Alien Research

CHAPTER 83

“LOCKED.” Buchanan let go of my hand, pulled out his lock picking set, knelt down, and got to work.

“Well, that was anticlimactic.”

“Still be ready to run,” he said. “We could have alerted someone that we’re here.” Kept my hand hovering over his shoulder. The lock clicked and Buchanan stood up quickly, took my hand, and blocked me and the others as he slowly opened the door.

He stopped, then opened the door a little wider. “Everyone speak very softly or not at all,” he said over his shoulder. “And move quietly.” Then he stepped inside and the rest of us followed.

It was easy to see why Buchanan wanted us quiet—we weren’t in a room. We were on a large metal catwalk that went around the perimeter. Below us was the explanation for why there were extra stairs but no entrance to the “floor” below.

It was a fully automated assembly line. Lots of impressive, gleaming machinery, conveyors, vats, and more, all being run by robotics. It looked like everyone’s vision of The Factory of the Future. There were two staircases down—one near us and one on the opposite side.

My phone buzzed in my hand. Lorraine wanted to know where we were. Told her, and they joined us. We all looked for a while, then Buchanan had us back out. He closed but didn’t lock the door.

“Well,” Claudia said, “that answers the one question we had.”

“Which was where were they making the actual drug?” Lorraine explained.

“There are liquid and powder forms,” Serene added. “And while the liquid forms are being created in the labs down below, they weren’t making enough to explain the amount of the finished product we found.”

“We did find pipes and tubing going up here,” Claudia said. “This factory must take the raw serum from the science labs, duplicate the liquid form, dilute it for consumption, take some of it and reduce it to powder form, then package and feed the final products into the interior rooms below.”

“I have a question. Do we know who Doctor Feelgood actually is?”

There was a distinct pause. “Ahhh, I don’t follow you, Kitty,” Serene said politely.

“So few ever do. I want to know if we know who created the newer version of the drug, who’s behind it all. Is this all based on stuff Amy’s dad created originally? Or on what someone else created originally? If so, who’s making the new stuff? One person or a collective? Who has the formulas? Who comes up with the ideas for how to make the new versions? Because we need to not only get all of their data and notes, we need to stop them from creating the next level of this stuff, whatever it’s going to be.”

“Could be anyone out of Somerall, Gardiner, or Cross,” Amy said. “They’d be my top picks.”

“Maybe, but maybe not. They’re the people running things at Gaultier now, yes. But that doesn’t mean they’re scientists, and even if they are, it doesn’t mean they’re scientists with the skills to create Surcenthumain and its scary derivatives. It takes a skilled scientist to create a drug that works, especially a superdrug like this.”

“Do we want to go down and examine everything?” Abigail asked.

“No. Not yet.” This was the start of the tour. We still needed to know what was at the end.

“Can I be sick now then?” Amy asked. “I’d be proud, if this was creating things like cancer cures or something. But this is creating nothing but death.”

“Do we know that for sure?” Naomi asked.

“Well, we haven’t tested any of the samples yet,” Lorraine admitted. “But, who does this kind of work in this kind of facility if what they’re doing is for the greater good?”

“Why didn’t this show up on the blueprints?” Adriana asked.

“There were, what, five or six sets of blueprints?” I asked. Amy nodded. “They didn’t want this to be discovered by anyone. The schematics sort of match up, but not that well. I think the blueprints were there for them to have as a sort of guide, but whoever built this either did it without a final blueprint or they destroyed the final. My bet is on destroyed, by the way.”

“I’m sure my father didn’t do this on his own,” Amy said.

“No, I’m sure Antony Marling, Madeleine Cartwright, and Ronald Yates, at the very least, all added in. This seems very ‘them.’ And that begs another interesting question.”

“What’s that?” Adriana asked.

“What’s under all of their various buildings and the rest of the Gaultier buildings throughout the world? More hidden, underground facilities? This one has to have been built using some kind of cloaked material or cloaking device, since no one’s ever found it.”

“How much cloaked material could there be?” Buchanan asked.

“No idea, but if it’s the same stuff that the tunnels are made out of, then it’s Z’porrah created, and God alone knows how much they gave to our friends in the Evil Genius Society.”

“We don’t know that no one’s found it,” Buchanan added. “Just no one on our side.”

“Good point, Malcolm. Depressing, but good.”

“What do we do?” Abigail asked.

“It seems obvious to me.”

Everyone looked at me. “Doesn’t seem obvious to us,” Naomi shared.

I sighed. “We find out what the hell they’re doing down on the lowest level, and then we burn this place to ash.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Serene said. “They have an impressive sprinkler system in place, as well as some other sophisticated equipment to prevent accidents, protect against natural disasters, and so forth.”

“How can you tell that from just looking around?”

She handed me a manual. “I found it in one of the labs. It’s listing all their emergency procedures.”

“You read it already?”

“We all did,” Claudia said. “Hyperspeed.”

“Right, right.” Still wasn’t good at reading with hyperspeed. Christopher was a lot more focused on training me on the active side of things. He seemed to feel that this was both more important and more likely for me to actually use.

Flipped the pages. Something near the end caught my eye. “Huh. ‘Foremost should be the protection of the Omega Level and all personnel within it. In case of a full facility shutdown, enact Evacuation Omega and ensure all data and subjects are preserved.’ That’s interesting.”

“Did they list twenty-three other evacuation procedures?” Amy asked.

“Why?” Abigail asked back.

“Because omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet,” Amy said. “And since there aren’t twenty-four floors, I don’t know why you’d go from Evacuation Alpha to Evacuation Omega unless there were a lot of evacuation options.”

“Oh, there were only a few evacuation plans, not twenty-four.” Serene said. “And none of the others were named for the Greek alphabet. But omega means lots of other things, not just the end. It’s used in a wide variety of sciences.”

Turned the manual over and looked at the title. Emergency Plans, Gaultier Center for the Advancement of Humankind. The type was superimposed on top of a large omega symbol.

Managed not to ask why none of my Dazzlers on Duty had questioned the title, especially after Tito had shared what he thought the bad guys were really after. I also managed to remind myself that, to them, this title probably didn’t bode as it did for me. I was the Gregor Mendel fangirl, after all. The YatesCorp clause that would give anyone who could prove they were genetically a Yates offspring a seat on the YatesCorp Board made much more diabolical sense now, too. But maybe Tito was wrong.

“Um, I’ve got a very bad feeling about this. Girls, if we were talking genetics, what could omega indicate?”

“Like Serene said, many things,” Lorraine replied. “In molecular biology the symbol’s used as shorthand to signify a genetic construct introduced by a two-point crossover.”

“I dread to ask. What’s a two-point crossover?” I had a really, really good guess, but I also wanted to be really, really sure.

“A two-point crossover just means that you select two points on parent organism strings,” Claudia said. “Everything between the two points is swapped between the parent organisms, creating two child organisms.”

Fantastic. I wasn’t wrong. That was indeed my guess, or pretty much. And, double rainbow fantastic, Tito wasn’t wrong, either. “Oh. My God.”

“Kitty, what are you thinking?” Naomi asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

“Because I probably am. We need to get downstairs and find whatever’s hidden below.”

“Tell us what you think is going on first,” Buchanan said in a tone of voice that was pretty much brooking no argument. Of course, I heard that tone from Jeff, Chuckie, Christopher, and all the others frequently, too. I was good at ignoring that tone.

Reached into his back pants pocket. Sure enough, the keycard was there. Grabbed it, then his hand, and headed for the stairs. All at hyperspeed. I was impressed with how well hysterical panic ensured that I was able to control the hyperspeed. Almost as well as if I was enraged. That was good. Wasn’t sure I could get rage going, but hysterical panic was currently a given and terror loomed on the horizon.

Reached the stairs and continued down at hyperspeed. The others were behind us. “I’ll tell you on the way. Basically, I think that we’re going to look back on the idea of Gaultier’s Zombie Army with great fondness for a simpler time.”