Hexagon Pharmaceuticals
Parris rushed into the atrium of the East Wing after having travelled under the overcast and humid conditions outside. But where she headed didn’t have any windows, so it could stay miserable outside for all she cared. The large digital clock in the atrium read 8:23 AM. She wasn’t expected until ten o’clock that morning so she knew she wouldn’t be missed. Last night’s visit to Hexagon was a quick in and out. Once Parris made it to Hexagon, she signed in at the security desk in the atrium, got what she needed, signed out with the contents in her purse, and headed home. The masking agent didn’t take long to make and she gave Levickis three more syringes in a pouch for him and the others. She kept one for Fox in the glove compartment of her car. Whoever came in contact with him first would give it to him.
Having only slept four hours was murder on her body. Even with two cups of coffee, she still felt groggy. “Hardly anyone in the East Wing this early, guys.” There was no answer. “Guys?” she said again.
“We hear you, Dr. Parris.” Dobbs’s voice boomed through her earpiece, causing her to grab at her ear as she made a face.
“Turn the damn thing down, Dobbs. Lord. You trying to make me deaf?”
“Sorry about that.” His voice was a lot quieter. “Is that better?”
Her ear still rang. “Yes. Isn’t there a way for you to check your equipment?”
“I said I was sorry.”
Parris rolled her eyes. “Sure, fine, whatever.”
“Hey, lighten up a bit,” said Levickis. “This is no walk in the park for us either. We’ve just come through the tunnels and have reached the mainframe. It’s cold, damp, it stinks, and I know I stepped in something back there.”
Levickis’s voice became quieter, as though he were talking to Dobbs. “Have you located the POP yet?” This was the point of presence, an access point to the internet.
“I think it’s right here,” said Dobbs. “I can see the end of the fiber optic backbone cable, router, and switches. I see a free port here. I’ll connect the laptop and see if I can ping the mainframe…yup, the mainframe’s responding-Packets, sent equals four. Zero percent loss-we’re plugged in.”
Parris pressed the B4 button. “Anyway, I’ve just walked into the elevator.”
“Great, we’re ready to link up,” said Dobbs.
Parris looked up at the floor light above the door and watched them all flash. B2, then B3, and finally B4. The elevator slowed to a stop a moment later.
“It’s a go, Doc. We’re in,” said Dobbs.
Just in time. The elevator doors opened. The guard looked up from reading his magazine as Parris walked into the room and nodded. She smiled at him and looked to the left of where he sat and saw the entrance to the Safe. She reached into a pocket inside her tote and took out the security card Dobbs gave her and stopped in front of the control panel.
“The code key is one, zero, four, and five,” said Levickis as she swiped the card. When the display above the keypad asked for the authorization code, Parris punched in those numbers. When she heard the beeping sound, she opened the door and passed through.
“It’s all yours. We’ll hear from you when you get out,” said Dobbs.
Parris put the clearance card back into her bag and walked through the door, which automatically shut behind her. She heard static in her earpiece, and eventually the volume was turned down from Dobbs’s and Levickis’s end.
She stood inside a large white-walled hexagon-shaped room that was about twenty feet all around with an eight-by-five-foot window straight ahead of her. Through the window, she saw rows and columns of discs all tightly stacked together as a cluster.
In front of the window, was a flat screen monitor with the HEXAGON logo as its screen saver, a compact disc drive, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, all on a white fiberglass desk with a white metal-backed chair in front. Everything was where it was supposed to be, just as Dobbs has told her the night before.
Parris sat down at the computer, reached into her tote and removed the SCSI CD, inserting it into the drive. She heard it whirl, and in a few seconds a message appeared on the monitor-the virus was uploaded. First step done, security is offline. She tapped the space bar and the screensaver was replaced with the phrase Please enter file name and code number, followed by a blinking cursor. Parris typed in the word CLARITY and 60028.
On the other side of the window, a mechanical arm with a razor-thin clamp appeared from below the window level. It moved up and across several rows and columns of discs, and extracted a one-inch diameter disc. The disc was then carried to a drive on the far right-hand side and inserted. Parris removed a second SCSI CD from her tote-one that was specially designed by the boys at the Office of Science and Technology, and only an inch in diameter-and placed it into a second SCSI CD drive. She typed in a sequence of commands to copy all of the contents onto her disc. The message Copying files appeared on the screen with a progress bar below it.
Parris didn’t want to get too comfortable, but she was curious to know what was on the disc. Sure, Dobbs and Levickis were getting the data uploaded to them at this moment, but it was worth knowing. With the mouse, she opened a window that displayed two file names. Clarity and Pandora. She clicked on the Clarity file first, and another window appeared that displayed several names of individuals under the heading Subjects.
Parris leaned closer to the monitor, completely aghast at how many people had undergone treatment using the Clarity drug. Half of them she didn’t even know. The list of names was subdivided into various groups. She looked at the last sub-category where she recognized the names of individuals she had worked on, under the later variants of the drug. My God. This program must have been going on for months.
She was interrupted when a message that read Copy complete flashed across the screen. The two tech guys had their copy, now was the time to get out.
Dobbs’s and Levickis’s flashlight-mounted headbands provided a bit of light. All of their wires attached to Hexagon’s internal cable system in a spaghetti-like manner. Water dripped behind them in scattered locations, creating a musty smell in the air. On his laptop, Dobbs saw the confirmation message flash that all data was received. “She did it.”
Levickis checked underneath his right shoe again-he knew he’d stepped on something earlier. “Good, the sooner she gets out of there, the sooner we can too.” It was then that he heard a clicking sound close by, one that he recognized all too well. He turned around to see two dark figures and a bright flash which was almost simultaneously accompanied by a loud bang and the strong burning odor of gunpowder. A mixture of blood, skull, and brain fragments exploded from the back of Dobbs’s head and sprayed all over the monitors and the keyboards.
Dobbs’s body was thrown onto Levickis, knocking the wind out of him. If fear and shock could really paralyze someone, Levickis now knew this firsthand, as his arms and chest seized up on him, causing him to breathe short quick breaths. When Dobbs’s body rolled off of him, the barrel of a Makarov PM was pointed right between his eyes.
Then the bullet tore through his brain.
Demyan held onto the Makarov and dropped his arm to the side. Pyotr stepped from behind him and pushed Levickis’s body away with his foot, to make room for himself in front of the two laptops. One of the monitors buzzed with static while the other had the image of the security guard at the entrance to the Safe.
“The girl must still be in the Safe.”
Demyan didn’t respond. When Pyotr looked up at him, he had a large grin and he breathed excitedly. Pyotr ignored him and pressed the eject button at the side of the laptop and the disc popped out halfway. He removed it, found its casing beside the keyboard, inserted it, and dropped it in his jacket pocket. He then started to type.
Time to jet. Parris closed the program. Automatically, the mechanical arm behind the window removed the disc from its drive and replaced it into its storage slot. She ejected her disc, replaced it in its case and dropped it into her tote bag. Just as she got up from her seat, a booming sound reverberated all around her and the room lit up dark red.
What the hell? The word lockdown popped into her head, and she sprinted towards the door, slid to a stop in front of it, and pushed down on the handle repeatedly. The door wouldn’t open. She slammed her palm on the door. Shit.
She was trapped. What the hell happened to Levickis and Dobbs? They must have triggered a hidden security feature-or did I do it? But it wasn’t possible. They should have known of any upgrades to the security features. How could they have missed this one?
All communications to the outside were cut off, but they’d have to know what was going on now. You guys better find a way to override the security protocols. But she couldn’t chance them doing so on time. Any moment now, an armed security squad would be bursting through that door.
Parris pulled off her right shoe and turned the heel towards her. She pinched in a camouflaged lever and a thin compartment similar to a miniature compact disc drive popped out-one that was specially designed to hide the one-inch-diameter CD. She knelt down and put down the shoe while she tore into her tote and grabbed the CD case. The tote fell on its side as she opened the CD case, removed the CD, fit it into the slot into the heel of her shoe, and closed it.
She got back up, picked up her tote, and slid on her shoe just as the door burst open. Six guards, dressed in black outfits, helmets, and visors, poured in, surrounding her with electroshock guns. The first one who charged into the hexagonal room stepped away from the rest and approached her with his electroshock gun pointed at her chest. He screamed out something to her in Japanese. She didn’t understand him, but she raised both of her hands above her head. He reached to her right shoulder and ripped away the tote. Another guard came up from behind her, grabbed her other shoulder and pushed her sideways into the wall. She struck the wall and then felt someone throw their weight against the back of her neck to pin her there.
Hands frisked from top to bottom and then from bottom to top. She was then spun around and had the same thing done to her again. First her shoulders, breasts, then hips. At least he didn’t check the shoes. She was then pulled away from the wall and shoved towards the entrance to the Safe. She suddenly felt an enormous surge through the base of her spine that caused her entire body to cramp.
The electroshock gun. It was the last thing on her mind as she dropped to the floor and everything else around her faded black.