Ultraviolet Catastrophe(43)
Author: Jamie Grey

18

The technical storage warehouses were located in Division Ten and, lucky for us, completely deserted. I pressed my thumb to the scanner, and we slipped inside one of the huge storage rooms. The fluorescent lights flickered on with our movement, and I gaped at the floor-to-ceiling shelves stretching as far as I could see.

“The manifest is stored on the computer. Over here.” Asher booted up the computer in the corner and typed in a search term. I was still blinking at the sheer number of gadgets and devices piled on the shelves. And this was the smallest of the storerooms.

“Got it. Row 13, Section G.”

We started toward the other end of the room, our shoes squeaking on the cement floors. “I can’t believe Avery’s dead and no one seems upset,” I said. “I mean, he was creepy in class, but was he really that bad?”

“The guy was an ass**le. He hit on every female scientist here. And there was more than one whisper he’d had affairs with some of the senior students in the past. The only reason they didn’t fire him was because he was a brilliant scientist.”

I frowned. “I don’t care if you’re brilliant or not. If you act like that, you should be gone.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Asher led us down Row 13, his eyes scanning the shelves as we walked. “I don’t know why Danvers kept him around. She doesn’t seem like the type of person to put up with his shit.”

“And to give him a promotion? Why would she put him in charge of the project if he was that bad?” I searched, too, though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for. There were stacks of boxes labeled with odd names and descriptions like the Eyre Star Gazer or the Shepard Mass Effect Generator. I tugged at the tip of my ponytail. How many experiments was QT involved with exactly?

“Found it,” Asher called from down the row.

He bent over a small machine, fiddling with the controls. It almost looked like a price gun they used in supermarkets, but it had a small computer screen and a keypad.

“Put the fabric on the shelf there, and I’ll scan it.” He pressed some buttons, and the machine squawked. A fluorescent glow started at the gun end, and he passed it slowly back and forth over the piece of cloth. “It’s looking for biological markers now. If it finds any, it’ll start beeping, and we can try to type them.”

I held my breath as the machine hummed and vibrated. Seeing a QT invention in action was pretty cool.

A shrill beep echoed in the storage room, and Asher looked up with a grin. “Gotcha!” He pressed a few more buttons, and the light coming from the machine turned red. “Biological marker found. Now to figure out who this shirt belonged to.”

I inched closer so I could see the screen on the machine. The image of a DNA helix spun slowly as it searched the database. Asher’s lips were twisted into a smile, and his foot tapped the cement floor as we waited. He looked as excited as I felt. What if we found the killer? What if this solved everything?

Finally, the machine vibrated, and the helix disappeared from the screen. Our shoulders touched as I moved even closer, and Asher tilted the screen so we could both read.

We both let out a sigh of disappointment. The shirt belonged to Dr. Avery.

Asher dropped the machine back on the shelf and crossed his arms. His dark hair flopped over his forehead. “Damn it. I thought we had something.”

I frowned. “I suppose it tells us one thing. Someone dragged him down there. He didn’t die in the cryo chambers.”

“How do you figure?”

“There’s a seam in the fabric, like at a shoulder. But the fabric was caught on the door at waist-level. Someone dragged him through that door. He wasn’t walking.”

Asher’s eyes widened. “You’re right. So if he wasn’t killed there, where was he killed?”

“His office!” I said.

We sprinted for the door at the same time.

Unfortunately, even Asher’s mad acting skills couldn’t get us past the guards blocking Dr. Avery’s office. Name dropping didn’t work. Bribes didn’t work. I think the only person who could have gotten inside was Dr. Danvers, and she wasn’t around to ask. She was still barricaded in her office with security.

“Come on, man, we just need to get inside for a minute.”

“You heard me, Rosen. No one gets in.” The guard’s hand inched toward his waist. Where his stun gun was.

“Let’s go find Max and Zella.” I tugged on Asher’s arm. Pissing off security was not going to get us anywhere but locked in a cell.

“Fine. Whatever.”

I inched closer to whisper in his ear, trying to ignore the way his long lashes curled against his cheekbones. “Making them suspicious isn’t going to help. We need to figure something else out.”

“I suggest you get back to classes, Mr. Rosen,” one of the burly guards growled.

“Whatever, Jim. See if I help you next time you need your pulse pistol fixed.” Asher turned away and marched toward the elevators.

“Let’s find the others and see what they think. With that much genius in a room, we’re bound to come up with something.” I snuck a glance at him from the corner of my eye. His shoulders were hunched around his ears, and a scowl twisted his face. “What’s up, Ash?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I just hate not knowing what’s going on. I’m the student liaison. I should be involved.”

“In a murder investigation? Aren’t you taking on a bit much? Let security and police do their jobs. Avery’s death doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

He stopped to face me. “Doesn’t it?”

My brain whirred and spun, things finally connecting.

I’d discovered Avery’s calculations were wrong.

Then we’d found an anomaly in the simulation.

Our data was wiped from the network.

Avery was murdered.

Sure seemed like it was connected to us. I shook my head, not wanting to believe it. “Maybe it’s just coincidence?”

“There is no such thing as coincidence.” His eyes were suddenly cold. “The project lead is dead. He was the only person who knew how he developed his calculations, how everything was connected. What else did he know?”

Shivers crawled over my skin, and I wrapped my arms around my waist. “What do we do?”

“We keep searching.”

“Maybe we should tell someone. Let Dr. Danvers or my dad take care of it.”