They gathered about a quarter mile away; no one had gone in or out in a while. Trent kept watch overhead, coordinating everyone's movements without need for radio communications. He reported an interference field of some kind which kept him from getting a reading on anyone in the building, then carried Phoenix over the building and dropped him on the roof, silently. Scott flowed down to examine the perimeter, a ground-level liquid covered by the darkness. Lucky stayed in the van with Reilly, waiting for the signal before they attempted to make their delivery.
    "Do you really think the delivery person thing will work?" he asked doubtfully.
    "What other shot do I have of getting in there?" she shrugged.
    Well, according to Felix, Trent said silently, the delivery person thing always works. I don't know....
    "I hate this hat," she muttered, adjusting it for the hundredth time.
    On the roof, Phoenix found a ventilation shaft and slithered in; a tight fit for his shoulders but bearable. From the layouts Felix had gotten off the computer, he knew there was a good spot for a security camera ahead. He disabled it with a spinning mirror and kept going.
    Scott encountered a fence with a mild electric charge, the first sign that someone might in the building after all. He went to gas form to avoid setting off any alarms and passed through it, careful not to absorb any of the juice on the way through. He found some air ducts into the underground levels.
    The upper levels looked abandoned but clean, and there was something funny going on with the space, Phoenix noted. Corridors too short, rooms too small—they could be hiding anything in the scavenged areas, but a search found him nothing of value on the top two floors. He decided to try the lower levels, through the elevator shaft. No problem. He landed silently on top of the elevator as it descended.
    Scott continued through the ventilation system, staying very flat and covering a huge amount of space. He found a barracks room on sub-one. The entire area was permeated by a weird electrochemical aura. Thirty-plus men slept there and there was room for twenty more. Not good at all.
    Phoenix made it to the third underground level. It looked as if it had been modified into a set of some sort, a hospital, maybe? He saw people in rooms and moving about. He moved from shadow to shadow in the dim lighting and glanced into a room. He recognized the figure in the bed, right height and build. An orderly was coming down the corridor, apparently headed for that room.
    She looked a lot like Winters.
    He slipped into the room, hid in a shadow, chopped her in the neck and grabbed the tray of pills she was carrying, dropping only one on the floor as she slumped.
    He called Scott to relay the signal; he'd found her, gave them the directions. Scott called Lucky.
    "About that package?" he told her.
    "Delivery on schedule," she grinned.
    The UPS van drove up to the gate.
    "Yeah?"
    "Got you' delivery heah," Lucky called.
    "Christ's sake, it's three in the morning, don't you people sleep?"
    "Yeah, well I can't help it, the truck gets broken down in the middle of the fuckin' highway, all right? I got you' stuff, do you want it or not? I'm tired too, I wanna go home!"
    "All right, you were due here—"
    "Yeah, I know I was due," she shot back. "I haven't had any dinneh. You got anything I can eat around heah? A hot dog, I'm starvin' to death heah, and my pahtner, he could use something too, maybe some coffee?"
    Reilly grunted.
    "You want us to unload this stuff?" she continued.
    "Yeah, head in." He radioed ahead. "Good god, yeah, we got the package, they're three hours late. Put the scan up."
    She could sense it, the hairs on her arms stood up as they went through, but they came through clean. Reilly wasn't wearing his gun, after all, and Chandler said he'd made sure she wouldn't show up as variant. She checked in with Trent, who suggested pulling out all the stops.
    "All right, man, come on, let's go, I'm hungry, goddamit!" Lucky stated as they drove into the loading dock. Five or six tired-looking guys waited there; she recognized the chemical scent. "You think you're tired, you should've been on the highway," she informed them. "Goddamn tire. You know what it's like to try and change a tire on a UPS truck? You ever tried, that, huh?"
    "No...."
    "No, I'm sure you haven't. You don't look like, y'know, you could lift that vase over theah."
    They exchanged amused looks. She started chucking out packages.
    "Hey, some this stuff's supposed to be frajeelay!" one exclaimed.
    "What's a frajeely, I don't speak Italian? Just because I grew up in the Bronx doesn't mean shit, we're not all a bunch of wops—" She dropped one of the boxes with a smoke bomb. "Goddamit, wha'd'you have in there? I'm gonna sue! Sue all your fuckin' asses!"
    "What the hell—"
    One of them grabbed her shoulder. She brought the stick to life and slammed it into his skull.

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