A wall of white light shone between Clayborn and me.

Time to strike. I sprang to my feet.

He smiled from behind the translucent haze.

I didn’t know what that light was. I snatched the ashtray from the end table and threw it against the light. The ashtray exploded.

Clayborn’s smile widened. A force field protected him. He retreated behind the partition.

An alarm went off. The red light on the entrance flashed.

I ran to the closest wall to break through and escape. I scraped my talons against the surface. Concrete. Same for the floor and the ceiling. It would take time for me to claw my way out, time I didn’t have.

The light beside the door went from red to green. The lock snapped open.

I ran beside the door and got ready to attack.

Two men carrying submachine guns rushed in. I swept my foot along their ankles and bowled them over. Their heads smacked the floor and their auras dimmed as they lost consciousness. I leaped into the foyer and slammed the door shut behind me.

The elevator doors were open. Red lights blinked in the hallway. An alarm blared, its horn screeching and echoing.

I didn’t see any stairs or another way out, other than the elevator. The exits out of the building were below me, and the guards would assume that the only way to escape would be down.

The elevator was all I had and I got in, trap or no trap. Cameras stared at me from opposite upper corners in the compartment. I swung my fists and knocked the cameras from their mounts. Let the guards work to find me.

I jumped and hooked my talons into the elevator ceiling. I tore at the ceiling panels and made a hole big enough to slide through.

Standing atop the elevator, I saw that I was on the second floor. I grasped the girders supporting the elevator and climbed to the third floor.

I set my toes and hands against the doors for the elevator and clung with supernatural sticky force. I ran my fingers between the doors and pulled them apart.

I faced an empty hall and paused for a second to get my bearings. No alarm sounded on this floor, but I could still hear the one shrieking downstairs.

Men shouted to my left.

I dodged right down the hall, turned the corner, and came face-to-face with a human guard armed with a shotgun. He stood before a metal door that looked like the hatch on a ship.

His eyes gaped at me. I didn’t have time to zap the guard; instead I knocked him out with a punch across the jaw.

The door was milled from thick steel and fastened to the wall with heavy bolts. The door lock had a slot for swiping a badge.

The guard carried an ID badge clipped to a shirt pocket. I took the badge and swiped it through the lock.

A screen above the lock flashed: BEGIN RETINAL SCAN.

What now?

An arrow on the screen pointed to a lens above the door lock.

I lifted the guard by his hair and pulled his left eyelid open. I wasn’t sure if this would work.

I pressed his face against the wall with his eye centered over the lens.

The screen showed an image of the guard’s retina. A line scrolled top to bottom across the screen.

The screen flashed: RETINAL SCAN COMPLETE.

A light on the door lock pulsed from red to green, and a latch inside the door clicked.

I dropped the guard and turned the handle of the door. I stepped over the threshold into a long, darkened room.

The only illumination in the room came from small desk lamps and the blank faces of computer monitors. I could see well enough.

I pushed the door closed. All the outside noise hushed. I spun the door handle until it stopped, then gave it an extra twist to jam the mechanism.

The room took up most of this floor, about fifty feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet to the far wall. Computer servers sat in bookcases, blinking spasmodically, sharing shelf space with stacks of notebooks and binders. A laboratory of some type?

Two rows of strange metal cylinders, each with a soft, bluish luster and big enough to hold a coffin, rested on wheeled dollies in the middle of the room. Each row had four cylinders, for a total of eight.

Four more cylinders stood along the circumference of a pedestal in the middle of the floor. The circular pedestal was about fifteen feet wide and rose above the floor about a step’s height. Two more rows of cylinders lay on dollies on the opposite side of the room.

The door of a freight elevator stood on the north side of the wall, directly above a door similar to that I’d seen in Clayborn’s suite. This elevator must be how they moved the cylinders from floor to floor in the annex.

I approached the closest cylinder. It held a large glass capsule. Inside the capsule lay a woman in a white medical gown, resting on her back against a white cushion, hands to her sides, her expression serene, as if in peaceful sleep. This woman’s complexion was the color of milk chocolate. Given her skin tone, her nose, and the oval shape of her face, she looked like the photo I’d seen before of Vanessa Tico. I turned to the next cylinder.

Inside rested a blonde. Janice Wyndersook, Vanessa’s fellow passenger on the doomed flight.

I dashed between the rows of cylinders, hoping that I’d find Carmen. Another woman, whom I didn’t recognize, lay in one of the cylinders. The rest were empty.

I approached the pedestal. Each of these cylinders stood on parallel grooves that pointed to an indentation in the center of the pedestal. The glass capsules of the cylinders faced the indentation.

Hesitantly, I put a foot on the pedestal-it looked made of polished steel-and stepped up to see inside the cylinders.

The first one contained Carmen.

The joy at finding her ran through me like electricity. I got close to the cylinder and placed my hands against the cool glass.

Restraining bands across her torso, middle, and arms held her upright. Like the other women, Carmen wore white. Her eyes were closed.

Her aura shimmered softly, the visual equivalent of a soft hum. She was in a deep sleep.

How had they captured her? Drugs? A paralysis ray? A mechanical restraint?

I had to get her out of the capsule. I raked my talons across the glass. Didn’t even scratch it.

I tore the metal leg from a nearby table. I smacked the capsule again and again. Carmen remained in her slumber.

A circular contraption the diameter of the pedestal hung from the ceiling directly over us. The contraption was a concave disk dimpled with ridges radiating from a thick glass rod pointing to the indentation of the pedestal.

The capsules must be slid down the tracks to the indentation, and then what? Was this a scanner? To measure psychic energy? A diagnostic tool? What?

In any case, it didn’t look good.

I beat my hands against the glass and shouted: “Carmen. Carmen.” I wanted her to wake up and shine her tapetum lucidum.

Desperation choked me. I roiled with anger. I tried to tear the cylinder from the tracks but it remained fixed in place.

Okay, acting like a gorilla wouldn’t solve anything. I calmed myself and examined the outside of the cylinder. There had to be a way of opening these things. I found a rectangular indentation on the right side beyond the glass front. The indentation was at hip height, low for me but right for someone of Clayborn’s stature.

The indentation protected a series of slots and female connectors. This was where external devices or cables were attached. What devices? What cables?

Heavy steps rushed to the door.

Hurry, Felix.

I looked around for anything that would seem to fit the connections. A collection of devices, small boxes with cables, sat on the closest desk. I ran to the desk, scooped all the devices in my arms, and hustled back to the cylinder.