Kirsten, shoots her a sympathetic glance, her shoulders hunched forward against the wave of sound and the inarticulate sense of mechanical violence. “I don’t know how to knock it out either!” she shouts, pointing. “Stairway! Across the room!”

Koda nods and sets off in the direction of the exit. Past the climate control unit stand rand upon rank of computer monitors on panels rising nearly to the ceiling, glowing with fluorescent reds, blues, greens like eye-shine in the semi-darkness. As they pass, Koda can make out the ever-changing readouts: strings of numbers, bar graphs that rise or shrink seemingly at random, wave-forms like EKG read-outs, all flashing and squirming across the LCD screens. Above them run the aluminum air ducts, suspended from the ceiling by struts that flex almost imperceptibly with the vibration from the equipment below, as if they might suddenly come tumbling down on hapless beings below. Bundled electrical cables, thick as a human thigh, run alongside them, weaving in and out among PVC pipes that must carry water or waste. Witch’s cradle. An involuntary shudder runs through Koda, and she does not look up again.

Past the monitors, the electrical plant occupies half the floor. In the dim light from the LED’s, Koda can make out half-a-dozen large generators, whirring and clanking behind a wall of steel bars. No smell of gasoline or other fuel taints the air; somewhere, then, there are windmills or solar cells not visible from the hills outside. Opposite it, behind its own cage, stands a transmission station, its matrix festooned with humming transformers and white ceramic insulators. Here the ozone smell is overwhelming, the same sharp odor that pervades the air in the aftermath of a lightning strike. The door is thick as a bank vault’s, equipped with combination knobs and a wheel like a ship’s to draw its bolts. Red DANGER signs merely state the obvious. It is a vulnerability, like the HVAC unit, but one they cannot exploit.

Ahead, a red EXIT sign burns above a door, and she makes toward it at a jog, Kirsten keeping pace behind her. The door gives way at her first push, and she glances back inquiringly at Kirsten, who can only shrug. She has no way of knowing if Westerhaus or the droids have set traps, no way of knowing whether the Institute personnel have simply become careless once the humans in the surrounding area had been wiped out.

The air from the stairwell hits them like a January blizzard on the Plains, cold to just above freezing. On it comes a taint of old blood, the odor of a meat locker. Koda cannot tell whether it comes from somewhere above them or from the air system. She turns to look at Kirsten, whose grimly set mouth tells her that she, too, has identified the smell. Somewhere above them is, in any case, limited; the stair goes up only one story, to a landing and another steel door. Taking the steps slowly and silently, Koda tries the handle. Locked, this time electronically. A retinal reader sits on the doorjamb at a little below average eyelevel. “Any way you can fool this thing into opening without blowing it?” Koda asks. “Does it have an override?”

“Let me see.” Kirsten steps past her, surveying the set-up. Standing just to one side, she slips her laptop out of her pack, keys up a screen and surveys a column of figures that makes no sense whatsoever to Koda. Kirsten, though, says, “Maybe. Maybe. If I just—” She looks up, staring at the door as if willing it to open. “Do this—” She presses a combination of keys, and the lock emits a series of electronic tones and snaps open.

Koda shoots her an admiring glance. “Hey, you’re good at this.” Cracking the door a centimeter or so, she peers out into a corridor painted institutional green. Unmarked doors line it at fifteen foot intervals. “What’s on this floor?” she whispers.

“Storage. Parts and equipment, mostly.” She wrinkles her nose at the odor, stronger here, though still faint.

“Can you hear anything?”

Kirsten slips out into the hallway, touching the implants behind her ears. After a long moment, she says, “I can hear the machinery downstairs. I don’t hear anyone moving or talking.”

Koda grins at her. “Fox ears. Maybe we need to give you a new name.”

“Yeah? How about you? How do you say Does-It-Like-A-Rabbit in Lakota?”

“Gratefully. Let’s go.”

Koda slips first out into the hallway, her rifle at ready, finger on the trigger. This is the eighth level; two more to go before the get to Westerhaus’ lair on the sixth. The corridor leads around the circumference of the building. Some of the rooms stand open, showing metal shelves rising to the ceiling. One seems to contain cleaning supplies, towels and toilet paper with five-gallon drums of ammonia and Lysol. Another appears to be subdivided by walls made of boxes with the familiar hp logo; computer paper not by the ream but by the forest. The odor has grown steadily stronger. “They have a cafeteria on t his level?” Koda asks.

“Don’t think so,” Kirsten answers quietly. “Something tells me that’s not pork chops spoiling.”

“I don’t think it is, either. Up around the curve, maybe?”

The hall leads them to the east side of the building. A bank of elevators and another stairway face double doors. Just visible against the faux terra-cotta tiles, dark stains spread beneath them. Blood. Its body am irridescent blue and green, a blow-fly crawls across one deep brown spatter, leaving black specks behind it. As Koda watches, it takes flight, ponderous in the chill, buzzing as it slips between the door panels to disappear into the room beyond. She pulls her bandana back up over her nose and mouth. “I’m going to go have a look. Stay here.”

“Koda—”

“Cover me. It’ll only take a minute.”

She pushes against the doors, a little surprised that they yield so easily, and lets them fall shut again behind her. The stench meets her in a billow of chilled air, stronger here, unmistakable. She gives her eyes a minute to adjust, the dim light seeping in from the hall showing her rows of chairs on a bare floor. Secretdefault “posture” chairs form one line, high-backed executive seating another, rows of vaguely Mission-style armchairs a third. Desks, also sorted by class, stand in neat lines across the middle of the room, while the tall bulk of filing cabinets occupies the front.

Switching on the penlight, Koda plays it over the back row of chairs. Human forms lie slumped in several of them, their clothes clotted with darkly frozen blood. One young woman sits with her forehead against the back of the seat in front of her, a hole the size of a quarter in the back of her skull, blood and grey brain matter scattered through her pale copper hair. The man beside her shows only a cage of shattered ribs and blackened viscera where his chest should be. Yet another sits with his head tilted back at an impossible angle, neck broken, mouth open and fly-blown. In the space behind, where a pair of handtrucks lean against the wall, a half-dozen more corpses lie stacked like cordwood, their limbs twisted and frozen into an inextricable tangle. Some of those in the seats may have died here. Others, like these, seem to have been killed and let lie till they began to stiffen, then brought here to await—what? Removal? Certainly no plant that manufactured sophisticated electronics would risk contamination from storing corpses long term. But that is another problem. It is impossible to tell how long these people have been dead, only that their bodies have been frozen, probably thawed slightly, frozen again.

Neither is it clear who they were. Employees? Two still sport ID badges clipped to their pockets, but blood has obscured the lettering. Salesmen, customers, visitors, caught in the Institute when the rebellion went down? There is no time to investigate, no time to think about them, no good to be done them. They have made their journey, going where it is all too likely she and Kirsten will follow before the night is through. Peace, she wishes them, then slips back into the hall.

“How bad?” Kirsten’s voice is tight with control, but the sudden rise and fall of her chest betrays her relief.

“A couple dozen. Can’t tell how long they’ve been dead or who they were. Most look like they’ve been shot.”

“Women?”

“Women, too, some young.” Koda pulls down her bandana and takes a deep breath of the relatively fresher air in the hall. “No baby-making factory here, apparently.”

Kirsten shakes her head as if to clear it, and it comes to Koda belatedly that she might well know some of the men and women who lie dead on the other side of the doors. But she only gestures toward the wall opposite. “Stairs? Or take the elevator and go for broke?”

“Stairs are harder to booby-trap. We may have to blow another door, though, and we’re getting up to where they’re likely to hear us.”

A quizzical expression crosses Kirsten’s face. “It’s strange. I still don’t hear anybody—no movement, no voices. Level Seven’s production. There ought to be somebody right over us if the facility’s still operating as usual.”

“Maybe it’s coffee break. Let’s go.”

The door to the seventh floor is, predictably, locked, and Koda stands by as Kirsten keys the code into her laptop again.

Nothing.

Swearing, Kirsten steps closer and her fingers fly over the keys a second time. Still nothing.

“Shit,” Koda swears, reaching for the plastique at her belt. “I’ll get the C-4 on it.”

“One more try.” Kirsten moves past her to stand directly in front of the door, her head a foot away from the jamb. Slowly, methodically, she punches in the long string of alphanumerics. Just as Koda threads the copper wire though the knob of plastique, the door lock gives a soft snick, and Kirsten, folding her laptop, pushes it slowly open. “We got it,” she says.