Around him, the narrow passage of the entry hall kept sliding by as he backed up. How long since he and Dani had entered? Five seconds? Ten?

Why wasn’t Pierce already coming through the door after them? He obviously knew the code.

The answer—the guess, anyway—came to Sam like a wave of nausea.

He looked at the gun and considered an obvious question for the first time:

Where the hell had Pierce gotten it?

He had not been carrying it when they last saw him in the Jeep, right after the helicopter crash. Where had it come from?

Maybe somewhere in this complex.

Maybe one of those two other doors right outside this room.

If so, it would explain this delay right now.

“Fuck,” Sam whispered.

If Pierce could get another gun, it would be game over any second now—a fully working gun vs. one that was jammed and worthless.

Ten feet from the door now. Still moving backward. The narrow entry channel still boxing him in on both sides.

He looked at the gun again. He focused on the wedged casing, gleaming in the dull light of the room, and the gun’s slide, pinching the casing in place by some spring mechanism inside.

Sam took hold of the slide with his left hand, and gripped it firmly.

Could he fix it by just—

It happened so easily it startled him. He pulled back on the slide, and the brass cylinder fell free immediately. It bounced off his arm, pinged loudly against the wall and settled on the floor with a ringing clatter.

Still holding the slide, he pulled it back as far as it would go. Through the open slot on the side, he could see into the gun’s inner workings. Could see where the bullet magazine fed up into it from below.

When the slide came to a stop, all the way back, a live new bullet clicked upward into that space inside the gun.

Sam eased the slide forward again, saw it grab and drag the new bullet, pushing it smoothly along—

—right into the gun’s barrel from the back end.

The slide closed with a metallic click that sounded right—exactly right. He leveled the gun on the door again.

His next backward step took him out of the narrow entry passage, into what seemed to be a big room; to his left and right, the wall stretched fifteen feet in each direction.

Another step, and he bumped into Dani; she’d gone still for some reason. Sam risked taking his eyes off the door for a quick glance at the room.

It was full of cages.

With chimpanzees in them.

The cages lined each of the two side walls. Big cages—bigger than the ones in Station 9. And their occupants were alive.

From inside each enclosure, a pair of deep-set eyes stared out at the two of them. Leathery hands gripped the bars.