Cassidy eyed the pile of ash on the floor near the rolly chair for only a moment, remembering the kindhearted nurse and wishing things had gone differently. The memories of what had happened to Lena would haunt her for years, she just knew it. For now, she couldn’t think about that. She sat down at the computer and moved the mouse, bringing the machine to life.
Beside her, Dax picked up the receiver and jabbed at the numbers, his hand trembling. He sighed and hit the button to hang up and start again. The second time worked no better than the first, and he growled in frustration.
“It’s okay,” Cassidy said, reaching out and stilling him. She gently pulled his hand away and dialed the extension.
“Thanks,” he muttered. Aurora must’ve answered quickly because she heard him repeat Cadence’s message—or Jamie’s as the case may be—and hang up.
By then, she was in the security interface of the computer. Using the vision of Spittle hijacking a computer somewhere downstairs in an area that looked more like a prison than anything else, she could clearly see what he had done. He might’ve been aware that she was in his head, as the images blinked in and out, like he was attempting to fight her off, but he was miles away now. They all were, save one. She knew that the forms she’d seen disappearing down the hallway on her way in were some of these escapees, that their objective was to break into the apartment complexes and catch the Hunters off-guard, but her appearance had spoiled that plan, and instead, they’d disappeared into the night, planning to regroup and try again another day. What had caused this sort of behavior was beyond her, but none of it mattered at the moment.
“You seem to know what you’re doing,” Dax said, looking over her shoulder.
“No, I’m watching Spittle do it, and trying to reverse engineer it,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t understand.
“Oookay,” he replied. Cassidy couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed he must feel having all of this happen on his first day.
“Here it is,” she said breathing a sigh of relief. She was into the alarm system now. A few more clicks, and she should be in the same area Spittle had messed with.
The door in front of them swung open, and Dax turned, pulling his Glock around and pointing it in the direction of the intruder. Cassidy didn’t even look up since she knew it was Brandon. She could sense him.
“Just me,” he said, and Cassidy felt Dax relax. Something about Brandon’s tone caught her attention, but she couldn’t bother to turn to look at him just now as she clicked away at the keyboard. “What are you two doing?”
“Cassidy is trying to reverse engineer the jamming of the IACs,” Dax explained, lowering his gun but not holstering it.
“You know how to do that?” he asked, leaning over to look through the window.
“No.” Cassidy clicked on a button that said, “Run alarm self-check,” and waited as the lines of indecipherable code flashed before her. Spittle had seen this, too, just before he jammed the system.
“She’s, uh, watching what some guy named Spittle did and doing the opposite or something,” Dax said, his tone questioning.
Cassidy turned to Brandon briefly. “How are the other areas?”
“So far so good,” he nodded. “Cale said Aaron had already warned them all.”
“Any sign of him or your dad?”
“No,” Brandon replied. “I heard some shouting and some running over by the perimeter fence, but I didn’t investigate.”
Checking the progress bar, Cassidy saw that it was at forty-five percent and not climbing very quickly. She let out a sigh. “Could you go see how Tara is doing?” she asked Brandon.
He looked at Dax and then back at Cassidy, and she realized he probably wanted to know why she’d asked him and not Dax. She wouldn’t have had an answer for him. His response was a quick, “Sure,” and then he headed down the hallway, though not as quickly as Cassidy would’ve liked.
“Who is that guy?” Dax asked as Cassidy turned back to the computer.
“He’s, uh, my boyfriend,” she replied, not sure why she found that difficult to say.
“Oh.” Cassidy didn’t have to see Dax’s face to know he was surprised. She hadn’t meant to keep Brandon’s existence a secret, but she hadn’t really had a chance to tell him, either. That was another “something” she couldn’t think about right now, so she pushed it aside, along with Lena, Tara, and most importantly, Bonnie.
The bar continued to disintegrate until the computer announced, “Alarm check complete. Error detected.”
“Dang it,” Cassidy muttered. She was hoping restarting it would override whatever Spittle had done. She absently wished her good friend Emma was here. She would know how to fix this in a second.
“Wait a minute,” Dax said. “You don’t need to restore it. You just need to disable it. If there is no alarm system, it can’t be jammed. Wouldn’t that turn off whatever it’s doing?”
He had a point. “It’s worth a shot,” she replied. She clicked back on the alarm interface and tried a few menus before she came to a screen that asked if she wanted to shut down the alarm system. She clicked. ”Yes.”
“Passcode required. Damn it!” Dax said for both of them.
“Faye.” Cassidy spun around in her chair. “Run back and see if she can tell you.”
Dax nodded. “Which one is Faye?”
Suppressing a smile at the look of exasperation on his face, she said, “The doctor on the couch in the playroom.”
“Can she even talk?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but it might be our only shot.”
Once again, his head bobbed up and down, and Dax took off for the playroom.
Cassidy spun back to face the computer and reached with her mind to see if there were any remnants of Lena left in this place she’d loved so well, one she’d likely still be sitting in if Cassidy hadn’t delivered the devil incarnate to her doorstep. If there was anything left of Lena’s stream of consciousness, she couldn’t find it, so she waited for Dax to return, hoping Faye could give him something.
