“Don’t!” Sam’s voice was urgent. “We have no idea how the air lock is protecting or what reaction breaking it might set off.”

“Which is exactly what I was about to say before you jumped in. Jackson,” I added, “be careful coming up here. The floor above the other labs and near the stairwell has been tampered with, and it might be primed to collapse.”

“No prob.” He paused. “Is there any more activity on your monitors, Turner? Because the stench in this stairwell seems to be getting worse the nearer we get to the roof.”

I hadn’t felt him pass through the net I’d placed across the exit on the floor below, so it had obviously faded when the ceiling had collapsed on me.

“There’s nothing showing, but these scanners are primed for human life,” Sam said. “If it’s inhuman—spirit—then we wouldn’t pick it up.”

Meaning they wouldn’t pick me up when I was in spirit form—a very handy thing to know. “So what do you want me to do about this air lock?”

“Nothing. We’ll deal with it.”

“After all the shit we’ve gone through to uncover the thing, I’m not happy about walking away without knowing what it fucking contains.” Frustration filled my voice.

“Unless you can find a secondary entry point into the area, we have no other option.”

“And is there a secondary entrance?”

“There’s nothing indicated on the plans we have.”

“What about the old police files?” I asked.

“No mention there, either.”

Jackson strode into the office and stopped just behind me. “It’s a rather sturdy-looking mother, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” I placed my fingers against the wall to the right of the scanner. The plaster burned away from my touch, the white dust puffing outward as I pressed deeper into it. I was expecting it hit either a wood or metal frame, but instead I discovered a sheet of thick metal. I grabbed the edge of the plaster and tugged it away. Not just metal, but an entire wall of one. The plasterboard was little more than camouflage.

“Why would he even bother?” Jackson had repeated the process on the other side to reveal more of the metal wall. “It doesn’t make any sense when he controlled the entire area.”

“I doubt Luke was responsible for this,” I said. “It was probably done by the drug cartel using this place before he got here.”

Jackson grunted. “I guess we’ve no choice but to keep searching and hope we find something we can get into.”

We retreated and made a thorough search of the office. But there were no other exits, hidden or otherwise, and nothing in the way of computers, files, or paperwork of any kind. In fact, there was absolutely nothing other than the unmade bed and a lack of dust to even indicate this place had been used recently.