David stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I just – I have a bad feeling. Or rather, a feeling that something bad is going to happen."Little late, don'tcha think?" John said, grinning. "Where were you when we got into the raft?"
David half-smiled in response, rubbing the back of his neck. "Thank you, John, I'd almost forgotten. So, it's decided then. Let's solve our next puzzle, shall we? Oh, Rebecca, take a look at Karen's eye while we're at it, it's giving her some trouble."
They stood up and moved toward the back of the room, for the table in the northwest corner marked with a blue nine. Steve and Rebecca had already looked when they'd found the room, though there was no clue as to what the test was – a small, blank monitor screen with a ten-key hooked to it sat on the metal table, an enigma. Rebecca motioned for Karen to sit on the chair in front of test ten, the purpose of which also escaped her – it consisted of a circuit board wired to a plank and what looked like a pair of tweezers connected to it by a black wire. She bent down to take a look, frowning. The woman's right eye was extremely irri– tated, the pale blue cornea floating in a sea of red. Her eyelid had a bruised, swollen look. She turned to ask for David's flashlight and saw that as he sat down in front of the scheduled test, the screen flickered on, several lines of type appearing in the center of the monitor. "Some kind of motion sensor…" Steve started to say, but David held up his hand suddenly, reading aloud what had appeared on the screen in a rapid, anxious voice.
" 'As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven wives, the seven wives had seven sacks, the seven sacks held seven cats, the seven cats had seven kits; kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to Saint Ives?'"
There was a digital readout on the screen, showing
00:49 and counting down. In the time it had taken David to read the question, eleven seconds had al-ready ticked off the clock. David stared at the screen, his thoughts racing furiously as the team leaned in behind him. Tension radiated from them, and David felt a sudden prickle of sweat break out across his forehead. Don't count, that was the clue. But what does it mean? "Twenty-eight," John said quickly. "No, wait, twenty-nine, including the man…" Steve cut him off, talking just as fast. "But if they had seven kittens each, that would be forty-nine plus twenty-one, seventy, seventy-one with the man." "But the message said don't count," Karen said. "If you're not supposed to count – does that mean don't add, or… wait, there's the man with the wives and the speaker, that's another one…"
Thirty-two seconds had elapsed. David's hand hov– ered over the key pad.
Think! Don't count, don't count, don't… "One," Rebecca said quickly. " 'As I was going to Saint Ives' – it doesn't say where the man with the wives was going. That's what it means, the clue –
–don't count anyone except the one who was going to
Saint Ives!"
Yes, it makes sense, a trick question…
They had twenty seconds left. "Anyone disagree?" David asked sharply.No answer. David hit the key, entered it…… and the countdown stopped, sixteen seconds to spare. The screen turned itself off. From somewhere overhead, the now familiar chime sounded. David exhaled, leaning back in the chair.
Thank you, Rebecca!
He turned around to tell her as much, but she was already bending to examine Karen's eye, fixated on her patient. "I need a flashlight," she said, barely glancing around as John handed his to her. She turned it on, shining it into Karen's eye as the rest of them looked on silently, watching them. Karen didn't look well; there were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin had gone from pale to almost sickly.
"It's pretty inflamed… look up. Down. Left and right? Does it feel like there's something rubbing it, or is it more like a burn?"Actually, more like an itch," Karen said. "Like a mosquito bite times ten. I've been scratching it, though, that might be why it's so red."Rebecca turned off the torch, frowning. "I don't see anything. The other one looks irritated, too… did it just start itching all of a sudden, or did you touch it, first?" Karen shook her head. "I don't remember. It just started itching, I guess."
A look of sharp, almost violent intensity flashed across Rebecca's face. "Before or after you were in room 101?"
David felt a cold hand clutch at his heart. Karen suddenly looked worried. "After."Did you touch anything while you were in there, anything at all?" "I don't…"
Karen's red eyes widened in sudden horror, and when she spoke, it was a breathless, quivering whis-per. "The gurney. There was a bloodstain on the gurney and I was thinking about…I touched it. Oh, Jesus, I didn't even think about it, it was dry and I, my hand wasn't cut and oh my God, I got a headache right after my eye started itching."
Rebecca put her hands on Karen's shoulders, squeezing them tightly. "Karen, take a deep breath. Deep breath, okay? It may be that your eye just itches and you have a headache, so don't jump to conclu-sions here, we don't know anything for sure."
Her voice was low and soothing, her manner direct. Karen blew out a shaky breath and nodded. "If her hand wasn't cut…" John started ner-vously. Karen answered him, her pale features composed but her voice trembling slightly. "Viruses can get into the body through mucous membranes. Nose, ears… eyes. I knew that. I knew that but I didn't think about it, I… wasn't thinking about it."
She looked up at Rebecca, and David could see that she was struggling to maintain her composure. "If I am infected, how long? How long before I become… incapacitated?" Rebecca shook her head. "I don't know," she said softly. David felt as though a raging blackness had envel-oped him, a cloud of fear and worry and guilt so vast that it threatened to overwhelm his ability to move, even to think.
My fault. My responsibility. "There's a vaccine, right?" John asked, his dark gaze darting between Karen and Rebecca. "There's a cure, wouldn't they have a shot or something here if someone got it by accident? They'd have to, wouldn't they?" David felt a sudden surge of desperate hope. "Is it possible?" he asked Rebecca quickly. The young biochemist nodded, slowly at first but then eagerly. "Yeah, it's possible. It's probable, they created it." She looked at David seriously, urgently. "We have to find the main lab, where they synthesized the virus, and quickly. If they developed a cure, that's where the information would be…"
Rebecca trailed off, and David could see what she'd left unspoken in her troubled gaze; if there was a cure. If Dr. Griffith hadn't taken the information there, too. If they could find it in time. "Ammon's message," Steve said. "In that note, he said we should destroy the lab, maybe he left us a map, or directions." David stood up, his hope building. "Karen, are you feeling well enough to…" "… Yes," she said, cutting him off, standing up. "Yes, let's go."
Her red eyes were bright with fervent intensity, a mix of despair and wild hope that made David's heart ache to see.
God, Karen, I'm so, so sorry!"Double time," he said, already turning for the door. "Let's move."They quickly jogged for the front of the building, John's jaw clenched, his thoughts a grimly determined loop of angry intention.
No way some goddamn bug is taking Karen down, no chance, and if I find the bastard who set this nightmare up he's Dead, capital D, Dead meat. Not Karen, no way in hell…