Genesis by Keith R. A. DeCandido Page A

her favor. The mild chaos of a fire drill would make it that much easier for her to sneak off and meet with Alice.
    Along with everyone else, she headed toward the fire exit. The space that held her desk had two ways out, one toward the elevator bay, with fire stairs between the elevators and the fake windows; the other in the back leading to another set of stairs. The one by the elevator bay was wider and better lit, so everyone headed there.
    Before she got to the bay, however, she saw a crowd congregating in the hall. Why weren’t they moving forward?
    â€œWhat’s the problem?” she asked as she put on her jacket, flipping her dirty-blond hair out from under the jacket’s collar.
    â€œThe doors won’t open.”
    Lisa blinked. She peered through the crowd to seethat the PlastiGlas doors had shut, blocking access to the elevator bay. That wasn’t supposed to happen until after the room was evacuated, unless there was an actual fire that necessitated sealing the room to prevent a spread.
    â€œWhat about the ones at the back?” Lisa asked.
    One of the new Technical Support guys said, “Locked as well.”
    This was going in a direction Lisa didn’t like in the least. She was as familiar with the fire-suppression systems as anyone, and she ran through it in her head: the room was evacuated, sealed, and then flooded with halon gas until the fire went out. The halon would suck the oxygen out of the room, thus starving the fire.
    The problem, of course, was that the gas would also starve any animal life of oxygen, which was why the system was designed not to seal the room until after the evacuation was complete. The sole exception to this was if the fire was so out of control that the lives of anyone inside would be just as forfeit if they weren’t sealed in the room.
    But there was no fire. And Lisa knew for a fact that the systems were working just fine.
    Something was horribly wrong.
    Several nightmare scenarios went through Lisa’s head at once.
    One was that they had traced her, and had sealed off this section, not because of a fire drill, but in order to make sure she herself didn’t go anywhere.
    Another was that the Red Queen was malfunctioning in some way, which would be even more of a problem,since five hundred people’s lives depended on the little brat being in perfect working order. That shouldn’t have been the case, though, since Lisa herself was as familiar with the computer’s workings as anyone in the Hive, and she’d found nothing wrong.
    But then, she’d been so distracted the last few days . . .
    A third possibility was that Alice herself had betrayed Lisa.
    Before a fourth possibility could even occur to her, she heard a nasty hissing sound. Within seconds, the air around her seemed to shimmer.
    â€œHalon!” she cried, even as the gas started to burn her throat.
    With each passing second, it became more impossible to breathe. Her fellow workers banged at the PlastiGlas door in a futile effort to get out.
    Lisa herself screamed, “Stop it!” at the Red Queen’s security camera—the same one that Alice had shown her a recording from in the park days ago. The hypothesis that the brat had gone nuts was now foremost in what was left of her thoughts, and she wondered if indeed it had been her fault. Her mind hadn’t really been on her job lately.
    Right now, her mind was only on trying and failing to take another breath. “Stop it!” she cried again, more hoarsely, even as she collapsed to the floor, her legs suddenly unable to support her own weight.
    The gas permeated the room, making it impossible to see.
    All week, she’d been thinking about ways for the plan to go wrong, but this hadn’t even made the list.
    From the beginning, she knew that this endeavor might result in her death, but not this way. Not dying from a goddamn computer malfunction.
    She tried to yell, “Stop