Chapter 16 - The Wrong Direction

An officer hauled the chain away. Inside, an inch of brown water covered the floor, and the lights flickered above a maze of painted pipes. Ben was behind a wire-mesh partition, both wrists scraped raw. He looked older than he had the day before.

"Stay where you are!" the rescue captain called. "We're coming to you."

Ben pointed through the mesh. "The sign says OPEN, but Cal moved it. He wants you to turn that handle. It'll make the pressure worse."

Nadine directed her team to compare the actual pipe routing against the engineering drawings. Ben was right. Someone had moved the direction plate and tampered with the position indicator.

"Don't operate either control until we verify it," she said.

The officers broke the partition lock and carried Ben to the upper landing. He tried to walk on his own, but his legs buckled after two steps. I was there when they brought him out. The moment he saw me, he began to cry.

"I thought they'd kill you," he whispered.

I held him without caring about the stitches pulling under my shirt. "We're both here. That's enough for right now."

He shook his head. "No. It's not. Cal's still down there. He said if he couldn't open the gate, he'd break the equipment that closes it."

Nadine heard him. She sent a warning into the control room, but the reply was buried beneath a metallic boom. The pressure monitor jumped. The valve wasn't just open; it was failing.

Elias put his arm around Ben as medics approached. "You did good," he said.

Ben looked up. "You're the man she tried to drug."

"Yes."

"She told Cal she only needed you asleep until the vote. He said she'd have to make sure you never woke up."

Ortiz reached for her radio. "We have direct testimony. Locate Mara Voss."

A call came in from a patrol unit stationed at Bellwether House. Mara's black sedan had just smashed through a temporary security barrier and headed toward the east bypass.

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"Why would she come here?" I asked.

Ben wiped his face. "Because Cal has the records of what she paid him. And she knows he'll use them against her."