Free Prologue by Greg Ahlgren Page B

happy teaching high school in some small town? How long before you began resenting your decision, resenting everything we had given up, and then resenting me because of it? You’re not a high school teacher, you belong in a major university. We’ve got to prioritize. Leipzig is only five years.”

At some point Sal had brought over the pizza, and, seeing their faces, put it down without his usual banter. But, as with the beer, Amanda never touched the food.

 

 

Chapter 6

Friday, July 10, 2026

 

Tonight was probably as good as any. She had heard Ginter and deVere talk about “grabbing some dogs outside the park.” They were attending another baseball game. They had both left the lab by
4:00
, and once they were gone, the support staff had quickly found reasons to leave. Natasha stood alone outside Paul deVere’s lab.
She slipped her right hand inside the v-neck of her shirt and lifted the chain from which her DNA-encoded pass card dangled. Taking the card in her left hand, she swiped it through the lab door’s scan reader while simultaneously placing her right hand on the palm reader.
“Natasha Nikitin, Access Denied,” came the computer voice from the door speaker.
Well, it was worth a try, Natasha thought, smiling wryly. Now she would have to do it the hard way. She walked down the hall, passing deVere’s and Ginter’s locked offices. It was unlikely that she would have any better luck with those doors, and she would only increase the possibility of discovery. Two weeks before she had walked into Paul deVere’s office and found him checking the computer’s log of accesses to his office. A task of boredom? Or was there something to hide in the office? She had slipped in once when he had gone down the hall to visit the “little scientists’ room,” but her hasty search had found nothing. Tonight she would be more thorough.
She opened the custodian’s closet and removed the six-foot aluminum stepladder and carried it back down the hallway and into the General Astrophysics lab which abutted deVere’s locked lab. Swinging wide the double doors to the file room, she opened the ladder just inside, and slung her shoulder bag atop a file cabinet. She climbed the ladder and pushed the ceiling tile up from its frame. She slid it over and reached into her shoulder bag. Her hand found the headlamp and cordless saw. The air duct was just where the building schematic had shown it. She knew that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, but her experience had shown that sometimes straight lines ran over the tops of walls meant to keep out intruders.
She made one more reach into the bag for the safety goggles, duct tape, and cordless screwdriver. No need to have the night’s mission detour to the emergency room at the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary. Despite their stellar reputation, sporting an eye patch the next morning would doubtless draw the wrong sort of attention.
Goggles and headlamp in place, she made short work of the sheet metal on the far side of the ductwork. She tore two lengths of duct tape that she folded over the metal’s rough edges. Grasping the support brackets, she pulled herself up until her knees were level with the opening, and then threaded herself into the ventilation system.
“I hope this holds,” she muttered. Like an inchworm, she crawled the few feet until she reached the air diffusing register in the high ceiling of deVere’s lab. She studied the register in the intense halogen beam of her headlamp. Not even screwed in place! She lifted the register and placed it gently ahead of her in the duct.
She poked her head down into the lab and played the lamp’s beam across the floor. Finding it clear, she dropped lithely down from the duct. A momentary panic hit her. How will I get back up? Her head swung about as she scanned the room for a chair. But how would she get it back in place afterwards? Then she laughed aloud. Linear thinking again! Better to keep the mind