Under the tiny, circular lights above him, his skeletal, powdery form revealed itself in the reflection in the Plexiglas. Grotesque and gaunt, his elongated limbs shook off his suit and sheathed themselves in the cotton scrubs. His laden breath wheezed as he moved, mimicking a robotic, skin-wearing android pumping hydraulic fluid through its joints during every shift. When he removed his fedora to replace it with the scrub cap, his deformed skull mocked him in the mirror image of the Plexiglas. Each dent and protrusion of his skull was accentuated by the angle of the light, but he kept his head bowed as much as he could during the fitting of the cap. He did not want to be confronted by his biggest handicap, his mightiest deformity — his facelessness.
Only his eyes were evident of his human countenance, perfectly shaped, but lonely in their normality. The old man did not suffer himself the indignity of his own reflection’s mockery, where his cheekbones flanked a featureless face. Hardly any hole formed between his nearly absent lips and above his meager mouth, and only two tiny fissures served as nostrils. The last piece of his clever disguise would be the surgical mask, elegantly finishing off his ruse.
Shoving his suit into the farthest cabinet on the east wall and just pushing the narrow door shut, he corrected his posture.
“Abend,” he muttered.
He shook his head. No, his dialect was wrong. He cleared his throat and took a moment to collect his thoughts. “Abend.” No. Again. “Ah-bent,” he enunciated more clearly and listened to his hoarse voice. The accent was almost there; only one or two more tries.
“Abend,” he spoke clearly and loudly as the door to the locker room swung open. Too late. He held his breath to break the word.
“Abend, Herr Doctor,” the entering male nurse smiled as he proceeded to the adjacent room to hit the urinals. “Wie geht’s?”
“Gut, gut,” the old man replied hastily, relieved at the nurse’s oblivion. He cleared his throat and headed for the door. It was growing late in the hour and he still had unfinished business to attend to regarding the smoking hot new arrival.
Feeling almost ashamed of the animal method he used to track down the young man he had followed to the emergency room, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air. That familiar odor compelled him to trail it like a shark would relentlessly follow blood through miles of water. He paid little attention to the courteous greetings of staff, janitors and night doctors. Without a sound, his covered feet trod step after step as he obeyed the acute scent of burning flesh and disinfectant where it was strongest in his nostrils.
“Zimmer 4,” he mumbled as his nose led him left at a t-junction of hallways. He would have smiled — if he could. His thin body crept down the burn unit hallway to where the young man was being treated. From the inside of the room he could hear the voices of the doctor and nurses declare the patient’s chances of survival.
“He will live, although,” the male doctor sighed sympathetically, “I don’t think he will be able to retain his facial functions — features, yes, but his sense of smell and taste will be permanently severely impaired.”
“He still has a face under all that, doctor?” a nurse asked softly.
“Yes, but barely, as the skin damage will cause his features to…well…dissolve into the face a bit more. His nose will not be prominent and his lips,” he hesitated, feeling truly sorry for the attractive young man on the barely intact driver’s license in the charred wallet, “are gone. Poor child. Barely twenty-seven and this happens to him.”
The doctor shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Administer some IV analgesics and start urgent fluid replacement please, Sabine.”
“Yes, doctor.” She sighed and helped her colleague collect the dressing. “He will have to wear a mask for the rest of his life,” she said to no one in particular. She pulled the trolley closer, carrying the sterile bandages and saline solution. They did not see the alien presence of the intruder peering in from the hallway, finding his target through the slowly closing slit in the door. Only one word escaped him silently.
“Mask.”
Chapter 2 — Stealing Purdue
Feeling somewhat concerned, Sam strolled casually through the vast garden of the private institution just outside Dundee under a roaring Scottish sky. After all, was there any other kind? He felt good, though, inside himself. Empty. So much had befallen him and his friends of late that it felt amazing to think of nothing, for a change. Sam had returned from Kazakhstan a week before and had not laid eyes on either Nina or Purdue since he had returned to Edinburgh.
He had been informed that Nina had suffered serious injuries due to radiation exposure and had been admitted to a hospital in Germany. After he had sent new acquaintance Detlef Holtzer to find her, he had remained in Kazakhstan for a few days and had not been able to obtain any updates on Nina’s condition. Apparently Dave Purdue had also been discovered at the same site as Nina, only to be subdued by Detlef for his strangely aggressive behavior. But that also was speculative at best, thus far.
Purdue had contacted Sam himself the day before to notify him of his own confinement in the Sinclair Medical Research Facility. Funded and managed by the Brigade Apostate, the Sinclair Medical Research Facility was a clandestine ally of Purdue’s in a past battle against the Order of the Black Sun. The association happened to be ex-members of the Black Sun; apostates of the faith, so to speak, that Sam had also become a member of a few years earlier. His operations for them were few and far between, as their need for intelligence would surface only every now and then. Being a sharp and efficient investigative journalist, Sam Cleave was invaluable to the Brigade in this regard.
Other than the latter, he was free to operate in his own capacity and do his own freelance work whenever he felt like it. Weary of doing anything as intense as his last mission any time soon, Sam had elected to take the time to visit Purdue in whatever madhouse the eccentric explorer had checked into this time.
There was very little information on the Sinclair Facility, but Sam had a nose for smelling the meat under the lid. As he approached the place, he noticed that there were bars on the windows all across the third floor of the four stories the building boasted.
“I bet you are in one of those rooms, hey, Purdue?” Sam chuckled to himself as he proceeded toward the grand entrance to the creepy building with its overly white walls. A chill ran through Sam as he entered the lobby. “Geez, Hotel California posing as the Stanley much?”
“Good morning,” the petite, blond receptionist greeted Sam. Her smile was genuine. His rugged, dark looks instantly intrigued her, even if he were old enough to be her much older brother or almost too old uncle.
“Aye, that it is, young lady,” Sam agreed flamboyantly. “I am here to see David Purdue.”
She frowned, “Then who is the bouquet for, sir?”
Sam just winked and tilted his right hand downward to hide the flower arrangement under the counter. “Shh, don’t tell him. He hates carnations.”
“Um,” she stuttered in abject uncertainty, “he is in Ward 3, up two floors, Room 309.”
“Ta,” Sam grinned and whistled as he walked toward the staircase that was marked in white and green — ‘Ward 2, Ward 3, Ward 4,’ swinging his bouquet lazily as he ascended. In the mirror he was greatly amused by the trailing stare of the bewildered young woman who was still trying to figure out what the flowers were for.