Cliff Ryder - Out of Time

His phone beeped quietly a few times, then he heard the satisfying clunk of tumblers, and the door began to swing open. He grabbed it, stopping it when it was open about six inches. He waited.

He heard no alarms and saw no flashing lights. He slipped inside and very carefully closed the door.

Then he stepped through a doorway, found a dark corner and stood still again. If anyone came to check because the door set off an alert, it would be in the next few moments. He didn’t want to be caught in the open and set off an alarm before he’d even begun to infiltrate the building.

There was no sound from the interior of the building, and he saw no lights. If anyone was watching, they weren’t coming forward to stop him.

Alex thought about it and shook his head. Rand wasn’t stupid. By now, he’d heard what had happened to the MRIS facility in China. Even if he didn’t have time to get the same kind of security forces in place, there was no way he’d leave the building manned with amateurs. His instincts tingled—whatever security was in place was most likely watching him and waiting.

He glanced into the main hall, but chose the maintenance stairs instead. He could cover the floors almost as quickly on foot, and he was less likely to be caught on a security camera or to run into a roving security patrol. He wished he’d asked more questions. Brin wouldn’t have thought a thing about it—security was what he did, after all.

Professional curiosity and all that.

Alex took the first two floors quickly. On the third his legs started to ache, and by the fourth he knew he’d made a mistake. The building was eight stories. He needed to find a maintenance elevator before his legs gave out on him completely. There was no point in getting to the top floors only to be in too much pain to move. Still, the elevator would be a risk. What he truly wanted to do was to start up the next flights of stairs and force his way through whoever was waiting for him, but he knew it wasn’t possible. Too much was riding on the next few minutes for him to jeopardize it with his stupid pride.

He took the doorway from the maintenance stairs into the fourth-floor hall and pressed himself to the wall. A quick sweep of the walls on either side showed the cameras. Predictably, they took direct lines on the main doors and elevators. The service entrance fell in a blind spot. He saw that there was another door just to the left of his position. He had to cross the line of a camera to reach it, but only for a second, and he thought the risk was a good one. He took one quick, deep breath and he moved. He crouched low and stayed tight to the wall. Seconds later he grabbed the door and slipped inside.

The door led to a walk-through closet. It was well stocked with cleaning gear. Mops lined one wall, and gleaming buckets stood in a row beneath them. There were brooms, vacuums and a variety of antibacterial cleaners. The scent of chemicals was strong enough to make his eyes water. Alex slipped through the center of the closet and pushed through the door at the far end. It opened into a slightly larger room with deep sinks, several stainless-steel vats and the one thing he hoped he’d find. Gleaming metal doors opened on a maintenance elevator shaft.

He started forward toward the doors but stopped. Footsteps echoed in the hall beyond the cleaning locker. They approached slowly, and Alex pulled back from the elevator. He glanced around the room quickly. There were several closets, one tall locker, the deep sinks and not much else. The steps drew closer still, and he heard a deep cough.

There was no time to waste.

Moments later the outer door opened. A man in gray coveralls entered the outer room with a heavy sigh. He walked straight through to the back room and pulled the door closed behind himself, glancing furtively over his shoulder as if he was afraid he’d been followed. Apparently satisfied, he walked across the room and pulled open a small vent on the wall. It appeared to be some sort of exhaust, maybe for removing unwanted airborne contaminants.

Seconds later, the man had a small object in his hand and leaned in close to the vent. There was a flash, a flicker of flame, and then the man inhaled.

As he fought the rising cough, Alex nearly burst out laughing. Two hard hits later, the maintenance man tucked the small pipe back into his pocket and snapped it closed. He put away his lighter, closed the vent and walked to one of the deep sinks. After washing his hands, and his face, and then taking a long sip of the water to clear his breath, the man glanced around the room, turned and headed back to the hall.

Alex dropped. He’d been holding himself up in the overhead pipes, knees and arms jammed over pipes on either side. His muscles were screaming, and when he hit the floor his legs nearly gave out on him. He sank to the floor and sat for a moment, gathering his bearings. He felt light-headed, and the moment he took the weight off his legs they started to cramp. Rhythmic pulses of pain flared through his thighs and into his hips.

With a growl he rolled back to his feet and lurched to the elevator. He pushed the upward-pointing arrow and listened as the machinery hummed to life. It wasn’t like the dumbwaiter in Beijing. The MRIS elevators, even the service elevators, were well maintained, lubricated and tested on a regular basis by the local inspectors. Within moments the door opened, and Alex tumbled in.

When the door closed behind him he leaned forward and rested his head against one wall. He stayed that way for a few minutes, and then pulled himself together.

Brin’s office was on the seventh floor. She ran the entire research department, but her personal staff and offices were on the seventh. She was always joking it was high enough to have a view, and low enough to make it clear that Rand still ran the show. Alex’s plan was simple: find Brin. She would know where the prototype was being kept, and if she didn’t, or still didn’t know what it was, Rand would know.

He was more than a little surprised at the lack of live security. In fact, it was downright suspicious. Under normal circumstances he’d have understood it, but considering what was at stake, he was surprised Rand didn’t have goons goose-stepping up and down every corridor. It didn’t make sense, and it made him nervous. If he’d mis-judged the situation, or if he’d missed something important, not only his own fate hung in the balance, but Brin’s, as well. Maybe more than that, though he believed that Denny had been dead serious about a fast strike if he failed.

The elevator rose to the seventh floor quickly, and Alex spent the few moments sorting out his memory of the building’s layout. He knew Brin’s office was to his right. He knew the main lab she shared with her assistants was dead ahead, and that smaller labs, incubators and computer rooms lined the halls on both sides of the main lab.

There would be more cameras, but he didn’t believe he’d fall into their direct line immediately.

He was in a maintenance elevator, and unless the methods employed on the lower levels were different, he’d be clear, at least until he moved away from the elevator. The car came to a stop, and he waited for the door to open. Nothing happened.

Alex frowned and pressed the button to open the door. Nothing. The car sat still, not moving up or down, and he frowned.

He pulled the small meter out of his pocket and ran it up and down the wall near the doors.

The first two passes brought nothing, but on the third swipe, near the panel with the numbered buttons, he got a blinking red light. When he leaned in closer, he saw that there was a small panel imbedded in the wall of the elevator. It looked new. He pulled a multitool from his pocket and flipped open a small, sharp-tipped screwdriver. Moments later the panel was open, and he faced a second panel of buttons. There were sixteen in all. A hexadecimal code. Why were the maintenance people not allowed on Brin’s floor? he wondered.