“I understand. I’ll be careful. Meanwhile, don’t make eye contact with any of the patients. I think they would find that alarming, especially if they can see our auras.”

“Understood.”

“Whatever else comes out of this, we have to find a way to rescue these people.”

“Don’t worry, now that we know this place is not a legitimate hospital, Victor and Lucas will take care of things here.”

North opened the door with Ralph’s fob. Sierra followed him into the hallway. A couple of faces appeared at the windows in the doors. North avoided looking at the people inside the locked cells. He wondered if all of them had been grabbed off the streets or if some were actual patients.

He and Sierra made it past the unstaffed nurses’ station without creating a disturbance. And then they were at the end of the hall. This time Ralph’s fob did not work.

“Well, damn,” North said quietly.

Sierra looked at him. “What?”

“Old-fashioned security. This lock takes a key. What do you want to bet that the only person who has it is Loring?”

“Are you saying we can’t get inside?”

“No.” North took a high-tech lockpick out of one of the pockets of his black cargo trousers. “But it’s going to take me a minute.”

In the end it took about fifteen seconds, not a minute. The lock was good but nothing extraordinary. It had been installed by a skilled locksmith, which meant that it could be broken by a skilled burglar or a reasonably proficient cleaner equipped with the proper tools.

He got the door open and they moved into an unlit room.

He closed the door and switched on his penlight. The light played over a couple of stainless steel workbenches laden with a variety of instruments and electronic gear. Much of the equipment looked new, but one device standing alone on a separate table appeared to be of an old-fashioned design.

Sierra headed straight toward it, stripped off a glove and touched it cautiously. She winced.

“Hot,” she said. She pulled on her glove. “Lab heat.”

North felt his pulse kick up. A thrill of excitement flashed through him. He moved across the room to get a closer look at the artifact.

The square black metal box measured about a foot on all sides. It was rusty in places. The cloudy display screen was dark. Instead of a computer keyboard, several rows of knobs and dials studded the front of the machine. Wires were attached to the top.

“Looks like it came from one of the lost labs, all right,” he said.

“I can tell you right now that, whatever it is, it’s worth a fortune on the underground market,” Sierra said. “I’m surprised Loring would leave it here.”

“It looks heavy,” North said. “Also, it’s awkward. Probably takes two hands just to carry it. Why not stash it here? Who’s going to look for a valuable artifact from the Bluestone Project in a locked lab inside an asylum?”