Luca squeezed his arm. Hard.“Now!” He shoved him toward a hallway.“Move!”
As the cowed guard led them toward a bank of elevators, Luca turned to Stritch and pointed toward the old ladies. “You stay here. Keep them away from the phones.”
Behind his visor Luca repressed a sigh of relief. No need to worry about covering the exits. The baby hadn’t been born yet. No one would be going anywhere until that happened.
26
“She is gone,” Madhuri said, her voice an octave lower than usual.
“No!” Betsy cried. To Romy’s horror, she’d had to watch while Betsy cracked open Meerm’s chest and manually compressed her heart. She was still at it, working like a mad woman. “We’ve still got a chance!”
“Betsy, she is dead.”
Romy looked at the anesthetist’s black eyes and noticed they were rimmed with tears. Joanna’s too. Romy knew they mirrored her own. They all knew that Meerm wasn’t coming back.
She reached across and gently gripped Betsy’s forearms. “She’s right, Betsy. Meerm’s gone. You did your best but—”
“I should have brought her in sooner!” Betsy wailed. She leaned forward over Meerm’s inert heart, and sobbed. “But I was worried about the baby! Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
“You did all you could,” Romy said, touching the back of her sweat-soaked scrubs. “But she—”
Zero burst through the OR doors. “We have to go! SIRG just stormed into the lobby, armed to the teeth!”
“Who’s SIRG?” Joanna said, gaping at Zero’s mask. “And who the hell are you?”
“A friend,” Betsy said, ripping off her bloody gloves. She’d regained some of her composure but seemed exhausted.
“And SIRG,” Romy added, feeling her gut clench, “is a group that wants to kill that baby.”
“Like hell they will!” Joanna cried.
“Let’s go!” Betsy said. “We’ve got a minute, maybe two at the most before they’re here!”
“But what about Meerm?” Romy said.
“We’ll have to leave her.”
“No—”
“Romy,” Zero said softly, “I grieve for her as much as you—more than you—but they won’t be interested in Meerm now; they’ll want her baby, and we can’t let them have her.”
“We’ll take her,” Joanna said. “Madhuri, Betsy, and me. We’ll put her in an isolette and hide her in a motel or something.”
“What’s an isolette?” Patrick asked. He was still holding the baby and seemed very protective.
“It’s an incubator of sorts,” Madhuri said. “A special enclosed container we use for preemies. Keeps them safe and warm.”
“Good idea,” Betsy said. “Since they probably know my car, we’ll leave it here and take one of yours.”
Joanna said, “We’ll rustle up a portable isolette and meet you at the doctor’s entrance.”
She and Madhuri bustled off while Betsy and Romy pulled a green sheet over Meerm’s body. As the rest of them hurried out into the hall with the baby, Romy hung back. She rested a hand on the lifeless form beneath the sheet.
“You never had a chance, did you,” she whispered. “But things are going to change. And whenever people talk about the change, they’ll mention your name.”
Small goddamn consolation, she thought as she hurried away to catch up to the others.
27
Five men in full gear, plus the guard, made for a claustrophobic ride as the elevator crept to the fourth floor. When the doors opened, Luca and his team piled out and followed the guard to the operating suite.
The old man pointed to a pair of double doors. “The amphitheater’s through there.”
“That’s where they’re transmitting from?”
The guard nodded. “But the cameras are upstairs—through that door.”
“Any other way out?”
He shook his head.
Luca ripped the guard’s two-way off his belt and flung it against the tiles of the nearest wall. “Stand over there and don’t get in the way.” He signaled to Lowery. “You and Majesky take the stairs. The rest of you—with me.”
He depressed the bolt catch release lever on his HK to chamber the first round and stepped toward the doors. He didn’t expect resistance, but it never hurt to be prepared. And besides, he knew of no better attention getter than a three-round burst into the ceiling.
He kicked open the doors and stepped through. “All right—!”
Empty. The place looked like a cyclone had ripped through it, but not a soul in sight.
“What the—?”
He turned, ready to go out and bang that guard’s head against the wall for sending them to the wrong room when he noticed the shape under the bloody sheet on the table. Three quick steps took him to it. He hesitated, then reached out and pulled it off.
A dead sim, bloody, carved open from chest to groin. Looked like Jack the Ripper had been at her. He saw the gaping belly, the empty uterus.
The pregnant sim…this had to be her…but where—?
Oh, no…oh, no…
His knees felt gelatinous, his arms weak, the HK a hundred-pound weight in his hands as he turned and saw the TV monitor—where the operation was still in progress…at this table…on this sim…right in this room.
They’d fooled him…played him for a grade-A-prime sucker…
He looked up toward the spinning ceiling, saw a camera pointed his way from the balcony.
“Lowery?” he whispered into his comm mike. “Lowery, what’s going on?”
A helmeted head popped into view next to the camera. “They’re running a movie of the operation.”
“Stop it, Lowery,” he said, softly at first but with his voice rising. “Stop it right now!”
“I don’t know how!”
“Yes, you do, goddamn you!” He was screaming now. “Yes, you fucking well do!Now do it! ”
“Okay, okay!”
Luca heard the clinking release of the bolt on Lowery’s submachine gun, followed by one three-round burst, then another. The monitor went blank…
…but its final image had been Patrick Sullivan holding up a very human-looking baby girl…and Luca remembered how the Sinclairs had feared the birth of a girl…and he also remembered all that crap he’d read about inter- and intragenomic competition…
I took him a moment to piece it all together, but then suddenly he knew what had terrified them.
You slimy bastards! After what you did, you had the nerve to look down your noses atme?
Now more than ever he wanted that baby.
28
Racing along the hallway, Romy hung on Patrick’s arm and stared at the baby. She couldn’t take her eyes off that pink, perfect little face.
“You weren’t exaggerating, Patrick,” Romy told him. “She is truly beautiful.”
Behind her, she heard Betsy say, “Skip the elevators and take that stairway at the far end of the hall.” Then in a lower voice to Zero: “I need to talk to you about that baby.”
The two of them fell behind as Romy and Patrick entered the stairwell and started down. On the ground floor they exited and found themselves at the doctor’s entrance. Joanna and Madhuri were already there with what looked like an oversized clear-topped bread box on wheels.
“We took the elevator,” Joanna said, eyes wide, “and we saw a SWAT guy in the lobby. He had ‘FBI’ on his back,” Joanna said. “Are we in trouble?”
“They’re not FBI,” Romy told them, trying to keep the dread out of her voice. They mustnot get this baby. “They’re dressed-up thugs.”
Patrick passed the baby to Madhuri who kept her wrapped in her arms as they made the frigid pre-dawn dash across the near empty parking lot to Joanna’s minivan. Patrick loaded the isolette into the rear while Romy helped Madhuri and the baby into the front seat.
As Joanna started the engine, Romy spotted Betsy hurrying their way. Behind her she saw Zero leaning against the brick wall outside the doctor’s entrance. Her heart twisted. His posture was strange, as if he was sick.
“Is something wrong with Zero?” she asked Betsy as she arrived.
“He’s a little upset. I don’t have time to explain now. He can tell you. If you need us we’ll be at—”