Peyton rode in the back of the electric car with Gretchen and Charlotte. The two Navy SEALs sat in the front, both silent, eyes forward, occasionally glancing around for any signs of trouble along the dirt road that wound through the island. The car’s tiny lamps barely cut the darkness; Peyton assumed that was to avoid being spotted from above. The roads weren’t covered with large canopies; instead, large trees lined both sides, their massive limbs stretching overhead.
Peyton glanced over at Gretchen. The woman was in her mid forties, fit, with blond hair and an annoyed expression. Peyton wondered what had happened in the house to convince her to take them into the lab building. She assumed some sort of coercion was involved. Most of all, she wondered how a person with a PhD in biomedical engineering, who seemed rational, would ever cooperate with the Citium.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
Gretchen replied without looking Peyton in the eyes. Her accent was German, or perhaps Dutch, Peyton thought. “I dispute the premise.”
Peyton bunched her eyebrows.
“You assume we have acted against humanity’s best interest.” Gretchen looked at Peyton now. “I assure you that is not the case. Our actions will save lives. It is you whom I should ask why.”
“I think distributing a deadly pathogen is just slightly against the human race’s best interest.”
“Your perspective is myopic.”
“You have killed millions of people in the last week.”
Gretchen looked away. “Something we regret. Many of the deaths were due to decisions by your government and others. But the end result will be the same. An outcome easily worth the price.”
“Which is—”
The Navy SEAL driving interrupted. “Look alive, ladies.”
The car exited the dirt road and moved onto a heavily wooded promenade with covered walkways, no doubt with camouflage images on top. A large covered parking area loomed to the left.
“Take any space,” Gretchen said.
As they parked, the SEAL in the passenger seat turned and said to her, “I want to remind you of our arrangement—and the consequences of deviating from it.”
“I require no reminder.”
LED lights on the dome of the canopy lit their way toward the lab complex. They walked in silence as other staffers joined them on the path.
Inside, a guard at a desk barely glanced at them. Gretchen led them to an elevator and pressed a button that read B4. At the house, Peyton had considered where to go first. The others had the primary mission: finding the warehouses where the existing cure was housed. But as a backup plan, Peyton’s job was to find where the cure was being created, and gather any information on its mechanism of action. If the others failed, and governments around the world were forced to try to manufacture the cure themselves, that information would be critical.
Gretchen led them to an office with plate-glass windows that looked down on the floor of a vast manufacturing plant. The facility was clearly underground, but it was the machinery that shocked Peyton the most.
“What is this?”
“What you requested.”
“This is where you manufacture the cure? Impossible.”
An amused smile crossed Gretchen’s lips. “Again, your premises are incorrect, Dr. Shaw.”
Peyton activated her comm. “Something’s wrong here.”
There was no response.
“Desmond? Avery?”
She waited.
“Dad, come in.”
No reply came.
Chapter 115
On another lighted path, Desmond and Avery walked in silence. William and Carl were roughly ten feet ahead of them.
At the island bungalow, Desmond had changed clothes, wiped the paint off his face, and donned a wig with brown wavy hair. He wore a mustache that itched constantly. The polo shirt was a size too small, the shorts too big. Avery kept glancing over at him.
“What?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously.”
She smiled. “You look like a seventies porn star.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks.”
“Looked like you were putting the moves on Peyton back at the house.”
Desmond studied her a moment, but the young woman wouldn’t look at him.
“Hey.”
She turned toward him.
“Before…” he said. “What was our relationship?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure it matters to me anymore.”
Before Desmond could say another word, William stopped in the path and whispered for them to be quiet. The administrative building loomed.
In the building’s lobby, they each swiped their magnetic access cards; Carl swiped his own, and Desmond, William, and Avery used cards they had taken from residents of the bungalows—people they had verified had access to the building and critical areas. The people attached to the access cards looked vaguely similar to each of them in their disguises, but they certainly wouldn’t fool anyone who actually knew those residents. Desmond just hoped they could get by the guard at the desk—and not be noticed by the staff manning the security cameras.
To his relief, the front desk guard barely looked up. In seconds, they were past the lobby, at the elevator bank, and Desmond finally exhaled.
The building was four stories. Carl led them to the server room on the second floor, in the interior. It was expansive, at least a hundred feet long and seventy feet wide, and extended to the two floors above.
The place buzzed with the sound of countless servers. Rows of metal cabinets and cages stretched out. Some enclosures lay open, cords spilling out like the entrails of a mechanical monster that had been gutted by a tech. Some of those techs were in the room. They stood at carts piled high with server parts, worked on laptops, and typed on keyboards below fold-up flat screens that extended from the racks themselves. The room was windowless, lit by fluorescent lights, and cool. Air conditioning blew down on them, an artificial breeze from above. Plastic tiles formed a raised floor in a gridded metal framework, and the space underneath the floor allowed conduits and wiring to reach all areas of the data center. Their feet thumped as they walked across the tiles.
The scale of the data center was far beyond what Desmond had expected. What are they doing with this much computing power?