Read Wounds - Book 2 for Free Online Page B

here, and here.” He jabbed his finger dead center. “The main hospital’s here, at the heart.”
    Lense’s eyes clicked over the rough drawing. “That’s a lot to cover, and even if you get in…how are you going to do that, anyway?”
    Saad’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Nerrit may have new parts, but he’s an old man with ingrained habits. He always travels with a rear guard. We’ll ambush the guard, steal their ident tags and then slip into the complex. The beauty is that Nerrit isn’t going to the main facility. Once he’s in,” he sketched a rough square, “my source tells me that he’ll peel off here.”
    “A separate building?” Lense looked over at Mara. Mara just shrugged, looked away. “What is it?”
    “A specialized research wing, underground. Totally cut off from the main complex. The only way in or out is a tram tunnel, and a separate foot tunnel.”
    “Why the special tunnel?”
    “They’ve had to cut power there in the past. And there were…disturbances.”
    “So, is it for a SWAT team?” Lense knew of them, of course; all prisons had them if inmates got loose and cut off power. Underground tunnels ensured speed, stealth, and surprise. “What is it, a stockade?”
    “No, I told you. It’s a research wing.”
    “Well, then that level of containment usually means a biohazard.”
    “Yeah,” said Mara. She was holding up the wall again. “What the lady said. Biohazard. Right, Saad?”
    “Well, no,” said Saad. “I don’t think that biohazard really does it justice.”

Chapter
6
    T hey’d taken a left from his room, away from the guards at the end of the corridor, and then doglegged right. Bashir spotted an adjacent, nearly dark corridor on his left, and he thought he saw some kind of sensor winking like an angry red eye.
    But they didn’t go there. Instead, they turned right and passed room after silent room through a maze of corridors. They didn’t speak. The only sounds were the taps of their shoes and the whoosh of a ventilation system. They finally dead-ended at a thick metal containment door. The door’s sheen reminded him of Deep Space 9, all that Cardassian gray. Access required retinal scan and a thumbprint ID. Kahayn submitted to both, and the door slid open with a whine of hydraulics.
    The door gave onto another corridor that was much shorter, and now Bashir recognized familiar smells: the sharp bite of fixative mingling with a fuller musk-ripe odor of feces and the wine odor of fermented fruit. The right wall was painted yellow cinder block, he thought. Midway down, the wall was faced with a large rectangle of clear glass. Inside was something that looked like an exhibit in an old-fashioned museum: specimens suspended in jars; a long gurney that gave onto a metal sink and adjoining counter; a ring of metal counters on which stood equipment, analyzers of various sorts. Another metal door, wide enough for a gurney. A freezer, probably. Bashir knew the basic setup of an autopsy suite when he saw it.
    But they hadn’t entered. Instead, Kahayn went left to another door. She’d pulled it open and a fruity smell pillowed out, one mixed with excrement and hay for bedding.
    Animal room. But there was something very wrong here. Bashir turned a slow circle. That strange air, it felt…His skin prickled. Alive, and all edges and sharp angles.
    “Cold, isn’t it? But you feel it.” Kahayn stirred the air with her index finger. “How thick it feels?”
    Bashir nodded. “Yes. Crowded. Like I’m being jostled.” He did another turn. The room was perhaps six meters square, and bathed in fluorescent glare. Wire cages lined three walls, two to a wall. Each cage held an animal similar to Terran Pan troglodytes, chimps, but with orange fur like orangutans and a bit larger.
    And they were very strange. For one, they were absolutely silent. Not that this was unusual; Earth chimpanzees hooted only in panic or fear. But these animals were…sizing him up, yes. They sat on