Vagabonds

Chapter Thirty-One: Breaking Things

Eliza grinned.

"Sorry, we're coming." But before she could do anything, Moose was wrapping long, thin fingers around her wrist and dragging her toward the barrack. "Ow, ow, wait, too fast." But she couldn't help laughing when she saw Aquila's expression.

"Moose, we've talked about this," he said, folding his arms.

But the bespectacled boy was vibrating, bouncing between them like a ping-pong ball.

"They were dillydallying. We have the thingy to do!"

"Thingy," Aquila said, shaking his head. "How inspiring."

"W-we have exactly t-three minutes before my t-trojan takes h-hold," Tero said in a hushed voice, gesturing around the corner. "I j-just heard the g-guard patrol walk p-past."

Aquila rolled his shoulders. "Ok everyone, it's go time."

"Ooh, how original," Moose whispered, but no one laughed. The patrolling guards had reminded them all of the danger, the weight on their mission.

And the consequences if they failed.

Eliza swallowed and gestured forward.

"Lead the way," she said, smiling at Aquila.

He didn't smile back, his face as serious as if it were carved from stone. He stepped around the corner, tugging the group behind him like eddies of water. The seven intruders made their way silently to the only door they could see, a plain white rectangle embedded in the sleek wall, marked only by a simple plaque.

Fitzgerald Labs.

Eliza couldn't help the goosebumps that popped out along her arms. The last time she'd been here haunted her memories. She could still see the soldiers flying around, the dark-haired woman, that man.

Was he a victim of this Superman Virus? Had they tried to turn him into a super-solder?

Why hadn't it worked?

They slammed into the wall, Moose darting back and forth to check for anything Tero hadn't been prepared for.

"Looks clear," Moose said, returning with a salute.

"A-any minute n-now," Tero said, bent over a tiny security screen.

Suddenly, the screen flashed. The door hissed open, sliding noiselessly into the wall.

"Alright everyone," Aquila said, his voice as tight as his shoulders. "Stay together. And don't touch anything."

He led the way, closely followed by Tero, Moose, and a pale Tori. Eliza waited, letting Otto elbow Daisy to get him moving.

And then she was inside.

It looked exactly as she'd thought it would, like the pristine interior of a medical ward. Narrow halls and high-tech locks, cameras coating every surface.

She glanced up at the nearest one, but no red light blinked back at her.

Deactivated.

"Well done, batman," Moose said, returning from a length of the hall, having checked every single camera in the seconds it had taken the rest of them to file inside.

"D-don't c-call me —"

"Yeah, yeah, okay." Moose flapped a hand. "It looks like there's extra security down there, at the end. And stairs! Lots of stairs!"

"Don't get excited," Aquila muttered, but Moose was already disappearing down the corridor.

"I-I'll start hacking into the s-system," Tero said, fingers feeling over the nearest security keyboard.

"I'll help," Tori said, leaning over the monitor on the wall, muttering to Tero as she helped him find a port for his handheld tablet.

Eliza drifted down the hallway, leaving them behind. Why was it so empty? She'd been braced for a fight, had come in praying that no one else would get shot in whatever chaos bloomed out of their break-in. But Tero had managed to turn off the cameras without issue and they hadn't seen a single soldier beyond the patrol that had walked right past them.

Something was wrong.

Following a deep instinct that she couldn't explain, even to herself, Eliza ambled toward Moose, who was lingering at the mouth of a dark staircase that twisted into the ground. But she didn't quite reach him. Something compelled her to stop at a door, a simple swinging thing with a key-card lock, the panel dead from Tero's attack. It was probably a broom closet or bathroom or something equally innocuous.

But why would they lock a bathroom?

She curled her fingers around the handle. Waited a moment.

And opened it.

What the...?

As her eyes adjusted to the strange red glow of the room beyond and she saw the huge screens, the enormous tubes of gel-like liquid, the beds, she suddenly wished that Tero's hack-job hadn't worked so well.

"Holy shit," Eliza breathed, stepping inside.

There, spread out before her like the most surreal carpet, was row after row after row of empty cots, hooked up to blinking machinery. Around the edge of the room, pulsing scarlet, were pillars of fluid moving like eerie lava-lamps, sprouting tubes that snaked around the room like tree roots.

Or veins.

"Guys!"

Moose's call made her swing around in time to see the thin boy darting between cots and wires. His head seemed to blur as he cast around, absorbing the room orders of magnitude faster than she had.

Aquila swung around the door frame, stumbling as he took in what was inside.

"Woah," he whispered.

"Oh my god?" Tori breathed.

Tero was already at the nearest computer, plugging in his tablet as Otto read the screen over his shoulder.

"Says here this is for the secondary trials, after they complete mission Labrador, whatever that means," Otto said as Tori hovered behind him, biting her nails. "And that red shit on the wall... that's the virus. Apparently it's the strongest version they've made so far. Zeus line. But it's not... stabilized. Stabilized? What the fuck does that mean?"

Tero straightened, his hands dropping, stepping back from the monitor. He turned to face them, and his milky eyes yanked everyone's gaze in, holding their attention with an inescapable gravity that made Eliza's hair stand on end.

"T-that's w-why they're h-hunting us," Tero said, his words quiet but carrying, filling the red-tinted room. "T-they haven't m-managed to stabilize the m-mutation."

"What do you mean?" Aquila asked. They all hung on Tero's next words.

"T-they're trying to r-recreate what that scientist d-d-did to us," Tero said, gaping sightlessly at the beds, the tubes, the twisting IV lines. "O-our DNA h-held the mutation. F-f-for some reason, t-theirs d-doesn't."

"Why?" Eliza asked.

"Well asked, Ms. Mason," came a cold voice from the doorway. "We've been wondering the very same thing."