He ran his hand over his chin. He watched the movie again, studying the havoc it had wreaked. “They say on here we had eighty to two hundred years for us to figure out how to deflect the asteroid and its fragments. But there was one thing these reporters didn’t count on.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“That we wouldn’t continue to learn,” he went on.
She felt sick.
“What about these ruins you found?” he asked.
“They’re under Residence Building A-12.”
“There might be more information there. Something we could use.”
“There could be. But they didn’t know how to stop this thing either. Just a few fragments destroyed an entire city. It says these three fragments are much bigger.” She looked down at her PRD. “This time the destruction is going to be a lot bigger than parts of a single city. And that’s not even the main one that’s going to hit later.”
He fished around in a drawer. Pulling out another PRD, he quickly copied the contents of hers onto it, then handed the new one to her and powered down her old one. “Use this. They can’t track it. I need some time to think.” He hid her PRD in the same drawer and slid it shut.
Suddenly the door behind her slid open. Framed in the opening stood two Repurposers with building security. “We have orders for this one,” one of the Repurposers told Willoughby.
He stood up, hurrying around the side of his desk. “We were just discussing something very important.” He stood in front of her, blocking their way to her. “I told the guard that security wasn’t required. She has news.”
“That isn’t relevant.” The Repurposer moved forward, followed by the members of the security team.
H124’s mouth went dry. She backed up, looking for another exit. A second door stood behind Willoughby’s desk, and she ran for it. The men crashed through the furniture behind her, shouting to each other. She got to the door and wrenched it open. It was a fire door of some kind, opening to a gray utilitarian hallway. She dashed through, her boots sliding on the smooth tile floor.
“Don’t let her leave this building!” a Repurposer shouted.
Not knowing where the corridor led, she ran on, the men close behind.
Chapter 8
She raced down the hall, hurrying to the end of the next corridor. She careened around that corner before the Repurposers saw her. A steel door at the end of the hall opened to a staircase. She slipped inside, taking the stairs two at a time, heading down to the next floor. She was sure they’d cover the exits to the building. She had to think of something else.
She went down three floors, then opened the stairwell door and stepped into a quiet corridor. Maybe they’d expect her to rush toward the exit on the ground floor.
Emerging quietly into the new hallway, she glanced in both directions. It was empty. She knew they had to have an incinerator on one of the nearby floors. Most residential buildings had one on every other floor, and she had to hope this building was no different. She chose to run to the left, but a few feet down the corridor, she saw that it ended at another stairwell.
She bolted in the opposite direction, tearing past the stairwell door she’d come from. No incinerator in that direction either. She doubled back, slipping through the door and descending to the next floor.
Cautiously, she opened that door and stepped into another quiet hallway. A line of residential doors greeted her in both directions. She chose to run to the right. She was relieved to see an incinerator door at the end.
She raced toward it, hoping she could crawl inside the shaft, climb down to the incinerator room, and get out through some basement egress. Most basements had ancient, forgotten openings. She’d used them plenty of times in buildings when different theta wave receivers had been on the fritz, which had happened more times than she could count.
When she got to the incinerator, she slid to a halt in front of the TWR. She closed her eyes, concentrating, sending the thought for the incinerator to open. It didn’t. She heard it whirring and clicking on, listening to her, but it wouldn’t obey her commands. She tried again, with no result. She opened her eyes, muttering a curse. Of course she didn’t have access here in the PPC tower. They probably had a select few workers who could move around the building. The usual commands were not going to work.
She had to try a work-around. Glancing back down the hallway, she found it empty. She closed her eyes again, sending the incinerator a conflicting message. She told it to open and close at the same time, to begin and end incineration simultaneously. It whirred and clicked, and she smelled an electrical fire.
Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her multitool and flicked open a blade. She pried off the plate covering the TWR. Flames smoldered inside, so she blew them out. The incinerator door lock disengaged. Then she replaced the cover, making it look just the way it had before she’d hacked it.
She slid inside the incinerator, pulling the door shut just as she heard the stairwell door bang open around the corner. She froze, barely breathing inside the tight confines. With the TWR fried, she hoped it wouldn’t malfunction and switch on suddenly. Outside, footsteps ran in the opposite direction. She used the time to switch on her headlamp. The shaft led straight down to the ash collection area in the basement. She shinnied along the warm metal, past the body disposal area and into the narrow shaft that the ashes blew through.
She stopped when she heard the footsteps double back and head nearer. She switched off her light, holding her breath in the dark. The shaft was unbearably hot. Beads of sweat ran down her back.
“Anything?” a voice yelled.
“Negative, sir,” said a man so close to the incinerator door that she opened her eyes wide in the dark and hoped with everything in her that he would move away. “This hallway is clear!”
The footsteps ran back. She heard the stairwell door thunk open, then swing closed again with a clank.
She switched her light back on, chasing away the darkness. She shinnied to the edge of the shaft, peering down into the abyss. Her headlamp couldn’t penetrate it.
Carefully she swung her legs over the edge, then lowered herself into the vertical shaft. She braced her back against one wall, her feet on the opposite, and began crawling down.
Steadily she worked her way to one floor, then another. She was down five floors when she heard an incinerator door open somewhere above her. Light flashed inside the shaft.
“She must have gotten into one of these,” a voice barked. “Send a man up and a man down.”
She froze. She was trapped. In the shaft above her she saw a headlamp flashing, and the metallic thudding of someone crawling in after her. She rushed down to the next floor and climbed into its corpse deposit area. Switching off her light, she lay on her stomach in front of the door and quietly lifted it up, grateful for the fail-safe built into the incinerators that allowed them to be opened manually from the inside in case someone got trapped. This floor was dim and quiet, another residential floor.
She slid out, shutting the door behind her and gazing around in horror. Where could she go now?
Suddenly the PRD the producer had given her vibrated in her pocket.
She jerked it out, bringing up the floating display. His face hovered above the device. “I’m unlocking a door for you,” he whispered, his face close to the camera. “I can see where you are through my PRD.”
The door to her right clicked, and its biometric scanner glowed green. She heard footsteps, and the stairwell door on her floor banged open. She had one second to decide.
She glanced