“Ignore her,” Nate advised. “Let’s just concentrate on proving her wrong.”
Belinski nodded his agreement, and they moved cautiously toward the hallway that led to the fire stairs.
“If you lay down your weapons and surrender,” Thea said, “I will be merciful and let you live.”
Nate almost laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. “You were willing to kill thousands of innocents in the Basement to get to us, and now you want us to believe you’re not going to kill us? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“One of the things that drove your father crazy about you was your assumption that everything that happened had to be about you,” Thea said, and Nate had to clamp his jaws shut against a surge of fury that she would even talk about his father after murdering him. “I know you don’t think very highly of me,” she continued, “but surely you don’t think I’m foolish enough to use bombs to swat flies.”
Belinski’s point men made it to the corner and peeked around. The point men gave the okay, and they all rounded the corner and headed toward the fire stairs and the heavy metal door that blocked them. One of the men gave the handle an experimental tug downward, but no one was surprised when it remained locked. There was a card reader and a keypad on the wall beside the door, but Thea could no doubt block that even if they had the proper card and code.
“Do you honestly think I bombed the Basement on the off chance that one of my bombs might hit you?” Thea asked, sounding incredulous.
Nate knew he should take his own advice and just ignore Thea’s voice, but he found himself responding against his better judgment.
“If it wasn’t about us, then what was it about?” he asked.
One of Belinski’s men produced what looked like a tube of toothpaste from somewhere beneath his jacket. He squatted in front of the door and squeezed a line of off-white paste from the tube onto the area around the locking mechanism. He capped the tube while another of the men unspooled a length of wire so thin it was almost invisible, sticking one end into the paste and clipping it down to a length of about a foot.
“Do you have any idea how much money Paxco throws into the black hole you call the Basement?” Thea asked. “All to support people who are of no use to society, who are in fact harmful to society. They peddle drugs and contraband, they steal from legitimate citizens, they murder, they rape. The list goes on. And Paxco pays for the privilege of supporting them.”
Nate fought a shudder as he and Nadia shared a horrified look. Bad enough to think that Thea was okay with causing massive collateral damage in an attempt to kill them, but to think that her ultimate goal had been to destroy the Basement entirely … that all those helpless people had been not collateral damage, but targets.
“Paxco will recoup the cost of the military strike in no time,” Thea said with a hint of gloating in her voice, “and we will no longer have to spend our hard-earned money on supporting the dregs of society. We will reclaim the land, and I will have the funds I need to continue my work.”
“We’re going to want to stand around the corner,” Belinski said. He sounded brisk and unruffled, but the look in his eyes said he was hearing everything Thea was saying with the same sense of mounting horror as Nate felt. If any of them had doubted before that destroying Thea was a goal worth risking their lives for, they didn’t now.
“Does your security team always carry explosives when on bodyguard duty?” Nadia asked Belinski with an arch of her brow.
“Only when there’s a possibility we might have to blast our way through doors,” he answered. “I figured even in the best-case scenario, we might encounter immovable obstacles on our way down to the subbasement.”
Everyone except for the man lighting the fuse took shelter, and when he came pelting around the corner, they all covered their ears.
A loud boom shook the hallway, followed by the metallic clink of debris raining down on the tile floor. The door had been blown open, and the stairwell beyond gaped enticingly.
They hurried down the hallway, their feet crunching on debris as they went. There was an acrid, burning smell in the air, and Nate had to stifle a cough. They slowed down when they neared the door, one of the guards taking point again and motioning for everyone else to wait.
His caution was well warranted. He was still five feet from the door when a shot rang out from somewhere above. The shot just missed. Belinski’s man threw himself backward, but a second shot caught him before he was out of range. His colleague shot off a barrage of cover fire while Marco herded the rest of them back toward the corner.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Thea’s voice mocked. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider your options. I’m sure we can reach some kind of mutually beneficial agreement, Mr. Chairman, if we sit down to talk, just the two of us.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Belinski said.
The lights suddenly went out, leaving the hallway in utter darkness. In the event of a blackout, there should have been emergency lighting and illuminated exit signs, but there was nothing. The heavy protective shutters over the windows blocked out any hint of distant daylight.
“You had better hope we can reach an agreement,” Thea said. “I don’t foresee any positive outcomes on your horizon if you continue being so difficult.”
Nate had slowed down when the lights went out, and Belinski’s bodyguard had stopped shooting. It seemed like the darkness, while annoying and disorienting, would make it easier for them to stay hidden and escape. But Thea wouldn’t have turned off the lights if she didn’t think it was to her advantage.
“Keep moving,” Marco growled under his breath, and there was an unmistakable sense of urgency in his tone.
With a chill of renewed alarm, Nate realized that just because he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face didn’t mean Thea’s people had the same problem. They had access to the Fortress’s arsenal, and there was enough gear in there to stage a small war.
“Hurry!” Nate shouted, sprinting for the corner he could no longer see and dragging Nadia stumbling behind him. “They can see!”
Nate put one hand on the wall so he would know when they reached the corner. Just as they did, the hallway lit with the white flashes of automatic weapon fire.
In those brief flashes, Nate saw men in full combat gear and wearing night vision goggles spilling out of the emergency stairwell. The last of Belinski’s bodyguards was bringing up the rear, firing over his shoulder while Marco pushed Belinski in front of him, using his own body as a shield. But a handgun was no match for automatic weapons, and as Nate and Nadia careened around the corner, the gunfire stopped.
“Go!” Marco yelled, and for once Nate had no issue with taking orders. In a manner of minutes, Thea had killed—or at least incapacitated—four of Belinski’s five guards. The rest of them didn’t stand a chance unless they could find some way to put a barrier between themselves and the security officers.
Apparently, Marco had the same thought, because he brought them all to a sudden halt, right around what Nate guessed was the conference room door.
“Inside!” the man ordered, just as their pursuers rounded the corner and started firing.
Nate dove through the door, dragging Nadia with him. The muzzle flashes were blinding, but in their glare, he saw Belinski standing in the doorway, gun firing into the darkness. Marco unceremoniously shoved Belinski through the door, pulling it shut with one hand while still shooting with the other hand.
Nate would have liked to open the door and pull Marco in, but the man had made his decision and was buying them what little time he could. There was no point in wasting it.
“Help me block the door!” Nadia said, and he could hear her shoving chairs out of the way so she could get to the conference table.
Nate tripped over the body of one of the dead Replicas in his haste to get to the table. There was a lock on the conference room door, but it wouldn’t work with no power. That meant the only way to keep Thea’s men out w
as to block it physically.
Together, he and Nadia toppled the table and manhandled it around until one end was shoved up under the handle of the door and the other was braced against the wall. The table was too big to fit in the room sideways, so the impromptu blockade was at an angle. It would slow down anyone trying to get into the room, but it wouldn’t stop them.
The lights suddenly went on, blinding in their brilliance.
“I am becoming annoyed with you,” Thea said.
Outside the door, the gunfire had ceased, which no doubt meant Marco was dead—and the rest of Thea’s security squad would soon be at the door. Still blinking in the sudden light, Nate hastily hit the lock on the door. Its indicator light briefly flashed red, then flashed back to green again.
“The doors will obey my will, not yours,” Thea said smugly.
Nate cursed, realizing they were trapped. He’d had hopes that they could block the main door, then exit through the door at the head of the table, but of course its red indicator light was on. Which explained why Thea had suddenly turned the power back on—she wanted them trapped in this room.
“Nate!” Nadia cried, and he turned to see her crouching beside Belinski, who sat on the floor with his back to the wall. There was a large patch of blood on his pants right above his knee.
Belinski’s face was pale and sweaty as he put his hands over the wound and applied pressure. He closed his eyes and let out a strained breath. “It won’t kill me,” he said, pain evident in his voice. “But I won’t be doing any more running.”
“Perhaps now you will acknowledge your defeat,” Thea said. “If you surrender now, I will spare your life, Mr. Chairman. Once you come to understand my vision for Paxco’s future, I think you will find it is to our mutual advantage to work together.”
Nate didn’t have to tell Belinski that Thea was lying through her nonexistent teeth. She no doubt had a Replica of Belinski available, and once she took care of the real Belinski, she’d put her Replica in his place. Worst of all, Belinski had had a scan when he first arrived in Paxco—it had been part of the marriage agreement he and Nate’s father had arranged—which probably meant Thea could extract all the Chairman’s knowledge from his brain. No one would ever be able to prove the Replica wasn’t really Belinski.
Whether Belinski realized all this or not, he evidently had no interest in cutting a deal. He took one hand off his wound to pull the gun out of his pocket. He swept his gaze around the room, fixating on the security camera discreetly located in the far corner.
“This is your last chance, Mr. Chairman,” Thea’s voice warned, and Nate realized it was coming from the security camera.
Belinski realized the same thing and smiled grimly. Then he raised his gun and fired one shot, and the camera exploded in a shower of glass shards.
“Any more generous offers you’d like to make?” Belinski asked, but this time Thea didn’t answer. “I suspect her mike and speaker are in the camera housing,” he said in a low voice, “but let’s keep our voices down just in case.”
Nate wasn’t sure they had a whole lot to talk about. There was no way out. Unless …
Something banged into the door, making the conference table shudder. Belinski scooted over so that his back was now against the table, using his body weight to help hold it steady.
Nate glanced up at the ceiling. The white paneled ceiling. The kind that was used when there were things behind it maintenance workers might have to get to. Nadia and Belinski both followed his gaze.
“I don’t think I’m up to acrobatics,” Belinski said, then had to stop a moment to breathe through what looked like a wave of pain. “You two have to go on without me.”
Nate and Nadia both let out sounds of protest, but Belinski spoke right over them.
“Find Colonel Bradford in my contacts, and send him the message I’m about to record,” he said, pulling out his phone. “We have to get those missiles flying. It’s the only way we can be sure she can’t seize control of Synchrony—and its military—by Replicating me.”
“Would your man really order a missile strike based on a recording?” Nate asked. Sending missiles against a foreign nation was surely something Bradford would be reluctant to do in the best of circumstances, and considering how easily recordings could be manipulated …
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Belinski said as someone or something banged on the door again. The edge of the table slipped a tiny bit, despite Belinski’s weight against it. Nate shoved it back into place with his shoulder.
“I’ll make sure he knows it’s from me. I can’t guarantee he’ll act on the orders, but I think he will.”
Belinski opened his phone and pointed it at himself. He looked terrible, sweat beading on his almost gray skin, but there was no sign of fear or despair in his eyes. He looked to Nate like the kind of man people would obey without question.
Belinski identified himself and gave only the briefest explanation of the circumstances. “If any of the witnesses to the board meeting survive, they will be able to confirm my story,” he said. “But even if you can’t confirm what I’ve told you, rest assured that what I am doing is just and right.”
He ordered Colonel Bradford to launch his missiles at the Fortress, giving a long authorization code that must have been a bear to memorize.
“I’ll try to get out,” Belinski finished, “but I don’t like my chances. If I die, know that it’s for a good cause.” He smiled weakly. “And if I don’t make it back, there’s something I have to get off my chest: I was the one who sent Judy Perkins that valentine in your name when we were kids.” The smile faded. “Good-bye, old friend,” he said, then ended the recording.
Nadia cocked her head at Belinski, and his smile came back for a brief curtain call. “When we were ten,” he explained, “there was this beautiful eleven-year-old we both admired. Neither one of us had the guts to talk to her. I made her a Valentine’s Day card but chickened out at the last moment and signed Rob’s name to it. He always thought his older brother did it to humiliate him, and I was too embarrassed by what I’d done to tell the truth. He’ll know the message is genuine.”
Nate took the phone from Belinski’s hand, then gave it to Nadia. “You’ll need my help to get up there,” Nate said, “so you should go first. And whoever goes first should have the phone.”
But he already knew there was no “first” here. He could probably get himself up through the ceiling without a boost by standing on one of the chairs, but that would mean leaving Belinski here by himself. Thea might be keeping the door at the head of the table locked to ensure they didn’t escape, but if they didn’t do something about it, she could just line her men up outside that door and unlock it at her convenience.
Nadia gave him a knowing look, not fooled for a moment by his words. Tears swam in her eyes.
“You know you have to do it,” he said. “And you know I have to stay. The longer we can keep them out, the longer before Thea knows you’re not in the room.” He nodded at the locked door. “I’m going to have to try to block that one.” He suspected the best way to do that was to pile bodies in front of it, but he wasn’t about to mention that part to Nadia. And he didn’t much want to think about it himself.
Nadia shook her head doubtfully. “You think she doesn’t know about the ceiling?”
“Probably,” Nate admitted. “But it’s that or we all sit here together and wait for them to blow the door—or come through the ceiling themselves. And assuming that camera was her only way to see in here, at least if you’re up there, she won’t be sure where you are.”
“Just because I can get out of this room doesn’t mean I can get out of the building.”
“If you can get into the Chairman’s office somehow, there will be an emergency escape route, just like the one in Headquarters. It’ll take you straight outside.” Once she somehow, miraculously, got out of this room and into the office.
The door shuddered under another impact, and t
his time Belinski couldn’t hold back a cry of pain as he tried with all his might to keep the brace from slipping. The table scraped off some paint from the wall as it skidded over about half an inch. Once again, Nate set his shoulder to it and forced it back into place.
“We’ve got to hurry,” he said. “I know you don’t want to leave us here, but you have to.”
Nadia swallowed hard, and a tear trickled down her cheek. But she dashed it away and nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”
Her face set with fearsome determination, Nadia crouched beside one of the dead Replicas and took the gun he’d been about to draw when his link to Thea had been cut.
Keeping a nervous eye on the locked door’s indicator light, Nate prepared to give Nadia the boost she needed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Even with Nate’s help, getting up into the crawl space behind the ceiling was something of a challenge. Some of the panels were fixed in place, and the first one they managed to open had some kind of duct running over it so there was no room for Nadia to crawl through.
The whole time they were searching for a way up, Nadia was expecting the door to give way, or for Thea’s men to resort to explosives, but when she finally hoisted herself up, both doors were still closed.
There was no time for an emotional parting from Nate. The moment she was up, he raced to the locked door. He hesitated, meeting her eyes as she watched from her perch. His gaze flicked toward the body of one of the dead Replicas, and her stomach turned over as she realized what he was about to do. Best not to watch, she decided.
Forcing herself not to think about anything except the present moment, Nadia put the ceiling tile back in place, then used Belinski’s phone as a flashlight to look around her.
Unsurprisingly, the crawl space was low and claustrophobic. There were ducts and cables everywhere, and in the dim light of the phone she could only see a few feet ahead of herself. Pointing herself in the direction of the door at the head of the conference room, Nadia started to crawl.