He still didn’t move.
Mildred reached for his hand. “Trust me, John. Or humor me. We can always use that Medisterile unit to decontaminate ourselves.”
J.B. took her hand, and they went through the office and out into the corridor. A dozen yards to their right, they saw Krysty walking toward them. The expression on her finely chiseled face was strangely fixed, her eyes wide but unblinking.
Gesturing to her, J.B. called in a loud whisper, “Krysty! You all right?”
The Titian-haired woman’s deliberate, measured stride didn’t falter. Her eyes didn’t flick toward them. Without a word or a sign of acknowledgment, she turned into the open door of the shower room.
“What’s wrong with her?” J.B. demanded. “She sleepwalking or what?”
Mildred pulled at his sleeve. “Ryan’ll look after her. Come on.”
J.B. and Mildred walked quickly down the corridor to the disk-shaped steel portal. She tapped in the entry code, and the hatch rolled aside. Beyond it, the maze of sterile equipment glittered beneath the cold fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. The big room was broodingly silent and lifeless.
J.B. followed Mildred in, his sallow complexion worsening under the harsh, unflattering lights. He and Mildred walked down the aisle between two long trestle tables bearing large-scale fermentation tanks, a purification system and petri dishes.
A massive electron microscope stood on a separate table. In one corner, Mildred saw an oscilloscope, a fluoroscope and a stainless-steel liquid-nitrogen tank. The lid was open, revealing the honeycomb pattern of individual containers that had once held fertilized human embryos. J.B. followed her around the scientific labyrinth. She paused to examine much of the equipment, muttering beneath her breath.
Mildred stooped in front of a small refrigerator and twisted the latch. Cool air spilled out. “It still works.”
Looking over her shoulder, J.B. saw dozens of small capped bottles resting on wire shelves. Mildred picked up a few, excitedly reading the labels aloud. “Penicillin, Aureomycin, Terramycin, streptomycin… tetracyclines!”
“What are all those?” J.B. asked.
Mildred stood, shutting the door of the refrigerator. “Broad-spectrum antibiotics. Before we leave this place, we’re taking as many of the nonperishable ones as we can carry. I’ll look around for syringes.”
J.B. nodded. “Okay. And what else are we looking for?”
Mildred walked to the far, armaglass-covered wall. Peering through a pane, she saw a cylindrical hyperbaric chamber and other instruments and pieces of equipment that were unfamiliar to her. She found a door set between a pair of armagiass slabs and opened it.
“Now what?” J.B. demanded anxiously.
On the wall were six rectangular metal panels. Only two bore small, burnished plates beneath toggle switches. Mildred bent, peering at one of the plates. Aloud, she read, “Epsilon Subject, Female. Three Months. Phase Three.”
She thumbed the toggle. The panel swung open on oiled pivots, and an oblong, transparent canister slid out upon a steel frame. Inside the tube, covered by a sheet of plastic, lay the skeletal remains of an infant.
“Dark night,” J.B. breathed. “A baby.”
“Yeah,” Mildred replied sadly. “A baby born to serve a specific function in a world she never made.”
She pushed the tube back, closed the panel and stepped to the next one. The ID plate read Alpha Subject, Male. 2.2 Years. Phase Three.
Flipping the toggle, the door popped open and another canister slid out. It contained nothing but air.
“This is what I was afraid of,” Mildred said grimly. “He awakened.”
“Who awakened?” J.B.’s tone mirrored her tension, though it was heavy with exasperation.
She pushed the canister back, slamming the panel shut. “Get everybody up. Things want us to talk about them.”
Chapter Seven
Krysty and Ryan stepped out of the shower room just as J.B. and Mildred came swiftly down the corridor. Their postures telegraphed their anxiety to Ryan, and he snapped instantly to an alert mode.
“Strategy-session time,” Mildred said.
“Why?”
“Get everybody together.” Her dark, pretty face was set in tense lines. “I only want to tell this story once. That might be all we have time for.”
It took a few minutes to rouse Dean, Jak and Doc. Yawning, they stumbled into the kitchen, knuckling sleep sand from their eyes, and took places around the table.