Under the Microscope by Jessica Andersen

wondering what?”
    She focused on him and her eyes changed, so slightly that he might not have noticed if he hadn’tbeen watching for it. She clicked the phone shut and said, “Computer stuff. Jeff and two of the techs are in my office trying to figure out when those data ghosts were inputted. Maybe—”
    A ripping, rending explosion cut off her words and a fireball erupted from the second floor, blowing away a chunk of the balcony. The heavy construction crashed to the first floor, narrowly missing a section of office cubicles.
    Max shouted as an invisible concussion wall slammed him to the ground.
    He instinctively grabbed Raine on the way down, tangling their bodies together so he took the brunt of the fall. Debris stung his back and shoulders.
    The roar of sound and fury escalated to painful levels, seeming to go on for far too long. Cursing, Max rolled them behind Tori’s desk, where they were partway shielded by the solid wood kiosk.
    An unearthly groan rose above the fading roar of explosion. Aware of Raine beneath him, of Tori and two FDA drones huddled in the lee of the reception desk, Max risked a look just in time to see the giant hanging mobile snap from its cable. The huge model crashed to the ground and splintered into brightly colored shrapnel.
    The noise faded slowly.
    And the screams and shouts began.
    Almost as an afterthought, fire alarms shrilledto life. The fire suppression system activated with a thump and water sprayed, not from the overhead sprinklers, but from ruptured pipes along the walls and in the ceiling far above them, pouring down in haphazard sluices that added nothing but wet and noise.
    “Everybody out!” Max shoved Raine toward the main office door and gestured for Tori and the FDA agents to follow. “Outside, into the parking lot. The whole building could come down around our ears!”
    As he said that, the other half of the balcony let go partway, sagging directly over a handful of cubicles, where workers cowered beneath their desks.
    “I’m staying!” Raine yanked away from him, face gray with shock and drywall dust. “These are my people! That was my office! ”
    “These are your people, too.” He gestured to the small knot huddled behind the desk. “Get them out and call 911.” He got them up and moving out the door before he turned back to the destruction.
    Without the balcony, the entire second floor was inaccessible, with office doors opening onto thin air. A giant hole gaped where Raine’s office had been moments earlier.
    Jeff and two of the techs are in my office trying to figure out when those data ghosts were inputted, she’d said, which gave Max four immediate suspects for the bombing—Jeff, the techs and Raine herself.
    It couldn’t have been Raine, he thought instantly, sure of her innocence for the first time, though he couldn’t have said why.
    Even as the possibilities snapped into his mind, he was moving—not toward the door, but deeper into the office, toward the cubicles. He could hear moans and shouts and prayers, a litany of human misery. “Come on!” he shouted, coughing against the plaster dust and acrid smoke. “Everyone out!”
    As though they’d been waiting for someone to tell them it was clear, a half-dozen people bolted for the exit, skidding on the wreckage. Farther into the cube farm, where a chunk of balcony had landed, he heard voices shouting for help.
    “What can I do?” Raine’s voice asked from behind him.
    Max spun. Her face was bloodless, her eyes huge in her face, sending a stab of something hot and ugly through his chest. “I told you to go outside and call this in.”
    She gestured behind her, where Tori and the two FDA agents stood, looking grim but determined. “They’re on their way. Until then, we’re helping.”
    Max wanted to argue, but she was right, damn it.
    He glanced up at the raw edge of wall where the balcony had been and saw faces peering out ofthree different office doors, heard more calls for help.