"Is there anything we can do?"

"Nope," Walt said nonchalantly. "I think we're along for the ride on this one."

A bell rang, and the light over the elevator doors moved from left to right one number, signifying that they were at the second floor now, still rising. He moved away from the control panel to the back of the car, next to Teri. She reached out and took his hand.

"Scared?" he asked.

"A little."

The bell rang again before he could reassure her everything was going to work out all right. The elevator car lugged, and settled back into place. For a moment, nothing else happened and it was as if all the anticipation had been for naught. Then gradually the doors opened to the third floor.

Mitch stood on the other side of the hall, leaning against the wall. In his hand, he held a gun. On his face, he wore a smile that let them know just how much he was enjoying himself. "Well, well, well. Who do we have here?"

"Nice to see you again," Walt said.

"I know I'm tickled." He waved the gun at them, an invitation to exit the elevator. "Why don't you two join me?"

They did.

[145].

Gabe helped Cody into the wheelchair, and went back to the door to see if there was a way they might be able to pick the lock or break out the window. Something. Anything. Back home, he could pick the door between the garage and the kitchen with nothing more than a paper clip. All he had to do was jiggle it around in the lock a few seconds and before he knew it-click!-the door was open. This lock, this door, they were a different story.

"How about this?" Cody said, coming up behind him. In his hand, he held a tongue depressor, maybe four times the size of a Popsicle stick.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Out of that drawer over there."

Gabe shook his head. "Too big."

"Then what about this?" he said, bringing out the biggest q-tip Gabe had ever seen. It wasn't anything like the q-tips his mom kept in the bathroom cabinet at home. It was maybe twice that size, and as thick as a water-swollen strand of spaghetti.

"Maybe," Gabe said, taking it in hand. He flexed it between his fingers to see how brittle it felt. You go sticking things into a lock, you don't want them breaking off in there. Once that happened, you might as well forget it. He had learned that lesson the first time he ever tried to use a toothpick. "Let me try it and see."

He tore the cotton off one end of the q-tip and slipped it easily into the key way. Gabe gave it a jiggle, first to one side, then to the other, adding just a bit of pressure with his forefinger. It felt like a good fit, he thought. He jiggled it again, added a little more pressure, and cursed himself when it suddenly snapped off. Half-an-inch of the q-tip was now lost just inside the cylinder case. It was exactly what he hadn't wanted to do.

"Damn it!"

"What's the matter?"

"It broke off."

"Oh." Cody looked down, disappointed. "So, what are we supposed to do now?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe we could get someone to open it from the other side?"

"I don't think they can hear us from the other side."

Gabe cast a glance around the room, looking for something, an idea, anything that might draw attention, even Tilley's attention. If they could just get someone to open the door, then...

"A fire," he said suddenly. "If we can start a fire, a small fire, then they'll have to open the door."

There was no shortage of combustible material in the room. Cody stripped the covers off the nearest bed, while Gabe went through the cabinets and pulled out the Kleenex and tongue depressors and sterile gauze pads, anything and everything he thought might burn. They piled all of it high in the middle of the room, then pulled a fluorescent lamp off the wall and ran it over to the pile.

"Think it's hot enough?" Cody wondered.

"I think so."

Gabe got down on his knees, stuffed the Kleenex tissues into the tight space around the bulb, and added some bedding on top of that. He stood up and backed away.

"How long you think it'll take?"

"Not long."

After a few minutes, when nothing had happened, he conceded that the bulb probably wasn't hot enough after all. "We need something to get it started, lighter fluid or gasoline, something like that."

He went searching again, and this time, in the corner of a cabinet, he came across a bottle labeled: Isopropyl. A yellow warning notice cautioned that the contents were highly flammable. He removed the cap, and gave it a sniff. Instantly, his eyes watered. It was alcohol. Isopropyl was alcohol. Perfect.

He sprinkled a couple of Kleenex tissues with the liquid, tossed them onto the fluorescent bulb, then stood back and waited. When nothing happened, he tried pouring the alcohol directly onto the lamp itself. Almost instantly, the bulb exploded.

Gabe covered his face and turned away. When he turned back, he saw a brown-black circle gradually appear in the middle of one of the bed sheets. It had a raven iris that opened like a fissure in the earth. Cotton-thread edges disappeared into the black rift.

First it was one circle, then it was another, then another, then a whiff of smoke began to rise and it was no longer a question of if they could get someone's attention, it was a question of how long it would take.

[146].

The nearest monitor flickered and Jake felt something tighten in his throat.

The two kids had started a fire inside the room. He watched as the smoke thickened into a dark, angry cloud and began to run the line of the ceiling in all directions. Within seconds the hungry gray mass seemed to consume nearly every square inch of the room.

"Come on," he said, anxiously waiting for the overhead sprinklers to kick on. He didn't think the fire itself was going to pose much of a problem. But the smoke could be a different matter. It had already dropped a thick curtain over the picture on his monitor. Behind that curtain, in faint outline, he could see the two boys huddled on the floor, next to the supply cabinet.

He watched until the sprinklers finally kicked on, then he crossed to the far end of the room, and pulled down the handle to the fire alarm mounted on the wall. Instantly, the quiet halls, the vacant rooms, the entire building erupted into the deafening rattle of a bell.

"That should wake up a few people."

He went back to the console, sat down, and rolled his chair to the left, where a bank of override switches had been built into the panel. He started at the top and threw the switches for all the exits, the elevators, the stairway doors, the offices, the labs, every room, every lock in the building that he had the power to control. When he finished, he checked the monitors and was stunned to discover the two kids were still trapped. For some reason, the door to their room had failed to open.

"What the-"

He tried the switch again, once up, once down, and when that didn't work, again, once up, once down, and finally another half-a-dozen times before giving up the futile effort. There was only one way that door was going to open. He would have to go down there himself and open it manually.

He was on his way out, keys in hand, when D.C. showed up.

"You the one who set off the alarm?"

Jake nodded, and motioned toward the far monitor, which was little more than a dark-gray hue now. "It's the room with the two boys. The override's jammed. I can't get the door open. I'm going down to see if I can do something with it."

D.C. sat at the console, and quickly scanned all four monitors. "Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"Just keep going after you've got it open, understand? I'll watch things here until the fire department shows."

He nodded and went out the door without a word. He didn't tell D.C. that he'd had no intentions of returning anyway. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Not ever. The line had finally been crossed. He had been willing to accept that this was a research facility, that the sleepers were being monitored with the hope they would someday awaken. But twice tonight the monitors had caught someone pulling a gun. That had been enough. The fire had been too much. At $6.50 an hour, he could just as easily be playing night watchman at one of the industrial complexes, cruising around in a car, flashing his spotlight into the shadows, and listening to music on the radio. This had never been what you would call a dream job.

Jake crossed the floor to the elevators, entered the basement car, and waited for the doors to close. It was the first time he had ever stopped to wonder if someone were watching his movements the way he had always watched everyone else's.

[147].

Teri was the first one into the lab. She stepped inside the door to the left and turned to wait for Walt, who had kept himself like a shield between her and Mitch from the elevator all the way down the hall.

"How you doing?" Walt asked as he entered.

"Fine," she whispered.

"Never a dull moment, huh?"

Mitch directed them to the far side of the room, against the windows, and had them face outward. He sat on the corner of the nearest desk, picked up the phone, dialed a number and hung up again after he couldn't get an answer.

"Christ." He mumbled something about the doc not being there.

"Trouble in paradise?" Walt asked.

In the reflection in the window, Teri watched Mitch stand up and start to pace back and forth in front of the desk. He looked like a worried man, and that worried her, because she had always thought of him as having everything under control. She didn't like the idea that something might be going wrong. When things went wrong, people got hurt.

Walt was watching him, too. Only he was watching him for a different reason. Teri didn't immediately realize this, but when the fire alarm suddenly went off, Walt went off with it. He turned and closed the distance between the two of them in less than a second. Mitch never had a chance to use his gun.

Teri turned and screamed. "Walt! Don't!"

But by then, they were already grappling.

Walt smashed his fist into the man's jaw and Mitch went flying over the desk backwards, Walt on top of him. The gun jarred loose and bounced around on the carpet only a brief moment before they were on it again, each man trying to take sole possession.

Teri moved away from the windows, a hand to her mouth to hold back the scream that was trying to force its way up from her throat. She had stepped forward momentarily when the gun had bounced free, but she had been too slow and now she was backed against the electron microscope with nowhere else to go.

"Please!"

Mitch landed an elbow to Walt's face. His head snapped back, and Mitch met him with another shot to the face, this one so loud that Teri cringed. Walt rolled over, momentarily dazed, blood flowing out of his nose and a cut over his right eye.

The gun was within Mitch's grasp now. He climbed slowly to his knees, breathing heavily, then to his feet, blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. He bent over to pick up the gun, wrapped his fingers around the handle, and...

...and Walt rammed him from the side, full-body, full-force.

They tumbled over a chair, and it was Mitch who was the first one standing. He slammed a foot into Walt's side that rolled him over twice. Walt grabbed for his ribs and curled into a ball, in obvious pain.

"Don't!" Teri screamed. "Please, don't!"

Mitch, who was bent over, his hands braced on his knees, trying to catch a breath, looked up at her. His eyes were pure black, cold, empty. This was a duel to the death, she realized bleakly. He was not going to stop. Not until Walt was dead. And if he couldn't kill Walt, then he would die trying. It was all... right... there.

"Please?"

He shook his head and bent over to pick up the gun, and this time Walt rammed him going the wrong direction. Walt hit him low, around the waist and it looked like a perfect Sunday afternoon tackle. He nearly picked him up off the ground and the force of the hit drove Mitch backwards across the room, Walt's legs pumping, Mitch trying to get his feet planted, both men moving straight at the window.

Mitch went through first. The back of his head slammed into the window, shattering the glass and opening a hole big enough to drive a car through. Walt went through right behind him, his hands still wrapped around the man's waist.

It happened that fast.

And then it was over.

Teri heard a faraway scream that only later she would realize belonged to her. She went to the window, and looked down at the two dead men. Walt's neck had been broken, his head twisted back at a hideous angle, a bone protruding out the front.

She closed her eyes and turned away.

[148].

D.C. had finally shut down the fire alarm, and had gone out to the lobby to check to see if any trucks had shown up. It was getting down to the final few seconds now. Once the trucks started arriving and the fire crews started going through the building floor by floor, then all hell was going to break loose. Sooner or later they were going to stumble across the room in the basement with the sleepers.

The parking lot was empty, except for a pair of tail lights in the distance, on their way out the long drive. D.C. watched them momentarily, wondering whose car they belonged to, then he went back to the control room to check the monitors one last time.

Downstairs, in the basement, Jake had finally gotten the door open. A wall of smoke came pouring out and immediately filled the basement landing. The monitor flickered, this time inside the room with the two boys. They were huddled together, behind a gray screen of smoke, appearing for all he could tell, lifeless.

Another flicker and D.C. found himself watching the last few seconds of the fight between Mitch and Walter Travis. The two men, wrapped together like twine, went sailing out the third story window, a couple of idiot martyrs bent on giving themselves to the afterlife. Foolish men did foolish things.

D.C. hovered over the monitors, his arms braced against the console, and realized the end had finally arrived. He stood, and searched the surroundings, trying to recall if there was anything he needed to take with him. But there was nothing left but trouble here.

He turned the light off on his way out of the room, a habit that was strangely metaphorical. Behind him, the middle monitor flickered, and Jake showed up on the screen, carrying Cody Breswick in his arms. He carried the boy out of the room, over to the stairwell and set him down. Cody took in a spastic breath, then another, and his eyes opened slowly.

Jake went back to look for the Knight boy.

[149].

Teri was on her way down the stairwell between the first floor and the basement, when she encountered Cody. The boy had made it to the mid-landing and he was lying on the floor, too weak to go any further. His face was covered with soot, his blue eyes shining like diamonds in the coal.

"Cody?"

He nodded.

"Oh, my God," she said. She knelt and gave him a hug meant for all the children just like him. Those who had made it. Those who had not. "I can't believe this. I can't believe you're still alive. Are you all right?"

He nodded again, his eyes clearing.

"Where's Gabe? Do you know where Gabe is?"

"Downstairs," he said.