Ted Kosmatka - The Games

“Do you want to use my badge?” Vidonia asked him.

“Why?”

“Your name might raise a flag. The gate could be tied in to something, and you never know who’s checking.”

“We’ll have time to do what we came for. After that, who cares if they come? I’m not trying to elude them forever.” He waved his badge past the sensor, and … nothing happened, of course.

They both smiled at their lack of insight. It was amazing how deeply electrical power was interwoven into their everyday existence. It was something taken for granted, noticed only in its absence. Silas stepped out of the car and into the pool of light. The gate didn’t appear to have any sort of latch on it. He pushed; it moved. He walked the gate all the way open, then climbed back into the car. They rolled inside.

He knew that it was ridiculous, but as the darkened buildings came into view, he felt irrational disappointment and realized that he had harbored a secret hope that the blackout would somehow have spared the compound itself. He searched his mind and found no reason for entertaining such a possibility other than his fervent desire not to have to do this in the dark. He followed the winding drive through the facility grounds, passing buildings and parking lots and vast tracts of green space. The darkness made it seem even larger. He followed the curve to the left and then turned the ignition off, coasting the last twenty yards to the large eastern building’s entrance.

“Are you ready for this?” Silas asked.

“No.”

“Good. Me, either. Let’s do it.”

They stepped out, and the cool wind raised gooseflesh. The trees on the promenade shook their branches, as if warning them away. Silas ignored their advice and led Vidonia up the short flight of stairs to the broad entrance doors. He yanked, but they didn’t budge. The doors were standard battleship gray, two inches thick and very metal. He took out his card and swiped it.

Not so much as a beep.

“Had to at least try,” he said, to her look.

He glanced back down at the car.

She followed his gaze. “No way,” she said.

“It might.”

“No way. Too many stairs.”

He backed away from the doors and looked down the length of the building at the other entrance. It had the same raised staircase.

“I guess we’ll have to go through the back,” he said. “But it’ll be a longer walk once we’re inside.”

They climbed in the car, and he backed out. It would be one hell of a dark walk in there, and darker still once they’d made it to the gladiator enclosure. An idea came to him. He jerked the wheel in the other direction.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to need a little light.”

He followed the road back the way they’d come. Once at the gate, Silas jumped out and pushed his face against the glass of the gatehouse. It was black as ink inside. He felt around in the dirt for a rock, but they were all too small. Thinking then of a lug wrench, he returned to the car, leaned inside, and popped the trunk. There, beneath a fold of carpet, and beneath the jack, his fingers found the two feet of cold steel.

He stepped over to the guard shack, squinted his eyes, and bashed the window in with a single hard blow. There was a satisfying crash of broken glass. He snaked his left arm past the clinging shards, feeling for the lock. Found it. The latch turned, and the door came open in his other hand.

Mentally, he added another breaking-and-entering charge to his personal dossier of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The gatehouse was very small, which made his search considerably shorter. Either it was here or it wasn’t, but there just weren’t a whole lot of places to hide a flashlight. He yanked the drawers out and dumped their contents to the floor, trusting his ears to finish the job his eyes could only half accomplish. He heard the slick rasp of paper, the rattle of pens and pencils, the thwack of a cardboard box of paper clips.

He emptied the bottom drawer and a dark shape clattered solidly against the tile and rolled to the wall. The right shape, the right sound. He snatched it up, and his finger found the button. Light bloomed.

“Yes,” he said aloud.

Back in the car, Vidonia looked properly impressed. Silas shifted into reverse, spun around, then lurched up the drive toward the compound. Around the back of the research building, he remembered that the windows in the newer wing were lower to the ground. That would be their best option, because it would leave them closer to the enclosure than the rear doors. His own office window was somewhere above them, out of reach on the second story.

He drove the car up on the grass until the nose touched the wall. He shifted into park and cut the motor. His fingers caressed the cold of the lug wrench on his lap.

“Do you want to stay here?”

“No.” She didn’t hesitate.

“Are you sure?”

“You’ll need an extra set of eyes in there. The eggs could be anywhere inside the enclosure. And the sooner we find them, the sooner we can get out of there.”

“Okay.”

“Besides that, there’s no way you’re leaving me out here in the dark by myself.”

He couldn’t say he blamed her for that.

He opened his car door, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Did you believe him, what that thing said about what could happen?” Her eyes were pleading.

He could think of no honest response that would make that look go away.

“Extinction?” she prodded.

He sighed. “I’ve seen what it can do.”

“We both have, but that’s not answering the question.”

“I’ve seen its genome on a plasticine sheet. All that heterozygosity.”

“So you believe, then?”

“Yeah, I guess I believe.”

“He said the gladiator would be coming for its eggs.”

Silas nodded.

“Phoenix is a long way from here, but we drove the whole way. Could it be here already?”

“Let’s hope not.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“I have no idea how fast it can fly. It’s heavy, and it’s still learning, so I think it’s safe to assume it’s not efficient at long-distance flight. It might take days to get here. But you and I both know we’re going in there, regardless.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“The less we think about it, the better. C’mon.”

They shut their car doors.

Silas stepped up onto the hood and felt it buckle slightly under his weight. He raised the lug wrench over his head, took aim, then brought it crashing down on the window. The glass shattered. He struck several more blows, bashing the glass inward—then finally raked the metal bar around the perimeter of the frame until all the big pieces were knocked loose.

He reached his hand down and pulled Vidonia up to join him. The hood popped loudly and caved another two inches.

“There goes the deposit,” she said.

Silas pulled his long-sleeved shirt off over his head. He folded the shirt and placed it carefully over the base of the broken window frame.

“Let’s do this.”

He leaned down for a good-luck kiss, and Vidonia’s mouth was warm on his. Her full bottom lip slipped into his mouth. He pulled away slowly.

“Let’s not get killed,” she said.

“Sounds good to me.”

“No, I mean it.”

“You think I don’t?”

“I want us to have more time.”

“We will.”

“Together.”

Silas paused. “We will.”

He leaned his torso through the broken window and felt along the inside wall with his hands for something to grab on to. There was nothing but hard, blank flatness. The window was just high enough to make it awkward. He pushed against the wall and slithered through on his stomach. The pain was both sharp and small, the way bad cuts sometimes are, and he knew his shirt hadn’t been quite thick enough.