Keva and the rest of the crew finished gearing up.
Renna’s skin prickled, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She hated this feeling, like things were about to go tits up and there was nothing she could do about it.
The Athena touched down with a soft tremor, and the cargo door slid open. Everyone drew their guns, and each group headed down the plank. Keva raised a hand in farewell and headed east with her crew.
“Renna, you have the map?” Finn asked.
She nodded. “Shouldn’t be too far. I found an entrance that looks like it’s through the forest here. Keva and her team will have to go farther around the building before they can get in.”
“Let’s go.”
The trio headed through the jungle. The air pressed down on her like a weight, the smell of death and decay catching in her nose and hair. Strange animals screamed at them from the shadows as they approached the cement-gray building. At least it wasn’t made of the same strange material the last place had used. Getting in would be much easier.
Walking through the wet heat felt like moving through water. Renna tugged at the neck of her shirt as sweat trickled down her back and her hair plastered to her face. Beside her, Finn used his sleeve to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.
Luckily they found a thick, steel door guarding the entrance at the corner of the building. A V’Mani lock glowed blue against the dull cement wall. Renna smiled. About time things started looking up. She had the lock disabled in moments, and Finn let out a low whistle.
“You get what you pay for,” she said with a laugh.
Viktis shook his head. “Or, in this case, who she slept with.”
Finn took a step forward. “Watch it, pirate.”
Renna rolled her eyes and slipped through the door into a dim hallway. A fine coat of dust covered the floor, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the ceiling.
If the kidnapper was going for creepy, he’d nailed it on the head.
“Scan for security,” she ordered. A few cameras and sensors popped up on the map her implant laid out for her, but none were close enough to worry about. “We’re clear for now. I say we head toward the center of the facility and then down. The distress call said something about the problem being on level two.”
Finn shifted his grip on his blaster, holding it more firmly. “Let’s go. And stay quiet.”
“This ain’t my first brawl, soldier.” Viktis shoved past him so that he was closest to Renna.
She ignored their bickering and focused on the doors dotting either side of the long corridor. Her implant said there were no heat signatures, but it wouldn’t hurt to stay on guard.
The hall dead-ended after a few minutes. Their only choice forward was through a door and into a brightly lit passageway that led toward the center of the building.
Renna pulled back to check the map again. Her stomach plummeted. The central hub was at the end of this corridor. Gathered in and around the area were at least a hundred heat signatures.
There was nothing for it; they were going to have to go right past that space to get to the stairwell. “Stay on guard. This section is crawling with people,” she warned, before moving silently toward the main hallway.
Finn and Viktis followed close behind her, blasters drawn as they circled the main open space. It seemed to be some sort of auditorium, two stories tall, with the main floor on the lower level. She crept closer and risked a glance over the railing into the room below.
Human men and women filled the space, all standing perfectly still, staring straight ahead. Her gaze caught on one of the men at the edge of the group. He was tall, with closely cropped dark hair and olive skin like hers. He looked like someone she might see on a street in Hesperia. Someone she could be related to.
Until his eyes began to flash with a strange red light.
The same light that most implants made when they were downloading information. A quick glance around confirmed her suspicion. Every single person had the same flashing light in their eyes.
She clutched at the railing as everything inside her started to scream.
“What is it? What’s wrong with them?” Finn’s breath was hot against her ear, but for once, his closeness didn’t distract her.
“I wish I knew.” She swallowed back the nausea burning her throat as everything started coming together. The mercs, the facility, the drugs. “Navang must be experimenting on them, trying out the drug we found. We need to get out of here before they see us.” Renna crept around to the emergency exit and ran her safety program through the lock. It opened with a snick, and the three slipped into the stairwell.
“What were they?” Viktis asked, scraping a hand over the bone plates in his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
She shook her head. “I think they were…robots. But we don’t have time to figure it out right now. Navang is here somewhere. We need to find him and Myka.” She scanned through her implant’s blueprints of the facility. “Looks like level two has a lot more security than the upper floors. Let me go first and disable the systems.”
Both men nodded, and she eased open the lower level door to reveal a gleaming white hallway. Glassed-in labs and research pods lined the way. It reminded her of Aldani’s station back on Iniros, but with one big difference.
Her implant detected no heat signatures, no movement in any of them.
She snuck forward and peered into the first lab. One of the lab chairs had fallen on its side, and a coffee cup sat steaming on the desk. Someone had been here. And recently.
Shit.
As she crept down the hall, she snuck glances into lab after lab. All empty. She disabled the sensors as she went, but it seemed like it didn’t matter. There wasn’t anyone around to catch them.
“Where is everyone?” Viktis whispered. His head whipped back and forth as he searched each of the rooms.
“I don’t know. But I don’t like it.” Renna kept moving despite the goose bumps prickling her arms. Whatever that distress call had been about, it hadn’t been a trick. Something had happened here.
They reached the end of the corridor, which led to another pair of doors. These were thick, opaque plastic with some kind of airtight seal, almost as strong as an airlock. She didn’t recognize the flashing keypad beside the door, but she pulled out her tools and went to work. The silence around them—broken only by their breathing—stretched her nerves taut. Her skin crawled each time the air blowers kicked on or a computer beeped in the distance.