“You ever seen anybody this fucking well manicured?”
Sawyer’s mouth worked. “Swee’ovem vizza.”
“Real sweet. They were gonna do black tie.”
It was a gamble, she thought, making their relationship adversarial, but Cam knew Sawyer best and they hadn’t left him much choice, humiliating Sawyer on first sight.
If this destroyed man wanted to show them up, he might finally relinquish his secrets.
Hernandez sketched a salute, hiding the minicam down by his hip in his left hand. “I’m Major Frank Hernandez,” he said, “USMC Second Division and expedition commander.”
Nice. Overkill, but nice. They had to make Sawyer feel important, make it clear they’d brought their best.
Even D.J. was courteous. “My name is Dr. Dhanum—”
“Yaowp!” Sawyer lurched, both eyes blinking shut. For a moment Ruth thought it was a word she hadn’t understood, but Sawyer wasn’t interested in hellos. She supposed Cam had explained who had come, and that was plenty for him.
She watched his loose mouth, analyzing his sounds.
“Ayuhn’velah annabuh bee, a’cos assigned the way.”
“I can develop an antibody,” Cam told them. “Archos was designed that way, as an adaptable template—”
“Yahp!” Sawyer barked again at Cam’s elaboration. “ ‘Dadable templut,” he said, with all the petulance of a three-year-old who has ritualized a favorite story.
Cam carefully repeated it. “An adaptable template.”
Ruth looked away, a slow cringe, the horror in her still growing. The others were also silent.
Sawyer’s brain had been ravaged as badly as his skin.
He glared at them, defiant, challenging. Cam made a patting gesture and Ruth knelt to the scuffed wood floor, putting herself below Sawyer’s bed rather than continuing to stand over him. Basic psychology. They might lessen his agitation by demonstrating that they were a willing audience. Hernandez and Todd followed suit, but D.J. glanced at Cam. Cam stayed on his feet. D.J. reluctantly hunkered down.
Sawyer mumbled again and Cam said, “We were going to cure cancer in two years. Maybe less.”
D.J.’s brow wrinkled. “This was all in our—”
Ruth hit him, slapping her knuckles against his leg. Yes, they already knew these basics, but they were damn well going to let Sawyer brag. The name archos was new and possibly useful, another angle for the FBI to take with their research, patent records, incorporation files. They might be able to outfox Sawyer if he gave them enough clues but still wouldn’t cooperate.
Or if he was unable to cooperate. Lord only knew what was happening inside his head.
He lectured them on the mechanics of the nano, slurring, staring down at his bedsheets or dragging that lopsided gaze across their faces. But he was either still unaccustomed to or refused to accept the condition of his body, and repeatedly coughed for air in midsyllable. Once he started to retch. After each fit he pulled his good arm over his mouth, wiping away drool — and he began to bump the back of his hand against his lips compulsively.
Cam translated with determination and patience, though after a while he sat on the edge of the bed and stretched out his knee. His intonation was sometimes uncertain but he did not hesitate over technical phrases. He had been the one who spoke with James, she decided, although Sawyer probably addressed the microphone directly on occasion.
Ruth had wanted to feel the same sympathy she’d experienced for Cam, but it was a very different emotion inside her now. Sawyer must have been a great man, capable of great things, to have played any part in developing the archos prototype, yet his decision to withhold the location of his lab was unforgivable. It was a threat to her. It didn’t matter that it might not have been a wholly conscious decision.
Sawyer had not let his guilt become the burden that was so evident in Cam. What remained of him seemed possessed by the bitter rage of an invalid, and he was crippled further by his awareness of everything he’d lost.
He erupted with that rough shout again and again, at himself when his body failed, at Cam for guessing the wrong words or even for correctly anticipating what he planned to say next.
Hernandez filmed the two men, the minicam tucked against his body. The angle looked poor and the room was darkening as twilight settled outside the square window, but a good audio recording would be the most important thing.
Sawyer was selling himself.
Did he think he needed to convince them of his identity, or was he only striving to keep his past straight in his own mind? Ruth supposed he’d prevented them from making introductions so he wouldn’t have to use their names. He knew his limitations. His short-term memory was unreliable, yet he remained canny enough to try to conceal this weakness.
He was excusing himself.
Twice more he laboriously explained that archos had been designed to save lives. Four times he insisted he hadn’t played any part in allowing the prototype to get loose.
Ruth was reminded of a toddler again, attempting to make something real by chanting it over and over.
“What was your specialty?” she asked, after twenty minutes. She didn’t know how Sawyer would react to the interruption, but already he was tiring and she was afraid he’d keep them captive all night even as he grew more incoherent. Maybe it would have been better to let D.J. grill him from the start.
“The rep efficiency is mine,” Sawyer told them, through Cam, and his pride was fierce enough to mold his slack, eroded face into what she thought was a smile.
It was that simple. The wreckage of his self-esteem was propped up on who he had been, and only on who he had been, and he was terrified that they would exclude him after retrieving the files and equipment.
There wasn’t anything else left for him.
“Replication speed is going to be our biggest hurdle,” Ruth said, which wasn’t untrue. “James told you we have a working discrim key, right? You’ll have to look it over, but the vaccine nano won’t hold up if we can’t streamline the rep process.”
He regarded her quietly, perhaps judging her sincerity. She wondered how well he could see now in the shadows.
D.J. shifted on the hard floor and managed to put his hand down with a slap, drawing everyone’s attention. “I’d say it’s worth redesigning the heat engine,” he said. “We don’t need the fuse and that’s another way to shave some additional mass.”
Sawyer’s smile returned. This must have been his first opportunity to talk shop in fifteen months. He jabbered and Cam said, “Right. Except the design work is already done. Freedman added the fuse later. We can build straight off of the original schematic.”
“Fantastic,” Ruth said. That would save them days or even weeks — and he’d given them another clue. Freedman. Cam spoke for Sawyer again: “We’ll fly out tomorrow?” Ruth straightened, barely able to contain her excitement. Hernandez said, “Yes. Tomorrow morning.” Sawyer nodded, satisfied. But the silence lingered. Sawyer dabbed at his mouth and
D.J. shifted his weight once more. Hernandez said, “It would be better if you told us where tonight.”
“Whar?”
“There’s a lot of planning to take care of.”
“Col’ado!” Sawyer’s eye rolled with confusion and fury, and Ruth clenched her fist.
He expected them to take him east. Why? What did he think was waiting for him there? Safety, food, intensive medical attention — but no doctor would ever be able to fix him.
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he had no interest in saving them if they couldn’t save him.
Hernandez kept calm. “Not a chance,” he said. “That was never the deal. We can’t waste the fuel going back and forth, and we need you to make sure we recover everything important.”