EIGHTY-TWO

She is remarkable in more ways than you can imagine,” Charmaine told Dawkins and Wilson, as if Caitlyn wasn’t standing there. “As far as I can tell, her skeletal structure is human, but the bones are stronger and lighter. Only x-rays will confirm. Her muscles are stronger, pound for pound, than human muscles. And shortly I’ll be able to confirm blood content.”

“Eggs?” Dawkins asked.

“That’s next,” Charmaine said, pointing at a surgery table in the corner of the room. “We’ve got what we need to check. No sense wasting time.”

It was surreal to Caitlyn. The large room was divided down the center by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. The lighting on her half was subdued, except for lamps hanging directly above some operating beds, casting a harsh, sharp light on the sheets.

Despite the implied threat of the assorted medical apparatus, Caitlyn could not help but stare at the other side of the glass, where two large, hairy, humanlike creatures were upright on two legs, with stumps for arms. Both had the sides of their heads pressed against the glass. Behind them, a mangled body.

“They’re curious,” Charmaine told Caitlyn, noticing her gaze. “They can’t hear, but the vibrations on the glass tell them they are not alone.”

“They?” Caitlyn was shrinking away.

“Your cousins,” Dawkins snapped. “Let’s get things started.”

Charmaine snapped back at Dawkins. “It’s natural that she has questions. I promised her I’d be open with her.”

“You don’t need that kind of emotional engagement,” Dawkins said.

“She’s going to be stressed enough as it is. If she knows what’s happening, it will make things easier on all of us.”

“Just get it done,” Dawkins said. “Confirm we’ve got eggs. Confirm her blood has what we need.”

Caitlyn was still reeling inside. Those hideous creatures were her cousins?

Her focus changed, however, when she saw Charmaine grab a syringe from a nearby table. It would have been easier to give up. What hope was there?

But she charged forward, bringing her shackled wrists upward to strike down on the smug man who so casually ordered Charmaine. The other man, the stocky square-headed one with the short, graying red hair, stepped in front of her and swung an arm around her chest and pulled her in close.

She tried kicking at him, but it was futile.

His restraint was gentle.

“I hate this,” he said softly. “But you are saving my son.”

She tried biting his arm. Then felt the needle jab her thigh.

“Don’t let her fall,” Charmaine said to the big man. “It’s going to hit her quick.”

They’d crossed the expansive lawn through shadows of large oaks, the sound of their footsteps cushioned by the thick grass, the sound of cicadas in the heat of the night and, most importantly, protected by the hum of the HVAC unit at the rear of the house.

With Billy and Theo standing nearby, Pierce knelt beside the HVAC. He had a small flashlight with an intense beam and immediately found both intake vents. The one to the left was for combustion and drew air only when the HVAC needed to pump heat. The other was for fresh air and drew outside air into the house when the interior fans or air conditioning was on. Pierce was not a heating technician; this knowledge was agency 101, as Theo and Billy were about to find out.

The HVAC’s hum told him the air-conditioning unit had kicked in and was fighting summer heat. Pierce confirmed it by turning his palm upward. He held it close to the intake and felt the sucking motion as it drew exterior air into the unit to be cooled and moved through the house. Pierce pulled open the NI pouch that had been in the U. O. MEE package at the hotel front desk. It was a big lead-lined pouch used specifically for hiding the contents from scanners. Getting it past the checkpoint had been as simple as showing his NI badge and pointing at the NI logo on the side of the pouch.

Pierce handed out the gas masks—carbon filters that covered the nose and mouth, strapped into place with a couple of elastic bands around the back of the head.

They’d reviewed how to handle this at the hotel. He wasn’t going to repeat it here.

All three put the masks into place.

“Safety off,” Pierce told Billy in a voice muffled by the carbon filters. He handed Billy a dart pistol from the bag and another for himself.

The big kid checked the mechanism. Pierce did the same. Each pistol had twenty darts for rapid-fire action, each dart with fast-acting tranquilizers. Used when agents wanted to do more than disperse a crowd.

“Ready for countdown?” Pierce asked Theo.

The skinny kid’s instructions were to mentally count to sixty. Nothing as complicated as coordinating watches, which neither Billy or Theo had anyway. All Pierce and Billy needed was enough time to get into position. Billy at the rear door. Pierce at the front.

“Ready,” Theo said, nodding in his gas mask.

That’s when Pierce pulled the remaining item out of the NI pouch.

A canister of fear pheromones. Large enough to completely infiltrate a four-story hotel. With all the chances Pierce was taking here, at least he could guarantee saturation of every single cubic inch of the interior of the house.

“You’ll feel no pain,” Charmaine said, as she leaned over Caitlyn. “It will take about twenty minutes. But you won’t notice any time passing either.”

It had taken a couple of minutes to get Caitlyn into place. She was strapped to one of the operating tables. Arms at her side. Legs apart. Gagged. Charmaine held up another syringe. “This is a hormone that will encourage your body to produce extra eggs over the next months. There will be few if any side effects. I promise.”

She patted Caitlyn’s upper thigh, then injected.

Under the influence of narcotics, Caitlyn felt euphoric, barely noticed the jab.

“As for getting some eggs now,” Charmaine explained. “I’ll be using an ultrasound guide. It’s small and accurate. I use it to drain the follicles that contain your eggs. You won’t feel much. Most of the eggs will be frozen for our research, but some will be fertilized in a test tube. We’ll implant one of them into you and let the others divide.”

The two men were still in the room. Caitlyn was dimly aware that she should have felt some kind of resistance to a procedure so intimate in their presence, but the drugs made her beyond caring.

Out of focus, Charmaine’s face was still looming above her. Smiling, as if Caitlyn were a child in a dentist chair. Charmaine held up the tubelike instrument that she was about to use to violate Caitlyn.

Then came blackness. The sensation of cloth on her face. They had hooded her again.

Caitlyn heard the tube drop and clatter on the floor. In her drug haze, to Caitlyn it seemed like Charmaine’s scream was delayed, the way thunder rolls a few seconds after a lightning strike. And the scream, distorted in Caitlyn’s perception, seemed low and rumbling too, as if the sound were slowed down.

In the blindness of her hood, Caitlyn’s mind was too altered to completely understand what was happening, and this realization terrified her, washing away whatever euphoria had helped her float along.

She heard other screaming too. Realized it was coming from her own mouth.

And her frenzied panic flung her body from side to side against the straps.

Then the mercy of total unconsciousness.