Trying not to look hurried, not to mention harried, Roic helped Raven open the back of the lift van and slide out the float pallet.  A stack of boxes, emptied of their medical supplies, concealed the long shape in what Roic thought of as the freezer bag beneath.  The body bag, designed for short-term transport, would, if left sealed, keep its contents at cryo-temperature for a couple of days, Raven had explained to him.  Roic had to grant, it was a hell of a lot less bulky and eye-catching than a portable cryochamber.  Johannes drove off to find the visitor parking and wait, and m'lord led the pallet and its handlers inside through automatic doors that parted for them without protest.

M'lord checked the holomap on his wristcom and led off through a succession of corridors.  They encountered a trio of gossiping employees and an elderly couple, clearly visitors, on their way to the cafeteria that Roic smelled in passing, but none spared the pallet a glance.  Roic carefully did not look back.  Two more turns and a short ride down a freight lift tube, and they were pacing along an underground corridor that stopped at a double door, the first locked barrier they'd encountered.

M'lord opened one of the boxes, whipped out his special tool kit, ImpSec standard issue with upgrades, and knelt to the electronic lock.  He muttered unreassuringly, "God, it's been a while.  Hope I haven't lost my touch . . ."  He puttered for a minute or two, while Roic jittered and kept glancing over his shoulder, and Raven looked bland.  The doors parted so soundlessly, Roic was taken by surprise.  M'lord looked smug.  "Ah, good.  I'd hoped not to leave any evidence by damaging the lock."  He waved them through like some demented mâitre d'hôtel escorting diners to the best table in the room, and closed the doors gently again when the pallet had passed through.

The new corridor was much darker.  And, Roic was surprised to see, unfinished, which made him worry about encountering workmen, but he supposed a construction crew would have lights that would warn them.  Beneath the pyramidal building lay three sub-levels.  Around the core stack of utilities on each level, four concentric corridors extended outward in squares, with radial connecting halls at the midpoint of each side.  Too regular to be called a maze, it nonetheless seemed to Roic that it would be easy to get turned around down here.  So just how disturbing it had been to m'lord to be lost for hours in a true maze, with no light?