Weavers (The Frost Chronicles) (22 page)

Get into that thing? But there was no time to hesitate, no time to be afraid. No time to even think. My heart hammering, I grabbed the edge of the door and hoisted myself up, sliding into the seat he’d indicated. The vehicle smelled like leather and sweat. My throat tightened as Borde reached for the controls. He turned his wrist and I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a purr and a rumble beneath us. We lurched forward, and my eyes flew open again. The wall parted like a curtain and we were flying into the night.

Trees blurred past at a dizzying rate. We were moving faster than a horse at a gallop. My stomach churned as the vehicle tilted left and swerved right. Borde yanked the controls and mashed his hand on a control panel. Branches whipped against the sides of the vehicle and rocks flew past. I clung to the edges of my seat.

Finally, we ground to a stop outside the Labs.

“Quickly,” Borde shouted, throwing open the door and clambering out. I scurried after him, stumbling as I landed on the ground at a run, and together we sped toward the doors to the Lab. Light shone from them, dim light because the hour was late. The only people here now were the night crew and the workers who cleaned, and perhaps a lone researcher or two working long hours.

The doors hissed quietly open, and cold air hit my face as we rushed inside. Borde seemed to know exactly where he was going. He hustled down a staircase without stopping to see if I was following. For an old man, he was shockingly spry.

We reached a long corridor on one of the lower levels. The lights here were dimmer, cooler. The walls were not so smooth, and the floors not so shiny. I’d never been this far down in the Labs, except in Frost time, with Adam. I remembered a room filled with books and overturned tables. The memory rushed past in a flash and was gone, just a tingle of a recollection of dust and Adam’s cool eyes as we pounded down the hall. We skidded to a stop before a door. Borde threw it open, and we burst inside.

The room was empty. A plain desk and a chair greeted us. A single painting hung on the wall, the depiction of a set of mountains. Borde hissed something unintelligible beneath his breath and spun.

“We’re too late,” he said. “He’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

Instead of replying, he ran back into the hall, and I had no choice but to follow again.

We returned to the night and the vehicle, which was purring where we’d left it. Borde climbed back in and barely waited for me to find a seat before we were off, whirling into the darkness and dodging trees and branches once more.

This time, we came to a stop outside the Security Center.

“Come on,” Borde urged me. “I know what he’s doing!”

We descended into the depths of the Center together and ran through the corridors, our footsteps echoing. The halls were empty. Every room we passed was devoid of security workers. The screens blinked and beeped unattended. When we reached the stairs, Borde threw out his hand to stop me. “Wait,” he said. “Do you hear that?”

A faint clanging sound met my ears, like the blaring of a horn over and over. Borde jerked back and pressed his back against the wall.

“No,” he breathed. “No no no. He didn’t.”

“He didn’t what? What’s going on?”

Borde shut his eyes and covered his mouth with one hand. “He activated them.”

“What are you talking about?” I leaned over him, shaking him.

Borde blinked and focused on my face with the same piercing expression he’d looked at me with the first day he’d seen me in the Labs. “Listen to me and listen carefully,” he said, grabbing me by both shoulders. “They turn away at the sign. It’s how we designed them. Here—” He fumbled at his breast pocket and pulled out a card. I saw a flash of blue as he thrust it into my hand. “Keep this with you, and if you show it to them, you’ll be safe. Don’t lose it, because I’m not sure if I’m right—”

“Right about what?”

But he was moving again, this time at a crouch. I dropped low and scuttled after him. I wasn’t about to let him leave me behind.

As we moved down the hall, the blaring sound intensified.

“What is that sound?” I gasped. My ears throbbed as it grew louder.

“It’s an alarm,” Borde muttered. “Letting us know the security channels have been breached.”

Ahead, I saw red lights flashing. My chest squeezed momentarily, a gut reaction to the scarlet glow, but it was simply bulbs in the wall. The blaring sound was emanating from a hole in the wall above the flashing lights, and when we reached the place below it, Borde yanked open a box on the wall and punched in a code. The sound cut off abruptly, and suddenly the hall was so quiet I could hear our harsh breathing in the stillness.

“Better,” Borde muttered. “At least now I can hear myself think. Now come on, before he can get too far.”

Who could get too far? We were at the Security Center—did he mean Jacob? But whose office had we gone to in the Labs? Where was everyone? What was that alarm?

But I didn’t say anything this time, because I’d given up on asking questions of him. I simply followed as we reached a staircase and began to descend. Apprehension churned in my stomach and strung my muscles tight.

We reached a final, familiar hall. I recognized it from the night I’d first spoken to Jacob about the PLD. The sign at the end still proclaimed CAUTION: AUTHORIZED ENTRANCE ONLY.

But this time, like that first time, the door was open.

The darkness beyond gaped like a hungry maw, and Borde slowed as he approached it. He waved me back against the wall, and I pressed my shoulder blades to the cold stone. I watched as he crept forward and peered inside, and then he turned his head to look at me.

“Hurry,” he breathed, and I joined him.

We slipped into the cavernous room, the one where Jacob and I had first discussed the PLD. I hadn’t seen the interior of it before because everything had been dark, but now lights glittered like stars at the top of a lofty ceiling, faintly illuminating the room. My mouth fell open. Vast doors formed the far wall, and girders of steel crisscrossed the roof. Shelves formed a maze before us, a forest of metal. A swath of open floor stained with grease and dark patches of liquid lay between us and the doors. At the far end, I saw vehicles.

“He’s here somewhere, I know it,” Borde murmured. “Come on.”

Faintly, at the edge of my awareness, I heard a clink.

Borde heard it, too. “This way,” he said, and took off down one of the right-side rows. I followed at a run, focusing on keeping my footsteps as silent as possible.

Adam’s training from before came flooding into my mind, giving me confidence. I moved smoothly, surely. I ran my gaze over the shelves, looking for ways to scale them if necessary, looking for any signs of threat just as he’d taught me to do. Ahead, Borde had reached the end of the row. He waited for me. When I joined him, he opened his mouth to speak.

The scuffle of an errant shoe came from the left. He froze, laid a hand on my arm, and lifted both eyebrows to signal that he’d heard it, too.

Ahead, in the shadows, I saw furtive movement. A figure clad in white slipped past us, heading for the vehicles and the massive doors in the wall.

Whoever it was, he was trying to escape.

Borde motioned for me to wait, and then he leaped out from his hiding place. “Gordon!” he shouted, and the word echoed all around us.

I looked. The figure stopped, turned. I sucked in my breath.

The dark-haired man, the one who had gazed at me so suspiciously. Doctor Gordon.

“Borde,” he said, and his lips curled. “You found me.”

“I knew you would run like a dog with his tail between his legs if you ever got your hands on the device, yes,” Borde snarled. “But you aren’t going to get away with this. You think I’m just going to let you steal all my research? Give me the device.”

“Never. When I take it to the south and sell it as my own, then it will be my research, and if you try to claim otherwise, then you’ll be the one who stole it,” Gordon said. His gaze flicked to me, and he smirked. “No security guards?”

“They’ve all fled, just as you planned when you violated every security code we have—”

“Oh come,” Gordon said with a low laugh, a chuckle that sent a chill trickling down my spine from the sheer malice of it. “Surely you’re just as eager to see them in action as I am.”

Borde was silent. His fingers twitched at his sides. He looked at Gordon’s shoulder, and beneath the man’s jacket I noticed the same thing Borde did—a long, straight bulge down the back. The device! He had it slung on his back, beneath his coat.

“The device...how did you even—”

“I saw you talking to her,” Gordon said, jerking his head at me. “And I followed her to your private lab. I heard what she said about the device.”

“But how did you steal it?” I burst out, unable to keep silent any longer.

“That little redhead was more than willing to tell me where your room was in exchange for something she needed.”

I sucked in my breath. Claire had betrayed us?

“Give me the device,” Borde repeated. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a box. “Or I’ll call the Labs right now.”

Gordon smiled and tipped his head to one side, ignoring Borde’s threat. “Admit it. You aren’t afraid of them; they won’t attack you. Oh yes, I know about your little DNA failsafe.”

What wouldn’t attack him?

I looked from Borde to Gordon, but their faces gave me no indication of what they meant. Guards? The workers from the Security Center? And what failsafe was he talking about?

Gordon noticed my confusion, and his smile widened.

“She doesn’t even know about them, does she? Otherwise she wouldn’t dare be here.”

“She is braver than you realize,” Borde snapped. “And besides, she is not defenseless against them.”

I remembered the card in my hand. I lowered my gaze and turned it over. It was white, with an image of a blue flower.

A snow blossom?

Dread knifed me in the gut. “Know what?” I asked, and my voice came out as just a whisper in the sudden silence.

The scrape of metal claws against stone made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I turned so slowly, almost as if I were swimming in mud, as if my limbs had become paralyzed. A red gleam met my eyes, but it was not the lights from the hall.

It was the glow of eyes.

A Watcher.

I COULDN’T MOVE, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

There was a Watcher here, in this warehouse, in the Security Center.

And neither Gordon nor Borde seemed surprised by it.

The creature was medium-sized, larger than the vehicle we’d rode to the Security Center in, but smaller than any Watcher I’d see before. Spikes glittered along its back and down a lashing tail. The dog-like head turned to study me, and the massive clawed feet pawed at the ground. It looked like a giant cross between a cat, a wolf, and something else, something unholy and strange.

The blood-red eyes swept over me, casting light across the floor, and the Watcher snarled. Teeth gleamed in a gaping mouth, and the shoulders and haunches bunched as it launched toward me.

“Lia—” Borde began to shout, to warn me, but I was already moving as years of instinct kicked in. I dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the shelf, clutching the card to my chest.

Claws swiped at me, snagging my uniform and shredding the sleeve but narrowly missing breaking the skin. I thrust the card at the creature, remembering Borde’s words, but the red wasn’t reaching beneath the shelf to the darkness where I hid. The Watcher couldn’t see the card I held, so the image wouldn’t stop it from eviscerating me, not here.

I rolled away and hit a wall. I couldn’t squeeze far enough away to be out of reach, so I began to crawl.

“Hey!” Borde shouted, attempting to draw the creature away. What was he doing? Was he mad, calling it to him instead of running?

The Watcher turned its attention from me to Borde and Gordon. Gordon smirked again and held up a sliver of metal that glimmered in the light. Borde clearly recognized it, whatever it was. I heard his sharp intake of breath.

“You idiot,” he exclaimed. “Do you want to doom this whole Compound?”

“I wasn’t the one who created them,” the other man said.

Created them?

I reached the end of the shelves. If I could get across the row, I could climb up the other side and be out of reach. The Watcher was pacing toward Borde and Gordon, snarling. But the men didn’t move. They stared at each other instead of the creature. I wanted to shout for Borde to watch out, but the words caught in my throat.

As I watched, Borde calmly withdrew a knife from his pocket and swiped it across his finger. A line of red appeared and ran down his arm. A single drop of blood splashed to the ground.

The creature stopped.

After an agonizing moment, it turned away from him and moved toward Gordon.

Confusion raced across my mind and sparked through my limbs. How had he turned the Watcher away? What had he done when he’d cut his hand?

But there was no time to think. I wriggled out from under the shelf and sprinted across the row to the other side. Grabbing hold of the support struts, I began to climb. My hands were sweaty, and they slipped on the metal rods that held the massive shelves aloft. I gritted my teeth and kept climbing. Behind me, I heard the snarls of the Watcher. When I reached the first shelf, I turned my head to see what was happening. Would the creature attack Gordon?

He lifted the hand that held the sliver of metal. The Watcher halted, its neck bent at an awkward angle and its claws raking the ground to gain purchase as it slipped. A grinding sound filled the air and the beast shuddered. It took a step back and swung around to look for me again, as if Gordon was invisible to it.

“With the controlling key, I can make it do whatever I want,” Gordon said. “It’s just a machine, after all.”

Just a machine
.

I didn’t understand.

The Watcher whirled and spotted me. With a growl, it sprang in my direction. I scrambled higher, my lungs suddenly squeezed empty of air. The card slipped from my hand and fluttered to the floor like a fallen leaf. I swore. I swung one leg over the next shelf and hoisted myself up.