Arcadium (24 page)

What can I do?
What power do I have against thirty heavy-handed scientists?

At this moment
I just want to grab Liss and run. A few weeks ago I would have. But
I can’t leave Kean and Henry wondering. And I can’t leave Trouble
to the mercy of the scientists… whatever it is they want from
him.

I turn back and
run down the hall. When I reach the door to the basement I don’t
even hesitate. I take the stairs at a run and hope Kean is still
sorting rubbish where I left him.

The smell tells
me I’m close and I slow, definitely not needing any more attention.
I peer around the corner and my heart jumps when I see him, even
though he’s nearly elbow deep in brown muck.

There are all
sorts of rubbish moving noises, clinking and squelching and all
sorts, so when I throw a loose tin can at him he starts and turns,
but no one else notices.

The second he
sees me he strips off his gloves, casting a glance over his
shoulder, and jogs over. I turn and stride back into the hallway
and he follows me. “What is it?”

Finally I stop.
He stares at me shaking his head.

I can barely
say the words. “They took Trouble.”

“Who? Who took
him?”

“The
scientists. We were in our room and they didn’t see me in my bunk
and they got him on the ground and dragged him away. I didn’t know
what to do.”

Kean is
blinking rapidly, his mind whirring into action.

“I couldn’t
follow him. They were everywhere.”

Kean nods. “You
did the right thing. Damn it. What can we do? Can we get in
there?”

“What could
they want with him? Is it punishment for leaving work early?”

Kean’s face is
pulled taut with a grimace. “The boss pulled me aside for a word
and when I got back Trouble was gone. They told me he’d cut his
hand and they were looking after him.” He looks away. “I believed
them.”

“It doesn’t
matter,” I say and start walking back to the stairs. “We’ll go back
to the room, wait for Liss and Henry. We’ll get Trouble back and
then get the hell out of this place.”

“Yep.” He
follows. “I feel helpless.”

“I’m the one
that got us here in the first place. This is my fault.”

He touches my
arm. “The outbreak isn’t your fault. This isn’t your fault.”

We’re almost at
the stairs when the door above opens. Heavy footsteps begin down
toward us, as does a whistled tune.

Kean’s eyes go
wide. “It’s the slave driver.” He grabs my wrist and moves to run
back the way we came but I pull him toward the biohazard door. This
is the last place I want to be heading back into but there’s no
choice. We need cover now.

I punch in the
code and hope the whistling covers the tiny beep. The footsteps are
so close, as we push through the door the whistling stops and I
hold my breath. Kean holds the door open a crack because it’s too
late to let it close and risk making a noise. He watches through
the gap.

I keep my eyes
on him, for a few harrowing seconds, and then he breathes a thin
sigh of relief. Kean looks over his shoulder and follows my gaze.
“Close,” he whispers.

“We’re not free
yet,” I say, eyeing the bags full of infected bodies.

“Are
they…?”

“Yep.”

His mouth hangs
open for a brief moment. “Let’s move. We have to get out of
here.”

We jog up the
stairs, down the long silent hallway and head back to our sleeping
quarters.

Chapter
21

I lean a hand
against the bunk bed ladder and Kean stands with his back to the
door. I search my mind for a plan but all we can do is go in
blindly. And that’s too risky. But how do I just let Trouble go? I
don’t know what’s better, going out in a blaze of glory for love,
or slinking out the back to live a long and haunted life.

“If we go now
we could get him back,” Kean says.

“If we get
caught Liss and Henry won’t have a clue what’s going on.” I look
over at him. “We have to wait. We have to trust that Trouble can
keep himself alive long enough for us to get to him. We have to be
a team, Kean. We can’t split up now.”

“Ok, so… what?
If we don’t go soon…”

“Go where?” A
husky voice sails down from the top bunk and Jacob sits up.

Kean and I
stare up at him in silence.

And then it
comes to me. “You know, don’t you?” I say to Jacob. “They took
Trouble, dragged him away. What are they going to do to him?”

“Why did they
take him?” Jacob asks.

I climb the
ladder and hang off it so I’m face to face with him. “You said… you
said I didn’t know what was going on here. But there are hundreds
of dead infected in the basement and now scientists are kidnapping
people. Tell me what’s going on.”

Jacob is
frustratingly slow to reply. “It’s not good.”

“Why won’t you
help us?”

Jacob shrugs
and rubs his dark stubble. “You haven’t asked.”

I jump down to
the floor.

“Look.” Jacob
swings his legs around so they’re dangling over the side of his
bunk. “Calm down. There’s nothing you can do right now. This
facility is locked down. Every damned door has a code on it. How do
you think you’re going to get you’re friend back, huh?”

I try to keep
my expression steady and glance back at Kean. But Jacob is too
good, he reads me like I’ve just said it aloud.

“You’ve got the
code, don’t you?” Jacob looks between Kean and I, and begins to
laugh.

“I don’t have
the code.”

“Then I don’t
help.”

“Fine. We don’t
need your help.”

A clink comes
from the door and we all look over. The handle starts to move and
Kean steps forward just before it swings open.

Liss steps
through and takes in the scene with wide eyes. She’s not stupid;
she’s seen enough fear to know when it’s plastered over my face.
Liss looks at Jacob but says nothing, and comes straight to my
side. Kean pokes his head out the door and closes it. “Where’s
Henry?”

“Isn’t he with
you guys? The lady doctor came after lunch and took him. She said
he needed a check up.”

Kean and I just
look at each other. The silence is painful, heavy like a rainstorm
of stones.

“Give him the
code,” Kean says in a low voice. It doesn’t even sound like
him.

I stare
back.

“They have
Henry!” Kean’s words burst out. “Give him the damned code!”

I glance back
at Jacob. He’s watching with calm curiosity.

“What’s going
on?” Liss tugs at my arm.

“We’re leaving
tonight, once we get Henry and Trouble back.”

Liss bites her
lip and stares at me with her big round eyes. And I can’t believe
what I’m about to drag her into.

“How do we get
past all the scientists?” Kean says.

I sit on
Henry’s bunk. “We’ll have to wait until midnight.”

Jacob clears
his throat. “You probably don’t want to wait that long if you want
to get your friends back alive.”

“Why?”

Jacob draws a
short breath and looks between Kean and I. “Once they’re taken the
experiments start within hours.”

Kean covers his
eyes with his palm, blocking out everything, and then slides it
down so it covers his mouth. I don’t know what to do for him; it’d
be like me losing Liss and that would be the end for me. There
aren’t words for that kind of thing.

“What
experiment?” I ask.

Jacob tips his
head to one side. “They’re looking for a cure. So they’re going to
need a steady supply of freshly infected. And they aren’t going
outside to collect them when people are coming straight to
them.”

“All those
infected people downstairs…” I look at Kean. “They all came from
inside Arcadium.”

“A fresh pool
of ignorant subjects to pick from.” Jacob leans forward, hands on
his knees. “Any gender, any age they want, it’s all here. They
control everything.”

Kean drops his
hand. “This isn’t a sanctuary, it’s a trap.”

But something
doesn’t add up for me. I frown at Jacob. “If you know this, why did
you come here?”

“You know, I
can sit here all day and answer your questions, but aren’t you
trying to save your friends?”

“He’s right,”
Kean says. “We have to go now. Maybe if we had some kind of
distraction we could slip through unnoticed.”

Jacob slips off
the top bunk and lands on his feet with a resounding thud. He looks
straight at me. “You give me the code and I’ll make sure you get
your distraction.”

I wait a few
seconds, just in case a brighter plan comes to mind. I don’t know
why Jacob wants the code so badly but I guess there’s the only way
out.

I want Henry
and Trouble back, so there’s no choice. Finally I meet his eyes.
“Better be a big distraction.”

Jacob’s mouth
morphs into a wide grin. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Even with a
distraction, how are we supposed to find them?” Kean says. “We’ll
be running around blind.”

“Not exactly,”
I say. “I’ve seen the labs. If we can get to the surveillance room
we’ll be able to find out exactly where they’re being kept.”

Jacob is still
grinning. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

Chapter
22

Kean glances in
both directions before we file out of the room. Everything’s gone
decidedly stealth, just like on the outside. We half walk, half
run, arms linked together, leaving Jacob to trail along behind.

“Won’t Adrian
still be in there?” Kean asks as we round the corner.

“I don’t know.”
He’s right. Adrian could be anywhere and I get the feeling he’s not
going to approve of us leaving. “Stand back, I’ll check.”

I knock twice
on the surveillance room door and listen to the twin sounds echo in
the empty space. “You want the code?” I say, raising my thumb to
the code box. “Gather round.”

I punch in the
digits and hear the tiny beep.

“Hey presto,”
Jacob says, glancing over his shoulder. He pushes open the door and
we follow him in.

“Whoa.” Kean
glances around. “What happened here?”

I sidestep out
of a puddle of juice that’s leaking from a cracked glass bottle
abandoned on the floor. The rest of the lunch Adrian collected is
currently strewn about the place, splattered against the walls,
crumbling across the desk surrounded by shreds of torn brown paper.
Yogurt drips down the right bank of monitors.

Jacob steps on
some broken bottle glass and swipes it out of the way with his
foot.

“Careful,” I
whisper and press Liss up against the back wall.

“Seriously, who
is this guy?” Kean says, grabbing some paper and clearing the right
monitors of dripping dairy product.

“He doesn’t
want us to leave.”

Kean drops the
paper and studies the monitors. “He doesn’t want
you
to
leave. He doesn’t even know we exist.”

I search the
monitors for signs of Henry and Trouble. The decontamination unit
is clear, as is the first row of labs. There are scientists
everywhere though, typing at computers, hovering at benches,
reading paperwork as they cross through the halls.

My eyes narrow
and I peer at one of the screens. “There, what’s that?”

Kean leans
forward. “That’s them. Where are they?”

Henry’s sitting
on the floor and Trouble is pacing back and forth in the small
glass cage. The room has four more cages, each holding another two
people.

“These are all
labs.” I point at the row of monitors. “It’s like one long line of
rooms and you need the code to get through each door.”

“So the deeper
in they are, the slower it is to get to them,” Kean says.

A voice comes
from behind. “What are you doing?”

We all spin
around and my heart seizes in my chest. Adrian is hovering in the
doorframe, staring at us with mild confusion. His eyes land on me
and his expression changes, his eyes darken, his lips peel back,
his whole stance moves to attack mode.

I just stand
there and open my mouth to make up an excuse but Jacob gets there
first. He takes one look at Adrian’s face, sees the name on his
uniform and head-butts him.

Adrian stumbles
away but Jacob catches a handful of his jacket and drags him back
in the room. The door closes and Jacob has Adrian pressed up
against the concrete wall. “Get something to tie him up with!”
Jacob yells.

We start going
through the draws, pulling out useless paper and stationary.

“Packing tape?”
Kean says, holding up a roll.

“Bring it
here.”

Jacob wrestles
Adrian’s hands into place while trying to keep his mouth pressed
into the wall. Adrian squirms against his grip and the concrete
muffles his cries for help. I watch, only for a moment, and turn
back to the monitors. I know what the first lab room looks like,
and that’s in the top corner, completely empty. If I count along,
Henry and Trouble appear on monitor twelve, so my guess is they’re
twelve rooms deep in the conga line of laboratories.

Suddenly
there’s movement on their monitor. Two broad shouldered scientists
head towards the first of the glass cages, the ones at the opposite
end to Henry and Trouble. I watch, eyes glued to the black and
white figures, gripping the edge of the desk. The two scientists
enter the cage and pin down the occupants, one at a time. A third
scientist enters and holds up a strange gun looking thing. In
seconds she presses it into the leg of each occupant, and then all
three retreat out of the cage, sealing the glass door again.

The two
occupants react differently. One scuttles back into the far corner,
inspecting her leg while the other jumps up and goes nuts, banging
against the glass and screaming.

The scientists
remove their gloves, wash their hands in a long metal trough and
return to the benches. The two burly looking ones pick up
clipboards and return to the glass box, writing notes as they
observe the occupants. One looks at his wristwatch. The third
skinny scientist has replaced her thick gloves and is fiddling with
the injection gun. She reloads it carefully with a small syringe
sized cartridge and places it down. She’s talking to the other
scientists now. They converse for a moment, then drop their
clipboards on a side desk and move along to the next cage.