Стефани Перри - Underworld

And it'll have to wait, unless I want to go wet the dirt in enemy territory. . . .Rebecca didn't.

She leaned in to take a closer look at the machine in front of her, a stand-up device the size of a refrigerator and covered with buttons; the label on the front read, "OGO Relay," whatever that was. As far as she could tell, the room was full of big, clunky machines awash in switches; if all of the other buildings were similarly equipped, finding Trent's hidden code panel was going to be an all-night operation.

Each of them had taken a wall, and John was going over the tables in the middle of the room. There was probably a surveillance camera set up somewhere in the building, which made the need to hurry even greater—although they were all hoping that the minimal staff meant no one would be watching. If they wereverylucky, the security system wouldn't even be hooked up yet.

No, that would be a miracle. Lucky will be if we get in and out of this alive and unhurt, with or without that book. .. .

Since they'd walked away from the van, Rebecca's internal alarms had been ticking down to a full-blown case of the nerves. From her short time with the S.T.A.R.S. she'd learned that trusting her gut feelings was important, maybe even more important than having a weapon; instinct told people to duck bullets, to hide when the enemy was near, to know when to wait and when to act.

The problem is, how do you know if it's instinct or if

you're just scared shitless?She didn't know. What she knew was that she wasn't feeling good about their late-night raid; she was cold and jumpy, her stomach , hurt, and she couldn't shake the belief that something j bad was going to happen.

On the other hand, sheshouldbe scared—they all should be; what they were doing was dangerous. Something bad might actually happen, acknowledging it wasn't paranoid, it was realistic—

—hello. What's that?

Just to the right of the OGO machine was some-\ thing that looked like a water heater, a tall, rounded device with a window in the front. Behind the small square of glass was a spool of graph paper, covered with thready black lines, nothing she recognized— what had caught her eye was the dust on the glass. It was the same finely powdered dirt that seemed to be on everything in the room . . . except it wasn't. There was a smudge across the dirt, a damp streak that may have been caused by someone's finger.

A smudge on dirt?

If someone had run their hand over the dusty glass, they would have cleared a path. Rebecca touched it, frowning—and felt the pebbled surface of the dust, , the tiny ridges and whorls like sandpaper beneath her fingers. It was painted or sprayed on—that is, fake.

"Might have something," she whispered, and touched the window where the smudge was. The window popped open, swinging out—

—and there was a sparkling metal square behind it, a ten-key set into an extremely undusty-looking panel; the graph paper was also fake, just a part of the glass.

"Bingo," John whispered from behind her, and

Rebecca stepped back, feeling a flush of excitement as the others gathered around, feeling the tension coming from all of them. The mist of their combined breath made a small cloud in the freezing room, reminding her of how cold she was.

Too cold... we should go back to the van, back to the hotel for a hot bath. .. .She could hear the desperation in her inner voice. It wasn't the cold, it was this place.

"Brilliant," David said softly, and stepped forward, holding his flashlight up. He'd memorized Trent's codes, eleven in all, each eight digits long.

"It'll be the last one, watch," John whispered.

Rebecca might have laughed if she wasn't so scared.

John fell silent as they watched him plug in the first numbers, Rebecca thinking that if they didn't work she wouldn't be all that disappointed.

Jackson had called, informing Reston in his cool, cultured tones that two four-man teams were on their way by helicopter from Salt Lake City. "It so happens that our branch office was entertaining a few of the troops," he'd said. "We have Trent to thank for that; he suggested that we start relocating some of our security in advance of the grand opening, so to speak."

Reston had been glad to hear it, but wasn't so happy about the fact that they werethere,three armed men and two women poking around the Planet's entrance in the middle of the night—

"They can't get in, Jay," he'd interrupted, gently, soothingly. "They don't have access."

Reston had swallowed his knee-jerk response to

that, thanking him instead. Jackson Cortlandt was probably the most patronizing and arrogant son of a bitch Reston had ever known, but he was also extremely competent—and extremely savage if need be; the last man who'd crossed Jackson had been mailed to his family in pieces. Saying "No shit" to the senior member was akin to walking off" a tall building.

Jackson had then made it quite clear that while he appreciated the call, it would be best for Jay to handle such matters himself in the future—that if he'd bothered to keep himself apprised of internal shift-ings, he would have known about the teams in SLC. There was no explicit wrist-slapping, but Reston got the message all the same; he hung up feeling as though he'd been severely chastised; watching the five interlopers search the entry building only added to his mounting tension.

No codes, no access, even if they find the controls.

Twenty minutes. All he had to do was wait for twenty minutes, half an hour at the outside. Reston took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly—

—and forgot to inhale again as he saw one of them, a girl, push on the window to the keypad. They'd found it, and he still didn't know who they were or how they knew about the Planet—but the way one of the men stepped forward and started punching keys suggested that twenty minutes could be too long to wait for help.

He's guessing, random numbers, it's not possible—

Reston watched the tall, dark-haired man continue to tap in numbers and thought about what Trent had said at their last gathering. That White Umbrella might have a leak.

An information leak, from someone high up. Someone who might know the entry codes.

He reached for the phone again and then stopped, Jackson's subtle warning making him break out in a light sweat. He had to handle it, he had to keep them from getting in, but everyone was asleep and there wasn't an intercom, there was a gun in his room but if theyhadthe code, he didn't have time to—

—override.

Reston turned away from the screen and started for the door, kicking himself as he hurried out of control. There was a manual override switch in a hidden panel next to the elevator, he could keep the lift down even if they had the entrance numbers—

—and the teams will come and collect our little pack

He smiled, a smile entirely without humor, and broke into a run.

Leon watched anxiously as David typed in another string of numbers, hoping their presence hadn't been detected yet. He hadn't seen a camera, but that didn't mean there wasn't one; if Umbrella could build massive underground laboratories and create monsters, they could hide a video camera.

David hit a final key—and there was sound and movement at once, the low hiss of hidden hydraulics, the distant hum of an engine. A giant piece of the wall to the right of the keypad slid upward. As one, all five of them raised weapons—and lowered them again when they saw the thick mesh gate and the black and empty elevator shaft behind it.

"Damn," John said, a tone of awe in his voice, and

Leon had to agree. The panel was ten feet across, thick and heavy with machinery, and had completely disappeared into the ceiling in two seconds. Whatever mechanism was operating it was exceptionally powerful.