David Dun - At The Edge

"If you'll allow me," he said, hefting himself over the lip and through the wall. Inside was more storage and one solitary door in the middle of the wall, a sturdy door set on heavy hinges similar to those found on a bank vault. At eye level there was a small window made of very heavy plate glass that allowed visual inspection of the room.

To open the door, one would grab a large metal handle and pull it down. At the moment it was held in place by a heavy combination lock.

"What's in there, I wonder?"

Maria was intent on the door as well. "Let's look."

But neither moved for a moment while they took in their surroundings. Stark white walls with pastel green cabinets brought to mind a medical clinic. The floor was speckled green vinyl, probably laid over a wooden sub-floor, up to an area about a foot from the door of the special room, where the floor turned to concrete slab. Stacked to either side of the door were boxes of vermiculite, a growing medium for plants. Down the hall on the opposite side was a more normal-looking door. At either end of the hall were doors that appeared to be interior to the complex, one of which looked composite and economy driven, the other heavy wood with multiple panels.

They approached the double-plated window, looking inside. It was a room about twenty by fifteen. There were two desks, numerous cabinets, and a microfiche reader. In a far corner of the room hung a television camera behind a heavy wire-mesh grid.

"What do you make of that?" Dan said.

"It's a secured document room. The sort of place you'd keep highly confidential information."

"What do you suppose is through that door?" Dan said, nodding to the right to the end of the hall and the economy door.

"I don't know, but I doubt we're meant to find out," she said. He began walking. "Young, let's discuss this." She moved in front of him with one hand on his chest.

"You talk and I'll listen," he said as he reached around her for the knob and began slowly turning it.

"All balls, no brain," she muttered as she stepped from between him and the door.

He peeked through the crack at 3,000 square feet of modern laboratory, packed with all sorts of equipment that looked electrical and chemical. There were at least a dozen people in casual attire, concentrating on then" work. In the middle of the lab were two huge vats with a lot of tubing running around them and apparently in them. He guessed they were under pressure.

"What do you see?" she asked.

"Take a look."

She stepped around him and put her eye to the crack.

"What are they doing?"

"Something they obviously don't want us to know about. What if we just walk out there in our blankets and introduce ourselves-maybe they're not all bad guys," he said.

"Dumb idea. We'd never leave with anything."

He put a hand gently on her head, moving her down the crack so that he could hunch over the top of her and get a better view. After a minute or two a couple of technicians began walking toward the door.

"Close the door, they're coming."

"In here," he said, opening a storage-room door. It was a room perhaps twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, lined floor to ceiling with large shelves stacked with ordinary-looking supplies. Mostly it appeared to be paper products. On the floor in front of a large bottom shelf was a row of five-gallon cans of industrial cleaner. Behind the small aluminum drums the shelf appeared empty.

"Come on," Maria said, moving a couple of cans and crawling onto the shelf.

"Are you crazy?"

"Hurry, damn it."

Dan crawled in backward, only to discover that there wasn't enough room.

"I'll get on top," Maria said, sliding over him. He stayed prone underneath Maria, who lay facedown on his back.

With considerable effort he pulled the cans in front of the shelf.

"If they were coming, they'd already be here," Dan said.

Then a woman's voice.

"I think the file folders are in the big locker."

''You can look, but I think they took them all out of there and I think we've run out. We go through those damn things like bugs on a chicken farm." Male voice.

The door opened.

"Somebody keeps leaving the lights on."

Dan held his breath. Fortunately, Maria was a small person. Neither of them made a sound. He could see the woman's legs in navy blue slacks. She wore cheap white tennis shoes that squeaked over the floor as she rummaged through the shelves. She was working her way back and would surely see them if she began moving cans or looked just over the tops. It was inconceivable that she would miss them. Glancing back, he noticed Maria's petite white thigh on top of his meatier, even paler version, the blankets scrunched to the side. He liked her taste in panties-bikini style but not thong. It surprised him; he would have had her pegged for more matronly briefs. Unfortunately, nothing else in this place was the flesh white of their untanned thighs or the ivory white of Maria's underwear.

One shelf back the lady was searching too thoroughly. They were going to be found.

The door opened.

"If you're looking for file folders, we moved them over to the file room."

"Well, why didn't somebody say something?"

"Hell if I know."

The door slammed; the lights went out.

"That was close." Maria let out a deep breath.

First Dan moved two cans; then he let her slither out, unable to ignore the smooth warmth of her skin sliding on his. More concerned for Maria's safety than he cared to admit, he slowly opened the door, finding an empty hallway once again.

At the opposite end of the corridor stood the heavy wooden door, dark in color, that looked more executive than the rest. Instinctively they were drawn to it. They both hurried, imagining that at any moment the door from the laboratory might open once again. When he tried the door, he expected it would be locked. It opened.

A soft light in the corner partially illuminated the office. Inside, it had been decorated much more lavishly than the other rooms they had seen. There was a window with vertical mahogany blinds, a cherry television cabinet, custom bookcases to match, a large rosewood desk, a beige carpet overlaid with real or imitation Persian. There was a large folding-door, freestanding closet that when opened revealed various items of clothing on hangers, a lot of snack foods, rain gear, golf clubs, two rifles, and a sawed-off shotgun.

"Damn, look at that," Dan said.

Maria flipped up the corner of the rug.

"It's real. Handmade. Let's see what we can find." She went to another door that led into a small bathroom complete with a shower.

Dan tried the filing cabinet behind the desk. It was locked.

They both rummaged through the drawers of the desk but found no key.

"Most morons put the key in the desk," he said.

She went to the other filing cabinets and began looking through them.

"We better do this fast," he said.

"I'm hurrying."

"Oh, look what I found." She held up a flat gray box.

"What is it?"

"Box full of keys, all labeled and each key attached to the bottom with Velcro. And one says fireproof cabinet."

"Bingo."

Quickly they opened it and started rooting through files full of paperwork. Many pages of equations were unintelligible. They found computer printouts with chemical names and numerous spreadsheets that contained numbers and chemical symbols.

"Look," she said, holding a stack of photos. They were pictures of dead-looking bats.

"What's that mean?" he whispered.

"What's any of it mean? Those equations look formidable," she said. "A lot of very fine print. Whoever wrote them must be a math or chemistry person."

"Why do chemistry people take bat photos?" he said.

"Or write stuff about bat neurons," she said, holding up an equation with an explanation related to brain activity and consciousness. "We better get the hell to the other side of that wall before they find out we know about this."