So here’s the setup: You’re standing in the hallway outside the locked door of the examination room, just kickin’ back with your partner, your OIPEP killer bro, and maybe you’re talking about the kids or where you’re going on the next vacation or the latest episode of Law & Order or maybe trashing MI:3 (like you believe Tom Cruise could be a secret agent or any of that crap in the movie could happen, like Hollywood knows how it really works), and you hear the keypad on the wall go beep-beep and the gears of the locking mechanism rotate on their well-oiled axis. You step back, waiting for the boss to come out with the lobotomy patient, the tall kid with the gray-streaked hair and weird gray-flecked eyes, only the door doesn’t open. The doc unlocked the door but didn’t come out. How come?
You glance at your partner, who looks back at you like Hey, don’t look at me, and you hang there for another couple of seconds, hand resting on the butt of your Glock 9mm, chewing on your bottom lip, trying to decide while you wait for the moment to make a decision for you. A minute. Two. Two and a half. Did Kropp jump him? you wonder. Did he change his mind about coming out for some reason? Why unlock the door if you’re not coming out?
You nod to your partner. We go. He turns the knob. Pushes open the door.
A blur of white flying toward the far wall. It’s Mingus, sitting on the rolling stool, sliding across the smooth floor, his white lab coat flapping as he spins.
And no sign of the kid.
You rush in, guns drawn, and what registers in your head when Mingus screams, “Behind the door, you idiots! He’s behind the door!”?
You freeze halfway in, but it’s already too late. The door slams and there’s no kid. He’s on the other side.
The side with the master control panel.
I smashed one end of the broken hanger into the keypad. On the other side of the door, I could hear them, shouting and cursing, banging on it as if to get me to answer the door. “Shoot the lock! Shoot the lock!” one of the Things was yelling.
I ran down the hall, reviewing the directions. “Right, right, left, right . . . R, R, L, R. Reggie, Reggie, listen, Reggie. Really, really, lame, really!”
A guard was stationed by room 202, his black jumper shimmering under the fluorescents. I hadn’t planned for a guard and there was no time now to develop a plan, so I just went on instinct and my experience in dealing with seemingly hopeless situations: I rushed him.
He managed to free his weapon from the holster before I barreled into him, but there was no time to get off a shot. I grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and slammed my fist into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Then I spun him around, pushed his face against the wall, and twisted his arm behind his back, lifting it toward his shoulder blades until his fingers loosened and the gun fell to the floor.
I picked it up.
“The code,” I said.
“Screw you,” he gasped.
I let go and stood back, keeping the gun pointed at his head. He turned around and leaned against the wall, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
“I’ll shoot you,” I said.
“Yeah, right.”
I shot him in the foot.
He dropped. I stepped over him to the keypad by room 202.
“The code,” I repeated. “Or I take out the knee.”
Ashley was hiding behind the door. She came at me as I burst into the room, holding a metal stool that I guessed she intended to smash over my head. She froze when she recognized me.
“Alfred?”
“You bet,” I said.
The stool fell to the floor and then the girl into my arms, burying her face between my shoulder and the base of my neck. A world of blond under my nose and its sweet atmosphere of lilacs. She touched my cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded. Just outside the door I saw the legs of the guard as he started to crawl toward the stairs.
“Hold on,” I said. I went into the hall, yanked him to his feet, and pressed the muzzle of the gun behind his ear.
“We’re leaving,” I told him. “You’re our guide.”
“I don’t think I can walk,” he said.
I squatted, pushed my left shoulder into his gut, and stood up. His head smacked me in the back when I swung around to motion Ashley out of the room.
We trotted down the hall, away from the stairs that led back to Mingus and the OIPEP twins, Ashley on my right side, her guard flopping over my left shoulder.
“Tell me there’s a back door to this place,” I said to him—or rather to his butt, which was two inches from my nose.
“There’s a back door to this place.”
I grabbed his dangling legs with both hands and swiveled hard. His head hit the wall with a satisfying smack.
“Hey!” he said, like he was shocked I whacked his face against the wall.
I did it again. Whack!
“Stop that!”
I started walking again. The hall ended. One corridor branched off to the right, another to the left.
“Which way?” I asked him.
“The right way.”
I smacked him again—whack!—and he shouted, “No, the right hallway—literal right, literal right!”
We took the passage on our right. Ashley had said she was okay, but she was wincing with every step and breathing hard. My head hurt. Was my head pounding now from all the running and fighting—or was it broadcasting our position on the Kropp Channel?
“I’ve got a bomb in my head,” I told her.
“I’ve got a bullet in my foot,” the guard said.
I ignored him. “An SD 1031. It’s also a tracking device.”
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Didn’t know about the device or didn’t know it was in my head?”
“Didn’t know they implanted you.”
“Well, probably best you knew, in case I go down with blood pouring from my orifices.”
We came to some stairs.
“Up the stairs, first hall on the right, door at the end of the hall,” the guard said.
“Where’s that put us?” I gasped. He was gaining about a pound with every step I took.
“Back door.”
When we reached the door, I dropped him, grabbed a fistful of his collar, and pulled him to his feet. I shoved him toward the keypad.
“If this is a trick, you die,” I promised him.
He punched in the code, the little light flashed green, and the door swung open, revealing a white landscape shimmering like a Courier and Ives print.
Then Nueve stepped through the doorway, his gun pointed at Ashley’s head.
“No, Alfred,” Nueve said softly. “She dies.”