of them spoke. Then Zack looked into the depths of her eyes. If anything happened to this woman, he would never be able to live with himself.
Struggling to rein in his emotions, to concentrate only on the mission, he tore the pages from the notebook, folded them in half and stuffed them into the waistband of his pants. “Let’s see what we can find in Underwood’s office.”
Leaving Dr. Lionel’s office exactly as they had found it, Zack and Emily sprinted down the hall toward Underwood’s office. The area was well lit. He picked the lock as quickly as possible, knowing that if someone rounded the corner, they would be in plain sight. Thirty seconds later he was inside Underwood’s inner sanctum.
The office was furnished with dark, glossy furniture. The wall to Zack’s right was filled with books and volumes and legal tomes. Straight ahead, a computer sat atop an intricately carved desk.
“Underwood keeps everything on his computer.” Emily went directly to the desk and switched it on.
“He’ll have a log-in ID and password,” Zack said, following her.
“Everyone at Lockdown, Inc. has a similar log-in ID.” She settled into the chair behind the desk.
Zack watched her fingers play across the small keyboard, but he was uncharacteristically nervous. He couldn’t stop looking at the door. Couldn’t stop imagining all the things that could happen if someone walked in and caught them. Feeling sweat break out on his back, he glanced at the clock on the wall. Not yet 5:00 a.m. They still had some time before people started showing up for work. But they’d been inside for fifteen minutes. Another ten minutes and they were going to have to make a run for it whether they had what they needed or not.