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as he leaned forward, frowning. “What is
it?”
    Spider answered for me.
“Aydan can’t read the files. I don’t know why. I’m afraid... I
think she might have to use the network key after all.”
    “Dammit!” Kane’s fist
clenched by his side. “You can’t read anything at all?”
    “Nothing. It’s just
gibberish.”
    “Dammit!”
    I felt the same grim
lines on my face as I saw on theirs. I sighed. “Let’s go and get
the bad news.”
    I dragged myself off
the sofa and trailed down the hallway. They fell in behind me, and
we made the trip back down to the lobby in dispirited silence.
    I approached the heavy
steel-framed door reluctantly and bent close to the small aperture
for the retinal scan. The featureless door unlatched with a muffled
click and I stepped into the cramped chamber beyond it, followed by
Kane and Webb.
    As the door closed and
latched behind us, I stepped a single pace forward to the door at
the other side and let it scan me, too. Then I compulsively counted
down the thirty-second time delay, trying not to pay attention to
the way the walls and ceiling seemed to shrink toward me. Both men
stepped away to give me space, but it didn’t help much. The room
was only a few feet square. No one spoke.
    When the latch
released, I snatched the door open with a barely-suppressed gasp.
As always, the enclosed concrete stairwell made my heart rate spike
in momentary panic.
    I walked down the
stairs purposefully, trying to hide my shaking legs. At the bottom,
I pulled the door open and stepped into the glassed-in corridor of
the secured lab area.
    The white walls and
glass and the constant flow of cool, fresh air helped reassure me.
I took several deep breaths, deliberately pushing away the
knowledge that I was locked underground.
    Both Kane and Webb were
watching me and I avoided their eyes while we walked down the
hallway to Spider’s lab.
    He unlocked the door
with his prox card and retinal scan, and we all filed into the
room.
    “Pull up a chair,” he
said tightly as he unlocked the compartment at the back of his desk
drawer.
    Kane and I both sat,
and I scowled at the tiny circuitry inside the small box Spider
handed me. Then I snapped the box closed and removed my security
fob, looking from one frowning face to the other.
    “Well, this isn’t going
to get any better for putting it off.” I held the box in my hand
and stepped into the network void.
    This time, both Spider
and Kane appeared beside me. Our walk down the virtual hallway had
the feeling of a march to execution. Or at least it did to me. I
was too absorbed in my own misery to care what the other two were
thinking.
    When we reached the
file room, I hovered unhappily beside the stack of files. Both men
watched me, their faces sombre. I sighed and reached for the file
I’d opened earlier.
    “Son of a fucking
bitch.”
    “What?” they demanded
in ragged unison.
    I sank to the floor and
held my head in my hands. “I can read it just fine.”
    I rocked back and forth
a couple of times and jerked a couple of handfuls of hair. “What
the hell did I ever do to the gods to make them this
vindictive?”
    Spider knelt beside me.
“Aydan, I’m so sorry!” He reached for my hand and squeezed it.
“This totally sucks!”
    I looked into his
troubled face and gave myself a mental shake. He was so
tender-hearted, he was probably more upset about this than I was.
My whining wasn’t going to make things any better for me, but it
was going to make him even unhappier.
    I squared my shoulders
and got up. “Never mind, Spider. Life goes on. And anyway, it’s not
like I’m going to be going in and out frequently. A couple of shots
of pain a day won’t kill me.”
    “But what if you get
kicked out of the network again,” he said fearfully as he stood,
too. “That was... horrible.”
    I shrugged, hiding my
own dread. “I can’t see why that would happen. And you’ve still got
the signalling device, haven’t you? So you can signal me to