The Pyramid Chronicles: Fortuna Guard (#2)

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Blood Ties

The door to the server room was unlocked when Ash arrived. The only person inside was the Director, who was sat at one of the computers, intently typing away.

"Ash," the Director said without glancing up. "You shouldn't be in here." He clicked the mouse a couple of times. The computer made an unpleasant error noise, and he responded with a sigh.

"We were supposed to defend this room," Ash said. "Someone said they saw the Fortuna Guard come in here."

"Yes. You're too late. Do you know where Claudia is?"

"Roof, I think. She said going to leave soon when I last saw her." Ash's eyes moved over a strange diagram on the wall behind the Director. "Why?"

"Never mind," the Director said. "I thought I might be able to disable their flash drive's program, but I don't have time."

"How much longer do we have?" Ash had heard the announcement about the Fortuna Guard planting a bomb, but he'd been in the middle of a fight and hadn't caught all of the details.

"Just over twenty minutes."

Ash glanced at the door. Many altered had gone up to the roof already, but he'd heard a few discuss chasing the Fortuna Guard down to the lower levels on his way here. "We need to get out of here, anyway," he said. "There's something running around downstairs."

The Director frowned as the computer gave him another error. "What do you mean?"

"I have no idea what it is. It's this giant creature, it looks like a genetic experiment gone wrong. Like a spider crossed with a...well, I don't even know. It was the size of a horse." Ash bit his tongue and composed himself. The creature had scared him more than he cared to admit.

The Director's hands froze. The first hint of fear Ash had ever seen crept onto the man's face. "Not the Apex," he muttered. "What did that boy do?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind. You're right, we need to get everyone out now."

"Are you coming?" Ash asked.

"I'll be up in a minute. I'm going to try one more time to recover the data they deleted," the Director replied. "I was able to send some of it out before they took down the servers, but I'm afraid the rest may be gone for good. Unless we could steal the drive they took."

Ash had no idea what the Director was going on about. He probably should have cared, but he didn't. "Okay, well, Claudia wanted me to grab some blood samples from the lab." He didn't want to go back downstairs, even if it was only a couple of floors, but Claudia was the last person he wanted to say no to right now.

The Director responded by muttering something under his breath. Ash gave up on the conversation and left the room.

He stopped by his room to grab a backpack with a couple of his things before moving on to the lab. Power had been disabled on all floors but the twelfth, forcing him to rely on his phone's flashlight to illuminate the way. The world around him was silent until he found the container Claudia had described. As he picked it up, he heard the clicking. Faint, but definitely there. Ash shoved the samples in his bag and hurried to the nearest stairwell.

When he reached the eleventh-floor landing, a thud sounded nearby. Fear jolted through his body. The hand holding his phone shook as he pointed it down the hall to his left. Footsteps approached.

It wasn't the creature, but a girl that appeared at the end of the hallway.

Ash's lips parted. "No," he murmured. Was he hallucinating again? But this girl was far too old to be...