chapter 14

21:45

Her skin felt defiled beyond recovery, and no amount of scrubbing altered the feeling. After a long time under the shower’s high-pressure jets, rubbing handfuls of bactericidal gel into every inch of her body Laurel could reach, it still felt the same. She reamed her ears, blew her nose, inserted soapy fingers into her anus and vagina, and rubbed between her toes, but the sensation persisted. The surface muck had run away in gushes of brown liquid, eddying around the shower’s drain, but the tank’s fluid had leached into her skin, clogging her pores. Lanolin and nutrients should have felt like body lotion, but they didn’t. Laurel took a deep breath. At least the steam had the gel’s piney tang. In her nose and ears, membranes clung to memories of cold jelly. And to think she’d been in the fluid only a few minutes. … How would skin feel after marinating for years? She leaned a hand on the polymer wall of the shower cubicle, doubled over, and retched for the umpteenth time. Then she wrapped her arms around her waist, turned her face to the full blast of the shower, and rocked.

Dr. Carpenter—Floyd—seemed nice. No, he was gorgeous; tanned and with unruly blond hair that screamed for a woman’s fingers to comb through it. Despite her queasy stomach, she felt giddy. It must be all that rocking. After they dropped Russo at the surgical theater, he’d herded them into the showers, making a face as they discarded waders and oilskins. She’d glanced across at him, and her eyes locked on his raw gaze. He was ogling her, the soft weight of his smile pressing against her breasts, belly, and thighs.

A loud bang outside jolted Laurel from her reverie, hands flying to clear her eyes of the running water.

“Get out, now!” The male voice was tinged with hysteria.

Laurel slammed both hands on the enclosure door and jumped outside, to collide with a bewildered-looking Lukas and Raul. Floyd Carpenter was showing a different face from the man who had greeted them at the sewer entrance. Gone was the calm demeanor, replaced by panic.

“Your implants are broadcasting!” he yelled.

She reached to the lump in her neck. “Broadcasting? What are you talking about?”

“Come with me, fast.” He turned on his heel in a whirl of lab whites.

Raul jerked his head toward Lukas. “You know anything about that?”

The little man darted a drizzle of nervous glances between Laurel and Raul. “I-I swear, I had no idea—”

“Well, you do now.” Raul dashed to a pile of towels on a metal rack, grabbed one, threw another to Laurel, then bolted out the door, leaving a trail of wet footprints and water drops in his wake.

Twenty yards down an impersonal corridor, they piled through a set of double doors into a surgery room crammed with equipment, screens, and blinking lights.

“Look!” Floyd pointed to a large screen where, superimposed on a heartbeat track, another complex line spiked and fell in a fast sequence. “These implants are emitting high-frequency signals.”

Laurel narrowed her eyes. Someone with enough insight must have demanded that the designers include a transmitter. It made sense. The cunning addition gave Hypnos an ace up their sleeve. A card they had kept secret, even from Congress and the committee that approved the hardware. Damn! She stared at the trace on the screen, her mind churning with the implications. Another detail we didn’t know. How many more are we yet to discover?

“Do you have X-ray machines here?” she asked.

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then get an apron.”

Floyd opened his mouth a couple of times like a floundering fish. Then his eyes froze as the penny dropped. In two strides, he hurtled through the doors, his footsteps echoing down the corridor.

“I swear—” Lukas started.

“Don’t waste your breath.” Raul slapped Lukas between the shoulder blades. The small man winced as his towel dropped off. “Hypnos has probably been discreet about whatever extras they have packed in their sensors.”

Even from the government, Laurel thought. The air was thick with bactericides and the penetrating smell of lanolin wafting from Russo’s body. “I wonder what else they forgot to publicize.”

Laurel stepped over to a gleaming table. Under the harsh light of an overhead LAD array, Russo’s emaciated and unnaturally pale body—bare of hair or nails—resembled a cross between a model of a giant fetus in its early stages of development and the larvae of a stick insect. She gaped, aghast, at the wasted shape. His pruned skin, with an unnatural sheen, twitched at intervals as if subject to electric shocks. Laurel neared the head of the table and reached to pry open one of Russo’s eyelids. In slow motion, his pupil contracted. She glanced at the steady rhythm of his heartbeat on the screen. So far, so good. A peppering of wireless pads dotted his chest and head, while two lines snaked from IV ports in his hands to unlabeled bottles dangling from a frame. From his penis, a catheter drew whitish fluid into a transparent bag. She spotted tiny perfusion marks on Russo’s neck and several discarded ultrasonic syrettes on a rectangular tray atop a wheeled cart. Dr. Carpenter had probably been working to stabilize Russo and scrub the sedatives from his blood.

A series of sharp beeps issued from a bank of automatic analyzers.

She scanned the printout scrolling from the printer. “Holy—”

“That man has not had his blood scrubbed in ages. No maintenance, nothing. Nobody told me. He needs a total transfusion.” Floyd stood just beyond the swinging doors, a buff sheet folded in his hand. “Right now he’s a toxic dump. His blood is laced with complex chemicals and heavy metals.”

Laurel nodded. Another detail they hadn’t known. According to Shepherd, Russo would be unconscious and weak but not a living corpse.

“Total transfusion? More like a new body. You have large scissors?”

Floyd nodded to a door set flush on the wall to a side of the theater. Laurel opened it and selected the largest shears she could find. “Bring the apron over.”

Cursing under her breath at the toughness of the lead and polymer-fabric sandwich of the radiation protector, she managed to cut three-inch strips. When she finished, Laurel hurled one to Raul, another to Floyd for Russo, and wrapped the last around her neck. Then she stepped back to the wall cupboard to retrieve the adhesive bandages she’d spotted earlier.

When they finished, Russo and Raul looked like accident victims after having their necks immobilized. Laurel didn’t hold any illusions of looking better. On the screen, the spiky trace had disappeared, leaving only Russo’s heartbeat sailing across.

“Now what?” Lukas croaked.

Laurel darted a glance at Raul; it was her decision, but her legs had started to quiver again. After hearing an incredible tale from a man she’d never seen or met, judiciously doled out in several telephone conversations, she’d volunteered to help in springing Russo from the DHS’s clutches. Shepherd’s original plan contemplated enlisting three ex-professional soldiers to make up the team, but it was clear from the onset that it wouldn’t work. Men with proven military records would stick out like sore thumbs when they went through the sham trial. She had recruited Raul and Bastien, in the process becoming the team leader.

“Now we get the hell out of here.” Raul made a show of looking at an overhead digital clock. “The DHS’s legions must be massing outside.”

“Get out? Beam out is more likely.” Floyd seemed to have recovered his wits.

Raul wrinkled his nose and Laurel felt her stomach heave. “We go the same way we came in.” It was their only chance. To seal the sewers, the DHS needed an army they didn’t have. To enlist the police, they would need to broadcast the breakout, and they wouldn’t do that. Not yet.

“You’ve got to be joking.” Lukas held on to his towel and jerked his head around like a caged animal.

“Be my guest.” Raul shrugged. “You can try the front door if you like.”

“Better get him ready to travel.” Floyd had moved to the table and was drawing the catheter from Russo.

Laurel stared at Floyd. “You can’t stay here,” she said.

“A brilliant conclusion.”

“Look—”

“Plan to hit the sewers decked in towels?” Floyd sounded amused.

Laurel turned to Raul and froze as the image of waders with an inch of fatty sewage inside flashed through her mind. Unconsciously, she bunched her toes. “Shit.”

From the far side of the theater, Floyd unfolded a thermal sack to place Russo in and nodded to Raul for help. He then reached for the sack’s fastener and ripped. “Another brilliant conclusion.”