On his initial tour of the wing that included the Great Room and laboratory, he wondered about the prior use of the lab space and annex. The two rooms, hastily renovated, had almost certainly served as storage areas. There were no windows in either of them, and the mouse house, perhaps fifty feet long by twenty-five wide, included a huge built-in freezer/refrigeration unit, which had certainly been around for a while. The lab, identical in length and larger in width by at least a third, had shelves fixed to the stone wall, nearly all the way around.

It was easy for him to imagine the rooms filled with pallets of canned food, cleaning supplies, paper goods, and other items needed to operate the fortress. But it made little sense to him that things were carried or wheeled along the winding access tunnel and through the Great Room only to be stored and then brought back into the main building by the same route. But it was certainly possible. If there was a trap door, it would have been kept clear of any major obstruction, and would have to be fairly large. That ruled out the heavy benches in the lab, the incubators, the delicate electron microscope, and the refrigeration unit in the mouse house. On his next pass, Kazimi focused on the floor, squinting to spot any section of stone that was different from the rest.

Again, nothing. No sign of a secret passage. The space was a prison … a tomb … a mausoleum.

Only one way in … and one way out.

A sudden scraping caused Kazimi to freeze—footsteps echoing from the Great Room. A janitor? One of the guards? He strained to pick up the tapping of Bacon’s cane on stone. Drake or Costello. It was most likely one of them. He wondered what their directive was should they catch him trying to flee. A quick snap of his neck, perhaps. It didn’t matter. Ahmed Kazimi was not afraid to die.

But he did fear Janus.

The germ’s startling transformation was unlike anything he had ever encountered, and was fraught with terrifying possibilities. He studied his hands and saw at least a half-dozen small cuts, a torn hangnail, and a slight scrape by the knuckle on the index finger of his left hand. They were barely slivers to his eyes, but represented a gaping portal through which Janus could march into his bloodstream and kill him horribly. Doubtless, hospitals were trying to contain the spread. It would be, he felt certain, a futile effort. In time, not much time at that, a handshake would become the equivalent of a gunshot. Although there might be no visible entry wound, the victim’s organs would dissolve from the inside out.