Upgrade(85)

“Director Rogers?” We turned to the young female cop who had stayed behind. “I’m supposed to take you to the SWAT team.”

We followed her out of the Grand Central underground, up through the main hall and onto Park Avenue, where she’d left her cruiser double-parked.

As we rode south, I studied the floor plans Edwin had sent me for 140 Broadway, the skyscraper that housed Omega Laboratories. Omega had been a beta-phase lab, occupying the entirety of floors 33 and 34. They built flu vaccines for clinical trials, prior to the final-phase product moving into mass production for the market. Of course, that was all before Lower Manhattan flooded.

“Maybe this is a mistake,” Edwin said.

“What? This raid?”

“You have no idea what you’re walking into. People are going to die. I could probably get authorization for a drone strike. Hit the building before dawn. Just fucking bring it down.”

“I’ve heard estimates that ten thousand people live in Lower Manhattan.”

“There’d be some collateral damage.”

“And we’d never know for sure that we got her. Or the virus she built. I want eyes on her.”

One forty Broadway was an International Style building of glass and black steel, its initial construction completed 101 years ago. I quickly scrolled through each of the fifty-one floors, committing the various layouts to memory.

We rolled past Union Square Park, then down Broadway until it terminated at the intersection of Houston Street, one of the new southern boundaries for inhabitable Manhattan. The flood zone wasn’t a straight line across the island. There were variations. All of SoHo was underwater, but there were neighborhoods that high tide didn’t submerge, like parts of Chinatown.

Stepping out of the cruiser, I approached the line of Jersey barriers and chain-link fencing that blocked travel farther south. In the distance, beyond the barricade, I could see water lapping at the street where the tide had stopped.

Behind me, the city lights glowed in their iconic shades of white and champagne. Straight ahead, the only thing visible was a ribbon of starlit sky, squeezed between black buildings. I’d seen photos of this ghost city at night, but I’d never been here. There was something unnerving about the forest of featureless, black monoliths that now comprised Lower Manhattan. Of course, it wasn’t completely abandoned. The homeless had taken over three years ago. They called it New Venice. Far in the distance, I could see light sources emanating through broken windows—open fires in high-rise encampments.

Edwin came up behind me. “They know you’ve got the lead here.”

“You trust them?”

“It’s just NYPD bio-SWAT. They do what they’re told.”

I climbed over the concrete barricade and slipped through an opening in the fence.

“Hey,” Edwin called after me. I glanced back. “Watch yourself.”

Halfway down the next long block, I saw shadows and flashlights.

I announced myself as I drew within range, my inherent night vision overlaying details from the existing star-and city-light.

I saw four rafts and a dozen SWAT officers making final weapons checks. Two people in night-camo hazmat suits finished loading gear into a raft and walked over.

We introduced ourselves. The team leader was Bob Noyes, a burly, bearded man who looked like he could do some real damage. Beside him stood a silver fox named Aaron Brandes, who was presently shoving a lithium battery into a drone.

Noyes called everyone over. “Let’s focus up!”

The team hadn’t pulled their hoods on yet, so I made a quick scan, trying to establish eye contact with each of them, seeing what I could read in the low light.

Nothing I observed suggested deception. I saw exhaustion. One instance of mild intoxication. Two bored sociopaths, hungry for violence. But more than anything, uncertainty and fear. And I couldn’t blame them. The more I understood 140 Broadway, the more I could see why Kara had chosen it. Up there on floor 33 or 34, she had a perfectly defensible position. It was going to force me to do something crazy.

“The target is Kara Ramsay.” No one asked if she was my sister. I suspected they didn’t really know who I was. “You should have a recent sketch of her. She’s operating out of One forty Broadway, twenty-four blocks due south of our current position. You should also have the floor plans by now.”

“How much resistance are we expecting?” Noyes asked.

“Several guards with special forces training. But these aren’t ordinary soldiers. They have abilities you’ve never seen.”

“They know we’re coming?”

“I don’t think so, but they’ll be ready. I suspect the lab is on the thirty-third or thirty-fourth floor. Obviously, there’s no elevator access. There are four stairwells. Two toward each end of the building. When we get there, I’ll want a twenty-minute head start. Take up positions outside the stairwell entrances on the ground floor and wait for my signal. Four stairwells. Four teams. There will be motion-activated surveillance cameras, so use your personal signal jammers. I would anticipate barricades. Choke points.”

“Shooting galleries,” Noyes said.

“Basically. And now you know everything I know. We’ll head south, make a pit stop at the intersection of Fulton for drone surveillance and final comms setup. Any questions?”