Hellhole Inferno by Brian Herbert Page B

chart of security personnel. “I brought you everything I could get hold of. It took a great deal of searching. Not easy,” the woman said, as if hinting at something—more pay, no doubt—which Laderna studiously ignored. She saw a list of patient designations, but without names. She could crunch the information, though, and extract specifics. Since she already suspected where Haveeda Duchenet was being held, she could approach the answer from multiple directions.
    â€œAnd how do I get inside in the first place?” Laderna asked.
    The maintenance woman was sweating. “That’ll be harder. Every employee is coded into the security system, allowed inside only during designated shifts. A palm-print scanner verifies my identity before I can get through the door, and I won’t be allowed to slip a second person into the facility. There are weight sensors to verify it.”
    Laderna assessed the maintenance woman, confirmed that they were nearly the same size; the woman’s brown uniform would fit her well enough. “I have a way around that,” she said.
    After Laderna had killed the woman, donned her clothing, and gathered up her severed hand, she was ready to go.
    After midnight, Laderna used the woman’s cold palm print to pass through the identity scanner at the Cove Institute’s rear entrance. Once she launched her operation, speed would be vital. She had no interest in covering her tracks or being subtle—she wanted Michella Duchenet to know that her sister had been a very specific target. She needed to work her way through the facility with all possible speed, dispatch Haveeda, and then disappear. For Ishop.
    Wearing the facility’s uniform, Laderna arrived at the central guard station, where she stunned the guard and disabled the surveillance system. She had memorized the floor plan, the blueprints of the systems, and had crunched through the patient IDs; she was convinced she knew where the Diadem’s sister had been held all these years. It was probably a tiny, pampered apartment in the facility, someplace where Haveeda could cause no trouble. Laderna planned to put an end to her as quickly as possible. She moved on to her target.
    In her plan, she had timed every movement, and had very little room for error or delay. She would depend on speed, brashness, and accuracy; she would do it alone.
    This time, she used the guard’s severed hand to get through heavier security, sliding aside a thick metal door to a windowless section. Yes, Haveeda must be in here. Laderna needed to hurry, finish her task, and be away. Afterward, she already knew how she would disappear.
    Inside the high-security section, she found herself in a small entrance foyer, with cubicles containing lab equipment, cleansuits, and protective magnifying goggles. At this late hour, no one was around—the maintenance woman’s schedules had been accurate. Inside, she expected to find one or more confinement cells for patients of the sanitarium, luxurious rooms for the highest-priority, wealthy but disturbed guests. One of them was the Diadem’s sister.
    She passed through a second doorway and heard a strange silence, an electronic barrier that dissolved when she touched an identity scanner. Inside, additional doors each had a control panel. Her pulse quickened as she went to the first one. The data image on the screen provided the patient’s name and brief personal history, but this was not the name she wanted. She kept moving from door to door until she found Haveeda Duchenet.
    This door had a simple manual mechanism that locked from the outside. Laderna had expected something more complex and secure; if Haveeda became violent she could probably have broken through the simple lock. Considering all the other precautions, Laderna found it a curious lapse.
    She pulled the door open to feel a blast of cold vapor, as if Haveeda’s room was highly refrigerated. Inside, she saw no