Blue Labyrinth

As she ran, she reached into her bag, plucked out her phone, and examined it. As she expected: no bars. The thick walls of the Museum basement effectively blocked all cell phone reception.

She was fast and in good shape, but apparently so was Slade, and as she ran she realized she would lose this ru

Passing a bank of lights at the end of an aisle, Margo snapped them all on — it might make her visible, but if he wasn’t using his gun it would also neutralize his advantage with the flashlight. As the fluorescents popped on, she immediately turned and ran in the opposite direction down the next aisle. She could hear Slade, ru

There were several doorways leading from the whale eyeball room to other storage areas, but only one of them led to the back exit from Building Six. He was gaining, and she wasn’t any closer to that exit. And at this time of night, that exit might well be locked from the inside. As she ran along the shelves she pulled more jars off, letting them crash to the floor. Could she light the ethyl alcohol on fire? But she had no lighter in her bag, and even if she did the entire storage room might go up, taking her with it.

Doubling back at the end of the next aisle, she yanked more jars off a shelf and they crashed to the floor behind her, the huge whale eyeballs rolling about, trailing alcohol and slime. With a curse Slade slipped on one, then grabbed the edge of a shelf to keep from falling, sending more jars crashing to the floor in the process. The fishy reek of eyeballs and alcohol filled the room. He was up again in a flash, but Margo had bought herself a few more seconds. As she reached the end of the next aisle, gasping for air, legs burning, she finally made out the door that, ultimately, led to the exit from Building Six. But he was so close, he’d reach her before she could even get her key in the lock.

Beside the door was a fire extinguisher.

Even as she heard his feet coming up behind her, she yanked the fire extinguisher from its bracket, spun around, and swung it at Slade, hitting him in the solar plexus and sending him to the floor. As he began to rise again with a grunt she pulled the pin and aimed the nozzle at him, spraying the foam into his face at point-blank range. He blindly tried to fend off the spray, futilely grabbing for the extinguisher.

“Bitch!” he screamed as he tried to get up, clawing the foam away as Margo kept blasting the white stream into his face. “I’ll kill you for this!” He lunged, slipped, and fell flat again. She saw her opening and hit him over the head with the extinguisher.

With a groan he fell silent: unconscious, half-buried in foam, eyes rolling in his head.

She paused, thinking furiously. Another powerful blow to the head, now that he was immobile, would crush his skull. She raised the extinguisher… only to find herself unable to do it. She tossed it away. She still had her bag — thank God. She should just get the hell out. But which way? If she continued on toward the rear exit, she would have to traverse several more rooms, probably locked, any one of which her passkey might not work on. It would be far faster to retrace her steps, back past the botanical collections to the elevator. What Slade had said about jamming the lock was probably bullshit — how would he get out, then?

She started ru

Moving as quickly as she could in the dim emergency light, she passed the entrance to the botanical collections and made her way down the corridor to the exit from Building Six. If she could get up the elevator, she could head for the security entrance, staffed by armed guards. There she’d be safe. She could tell them about Frisby, dead, the killer cop unconscious in the basement…

She reached the exit door, tried the crash bar. Locked. The door handle didn’t yield, either. She tried to fit her key into the lock but saw that, true to his word, Slade had jammed the blade of a penknife into it. She swore aloud. She would have to try the back exit, after all — past him. Now she wished she had bashed his brains out. If only she’d had the presence of mind to take away his gun. She wouldn’t make that mistake on her return pass — that is, if he was still unconscious.

Moving fast and silently, Margo retraced her steps. What if he had come to and was awake? She’d better get her hands on a weapon. She cast about. She was now by the entrance to the botanical collections again. She thought for a moment. What kind of plant would be of any use against a gun? None, of course.

Then she remembered something.

Darting into the collections, she ran past the cabinets and shelving — pausing just long enough to retrieve her headlamp — until she reached the Herbarium Vault, the tiny red light on its front panel like a guiding beam. Gasping for breath, she punched in the code, then opened the heavy door.

There they were: in the gleam of her headlamp, she could make out in the far corner the blowpipes — long hollow tubes — and the quiver of little bone darts, each about two inches long, with a tuft of feathers at one end. The tips of the darts were smeared with a sticky black substance.

She grabbed one of the blowpipes, slung the quiver around her free shoulder, and loaded it with a dart, pushing it into the hollow tube, feather tuft rearward. Now, exiting the vault and moving through the collections, she advanced as quickly as possible, snapping off the headlamp and relying on the emergency lighting, through the storage room door and back into the whale eyeball collection. As she entered, the stench hit her with an almost physical blow.

Her heart nearly stopped: there, in the aisle where she had left the cop, was a puddle of foam, but no body. Wet footprints led away.

She froze in terror. He was conscious, on his feet — perhaps lying in wait for her. She cast about but could see nothing. Trying to control her hammering heart, she listened intently. Were those stealthy footfalls, echoing from some indeterminate direction?

Panic took over and she ran toward the rear exit, only to round a shelf and slam directly into Slade, weapon drawn. He grabbed her, put her in a hammerlock, and threw her to the ground. He stepped over her, gun in hand.

“I’ve had enough,” he said in a low voice. “Give me the fucking bag or I’ll put a .45 round in your head.”

“Go ahead. The noise will bring security at a run.”

He said nothing, and she could see she had guessed right. But then a small smile appeared on his face. “It appears I need a weapons upgrade. Something silent.” He bent down and picked up the blowgun tube and its quiver of darts, which she had dropped in the collision. He pulled one dart from the quiver, looked at it. “Poisoned. Nice.” He examined the tube. “And you conveniently loaded it for me.”

He raised it awkwardly, placed it to his lips. Margo threw herself sideways just as he puffed, the dart flashing out and missing her by inches, clattering off a shelf. She scrambled sideways in a crab-like motion, then lunged to her feet as he pulled out another dart and poked it into the tube. She ran desperately as a second dart flashed past her. She heard him coming after her yet again.