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She sounded almost like she felt sorry for that.

Nick didn’t let himself think about that too much.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he asked the women pleasantly. “Anything that would help me get in to see my friend?”

“The stairs!” the darker one blurted, the one with the braid and the younger face. “The stairs are hidden, and the doors lock, but they’re less likely to kill you…”

“And where are the stairs?” Nick asked pleasantly.

“We have a map… on the screens…” the woman explained.

“Great!” Kit enthused in Nick’s ear. “Have her show you those! I can’t easily get access to the whole building plans, but I can see parts of it, if I know exactly where to look. I can probably use the guy’s access code to get in, if you give me a view of that screen.”

“Can I see?” Nick asked the nurses politely. “Just a little peek?”

His smile on the two women never wavered.

Both of them nodded enthusiastically, and Nick walked around the counter so that he was standing behind the two women.

“Four minutes,” Kit murmured.

Nick kept his ears open for any sound of approaching footsteps, any hint that someone might be coming to the front desk to check on the two women from another part of the building. So far he hadn’t heard or noticed anything. He hadn’t smelled another living being.

He leaned over their two chairs once he was behind the desk, and breathed more thrall on both of them.

“Show me,” he coaxed.

They brought up the plans, and Nick stared into the screens, knowing his headset would be picking up every detail for Kit, Wynter, and the others to see.

“Have them show you the emergency protocols around exits,” Kit instructed him.

Nick passed that on to the two nurses.

A different set of blueprints filled the long monitor.

“And the lock schematics for Jordan’s room,” Kit said next, after they’d brought up the exits. “And any special access shit in the corridors down there.”

Nick passed that on next.

He got the nurses to show him a few more screens after that.

“Okay, thirty-four seconds, Nick,” Kit said. “Do you think you can get to those stairs?”

Nick smirked, but only a little.

“Of course I can,” he assured her.

He didn’t fully realize he’d spoken aloud until the two women looked up, blinking at him in amiable confusion.

“You’re going to need to hide under the desk now, loves,” he told them gently. “Go on. All the way under…” He was already pulling the plasma grenade out of his vest.

He ignited the end, then motioned for the blue-eyed nurse to jam herself under the massive piece of furniture even more.

Once she had, he walked out from behind the curved monitor.

He lobbed the grenade gently in the direction of the organic glass doors, and the rotating entrance in the middle that had scanned the fake implant Nick held up to it.

“Go signal incoming,” Nick said, as he began to jog backwards. “Four seconds.”