The facility seems to be almost empty, at least from the outside. Once we see a figure in night vision goggles disappearing around the corner of a building, but though we crouch and wait, the guard doesn’t return.
Keeping to the shadows, we make for the nearest door to the main building, only to find it locked tight. If this were a normal facility it’d be print-coded with the latest security—but print-coding would leave a record of the people who’ve accessed the place. Instead the handles are the low-tech kind, requiring manual keys. I feel around the door frame, but we’re not lucky enough for someone to have stashed a key somewhere. Instead we’re forced to make our way along the wall, testing the windows until we find one that Jubilee’s able to pop open with a dull thunk of her elbow against the frame.
The small room we climb into is empty but for a few supply cabinets; we’ve entered through some kind of storeroom. When we slip out into the hallway, muddy footprints mark the floor, telling us people were here recently. Beyond the room is a series of hallways, but a faint trail of dirt shows which path is most traversed. Jubilee takes point down the corridor, and I move silently after her, ears straining for any sign of life. My heart’s beating too fast, and I can feel a corresponding pulse in my head. There’s no sign of the wisp; our guide, for better or for worse, is gone.
Jubilee stops at the first corner, easing her head out to check that the way ahead is empty. Lifting her hand, she jerks two fingers to bid me follow and eases forward again.
The facility is laid out like a maze, but the paths and doors are labeled. We reach a branching corridor, and I tap my finger against a sign with an arrow that reads MAIN CONTROL ROOM. Jubilee nods; from there we might be able to get an idea as to the layout of this place and find some sort of records room or computer access.
A few doors feature glass panes, revealing unrecognizable equipment and fully stocked laboratories beyond them. Some are occupied by white-coated scientists, and we’re quick to move past those. True, we could grab one or two of them to interrogate, but there’s no guarantee that they even know who they’re working for. We need hard evidence.
On one group of researchers, my eyes linger. They’re gathered around a man’s body laid out on a table. He still wears his camouflage trousers and military boots, and the scientists are gathered around his head. When one of them moves to retrieve a tool from a nearby tray, I can see that the whole top of his skull has been removed; the scientists are carefully removing pieces of his brain, laying them out in a neatly labeled row. A glance at Jubilee tells me she’s as tense as I am, her shoulders drawn in tight. But we can’t help him now, we both know that.
Our path leads to a door marked MAIN CONTROL ROOM, and Jubilee pauses to look back at me. I’m watching her eyes, checking her pupils, looking for that vacant hint that will tell me she’s under the influence of the whispers, but I’ve never seen it happen like she has. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and it’s keeping me sick with tension.
Then abruptly the door opens, and we’re face-to-face with a startled man in a white coat.
For a long moment, we all just stare at each other in surprise. He opens his mouth to shout an alarm, and Jubilee moves instantly. She punches him, and the way his head snaps back as he folds to the ground would be comical any other time. I can’t help but wonder if that’s what I looked like when she decked me before escaping the Fianna caves.
Now she and I move as one—I get my hands under his arms and she grabs his legs, and we haul him back into the room. A quick look over my shoulder shows it’s empty, and we’re alone save for a long bank of computer screens and an unconscious scientist.
I crouch to take a look at him, and as I peel back one of his eyelids, all I can see is the white of his eye. “You really had to hit him?”
Jubilee’s standing by the door, listening for trouble. “What else could I do? I didn’t hit him hard, he’ll be fine.”
“You really have to start thinking laterally.” I roll the man onto his side so he doesn’t choke on his own tongue while he’s out.
“Not my forte.” She shrugs, abandoning the door to prowl the room. “This is monitoring Avon’s climate,” she says after leaning down to study a screen. “It’s got terraforming data displayed here for the last two decades. Far more detailed readings than what we get sent by TerraDyn.” She falls silent, but I know we’re both thinking about Merendsen’s theory that Avon’s progress, like the progress of the planet LaRoux destroyed, is being tampered with.
I stay by the scientist’s side, and he doesn’t stir as I check him for weapons, then push aside his white coat to make sure there’s nothing clipped to his belt. All I see is an ID badge, and I’m about to drop the fabric when a glint flashes through the plastic cover of the pass. Sitting alongside a card showing a serial number—no name or photo—is a tiny ident chip. It’s exactly the same as the one Jubilee found on our first visit here, right down to the tiny lambda. The room spins a little and I rub at my eyes, trying to remember when I last had more than a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. “LaRoux Industries,” I say, pushing slowly to my feet.
“That won’t be proof enough,” says Jubilee with a grimace. “They try to stop it, but head down below street level in Corinth and you can get anything on the black market. A raider ship could outfit themselves with old LRI ident chips with enough credits; LaRoux could easily say these were stolen, especially since they’re so antiquated.”