The Scarecrow

Carver inhaled deeply, held it, and then tilted his head back and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. I was sure he had positioned himself under one of the infrared smoke detectors.

“No one is innocent, Jack,” he said. “You should know that.”

He drew in more smoke and spoke almost casually, gesturing with the hand holding the cigarette, a small trail of blue smoke following it in the air.

“I know Agent Walling and you are trying to shut down the system but that isn’t going to work. I took the liberty of resetting it. Only I have access now. And the exhaust component that takes the carbon dioxide out of the room one minute after dispersal has been checked off for maintenance. I wanted to make sure there would be no mistakes. And no survivors.”

Carver exhaled, sending another jet of smoke toward the ceiling. I looked over at Rachel. Her fingers were racing across the keyboard but she was shaking her head.

“I can’t do it,” she said. “He changed all the authorization codes. I can’t get into-”

The blast of an alarm horn filled the control room. The system had been tripped. A red band two inches thick crossed every screen in the control room. An electronic voice, female and calm, read the words crossing on the band aloud.

“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in one minute.”

Rachel ran both hands through her hair and stared helplessly at the screen in front of her. Carver was blowing another round of smoke toward the ceiling. There was a look of calm resignation on his face.

“Rachel!” Mowry called from behind him. “Get us out of here!”

Carver looked back at his captives and shook his head.

“It’s over,” he said. “This is the end.”

Just then I was jolted by a second blast of the warning horn.

“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in forty-five seconds.”

Rachel stood up and grabbed her gun off the desk.

“Get down, Jack!”

“Rachel, no, it’s bulletproof!”

“According to him.”

She took aim with a two-handed grip and fired three quick rounds at the window directly in front of her. The explosions were deafening. But the bullets barely impacted the glass and ricocheted wildly in the control room.

“Rachel, no!”

“Stay down!”

She fired two more bullets into the glass door and got the same negative result. One of the ricocheting slugs took out one of the screens in front of me, the image of Carver disappearing as it went black.

Rachel slowly lowered her gun. As if to accentuate her defeat, the warning horn blasted again.

“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in thirty seconds.”

I looked out through the windows into the server room. Black pipes ran along the ceiling in a grid pattern and then down the back wall to the row of red CO₂ canisters. The system was about to go. It would extinguish three lives but there was no fire in the server room.

“Rachel, there must be something we can do.”

“What, Jack? I tried. There is nothing left!”

She slammed her gun down on a workstation and slid into the chair. I came over, put my hands on the desktop and leaned over her.

“You have to keep trying! There’s got to be a back door to the system. These guys always put in back-”

I stopped and looked out into the server room as I realized something. And the horn blasted again, but this time I barely heard it.

“Attention, the VESDA fire suppression system has been activated. All personnel must exit the server room. The VESDA fire suppression system will engage in fifteen seconds.”

Carver was nowhere to be seen through the windows. He had chosen an aisle between two rows of towers out of view from the control room. Was this because of the location of the smoke detector or for some other reason?

I looked over at the undamaged screen in front of Rachel. It showed a multiplex cut of thirty-two cameras that had been turned dark by Carver. I hadn’t thought about why until now.