A light started flashing on-screen but Smith was too lost in his own thoughts to notice until he saw Ito jerk straight in his chair.

“What is it?” Smith said, coming up behind the man again.

“It appears to be a malfunction. There are a number of doors that haven’t locked down.” The scientist sucked in a frightened breath as he scanned through various screens of text that Smith couldn’t read.

“Talk to me, Doctor.”

“It’s…it’s the storage lab.” He tapped in a few commands and the screen began flickering through security camera stills.

“There!” Ito said, jabbing a finger at the monitor. Smith leaned in closer. The image depicted Masao Takahashi running with two thermos-size containers.

“Tell me those aren’t what I think they are.”

Ito just kept watching the stream of images. Finally he found one of Takahashi time-stamped only a few seconds before, and he switched to video. The general was still running but he’d been joined by two guards—one in front and one behind.

“He’s going for the exterior doors,” Ito said, spinning his chair toward Smith. “He must have an override code that I wasn’t told about. If he escapes with those canisters…” The scientist fell silent.

“If he escapes with those canisters, what?”

“The nanobots inside are programmed for trillions of divisions and are designed to operate within the borders of China. The collapse of the country will be slower, but the end result will be the same.”

“Hundreds of millions of people freezing and starving.”

Ito nodded.

“Shit!” Smith shouted, slamming a fist down on the table next to the keyboard. “Can we get an outside line?”

“No. You can’t feel it, but the radiation is getting fairly intense. It makes our communications system useless.”

“Can you open this door?” Smith said, pointing to the one leading back out into the corridor.

Ito nodded.

“Where are the security guards that were coming our way?”

Ito typed a few more commands into his keyboard and located them. They were just outside.

Smith stepped back, trying to think. Takahashi would know the door was indestructible. Did he send the guards just to stand there and make sure Smith couldn’t get out? Or did they have an access code that Ito had been kept in the dark about?

His question was answered a moment later when one of the men retrieved a piece of paper from his pocket and pulled the cover off the keypad.

“Open it!” Smith said, crouching and extending the Sig Sauer out in front of him.

“But they’ll—”

“Now, goddamn it!”