When they reached the end of that corridor, they found a locked door with a keypad.
She whistled to the team, who focused on her.She motioned for Peyton to move aside.As the team trained their weapons on the door, she punched in the security override code and the lock blipped green and opened.
As they made entry, they yelled the command in Russian for everyone to drop, but then Peyton heard an older man screaming in outrage.
“Peyton!”she called out.
Peyton hurried in and saw Aisling holding a man at gunpoint.He looked like he was in his seventies.He wore scrubs, was barefoot, and from the way his hair stuck up, plus the small bunk behind him that looked like he’d just jumped out of it, Peyton suspected they’d awakened him.
Peyton grabbed his arm and ordered him to calm down and obey.“English?”he asked, and the man nodded.“Are you in charge here?”
Fear filled his face.“Who are you?”
Aisling jabbed the muzzle of her carbine into his chest.“That wasn’t what he asked, ye feckin’ twat.”
“Y-yes, I’m in charge.”
“Of this entire lab?”Peyton asked.“Of the research?”
The man nodded.“Yes.”
She looked at Peyton.“Take him and have him give ye the grand tour.”They joined the others.From that point on, it was orderly chaos filled with ripping out hard drives, confiscating laptops, and having the man lead them to all the holding cells, including a separate wing in a secure section they’d received little details about.
They also took his keycard and codes so they could access all the rooms.
Five more techs were shot before they could be subdued, but twenty minutes after Aisling and her team made entry, they were already carrying out subdued hostages.
Peyton handed the doctor off to one of the other Primes.“He’s in charge.He goes.No matter how tempting it is to rip his throat out, keep him alive.All other personnel get liquidated.”
The Prime nodded and curled his lips at the guy, baring his fangs and making the doctor cringe in fear.“Just promise I get a chance at him before you skin him.”
“That’s already a long fucking line,” Peyton said.“Hold him down here, at the stairwell door, in case we need him for something.You stay on him.”
The guy grabbed the scientist by the scruff of the neck and dragged him away.
“Peyton!”Lowri called out.
He turned.“Yeah?”
“We need Jake over here,” she said, waving from a doorway on the other side of the main room.“This looks like the main lab area.There’s a lot of stuff, but most of it’s in Russian.”
“Jake!”he yelled, and the man turned, holding his hand up where he stood on the far end of the room.
“You’re with Lowri and Aaron,” he said, pointing.
As they headed off, Peyton made his way down to the secure area where they were bringing out hostages.
“How many so far?”he asked the woman in charge of coordinating that.
She looked grim.“That we can bring home?”
“Shit.Yeah.”
“Ten so far, all adolescents.We haven’t opened all of the cells either, but we’ve already found five we need to let go if they can’t communicate they want rescue.They’re… bad.They wouldn’t survive the evac anyway.”
“Okay.”He patted her shoulder, giving her a quick, silent Prime pep talk to bolster her reserve, and headed deeper.One of the team members would take DNA samples from and pictures of the people they had to leave behind in hopes of maybe identifying them and contacting their families to let them know their fates.
They hadn’t made it to the far end of the first wing of cells yet, and they had only cleared maybe a quarter of the cells so far.Then Peyton made the mistake of looking inside one cell, where they were leaving the occupant behind, and he wished he hadn’t.A Prime had already told them to sleep, but the empty ketamine syringe on the floor had added extra insurance to the person’s relief.
