I made my way down to the hospital cafeteria. The tables were mostly empty. I saw an elderly couple, a teenage boy with what was probably his mother, and a young woman eating a salad by herself. She was strikingly pretty, with dark hair in a long braid on one shoulder, and a narrow, expressive face. Another day—maybe another life—I would have contrived some reason to sit near her and start a conversation. At the moment, the energy required to do something like that seemed as far beyond me as flying to the moon.
The dinner selections were mostly picked over. I passed on the dregs of a corn chowder, ignored the somewhat wilted salad bar, and settled for chicken fingers and some curly fries. I sat as far away from the other patrons as I could get. As soon as I took the first bite, my body realized how hungry I was, and I wolfed the food down.
My hands shook. I tried to hold them still, but soon my whole body was shaking. My chest convulsed painfully. I didn’t even know what was happening until the first strangled sob burst out of my throat. I put my head in my hands and bottled them up as best I could, embarrassed to cry in public, but my shoulders shuddered uncontrollably.
I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept or eaten properly for a week, and probably not terribly well before that, either. But I knew that wasn’t all there was to it. I had just seen a man trapped in his own body, fighting his own mind for dominance and getting a message out to the world like a prisoner tapping on the walls of his cell. Or like a doomed sailor trapped in a sunken ship, tapping desperately on the steel hull for an unlikely rescue.
Before that, I had seen Mei-lin face the certainty of her own infection with bravery and self-sacrifice and narrowly escaped the same fate myself. I had watched from a distance as thousands of soldiers died from the guns and bombs of their own countrymen. I usually managed to keep my emotions tucked away where I couldn’t see them, and most of the time I didn’t even know they were there. Apparently that wasn’t something I could keep on doing forever.
I felt a gentle hand on my arm. I jerked my head up, startled, and saw the beautiful woman with the long braid, now sitting across from me. She wore black jeans and a green cotton shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves that revealed slim wrists. She had green eyes and a light dusting of freckles on her nose. She looked at me with a frank expression of sympathy.
“Who?” she said.
I sat up straight and wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “My dad.”
She nodded. “I lost my mom last year. Pancreatic cancer.”
I told her about my father’s early-onset Alzheimer’s, though I referred to his current condition simply as a bad reaction to a medication. Which was true, if not quite the whole story.
As someone willing to come up to a crying stranger in a cafeteria, I expected a bleeding heart, the kind of girl who loved to save puppies and take homeless beggars for a meal at McDonalds. Instead, she was crisp and intellectual, distracting me from my troubles by talking about the hair salon she had inherited from her mother and how little her business degree had prepared her for the day-to-day of operating a retail store. She asked what my father’s work had been and was impressed when I told her he’d worked for the NSA.
Her name was Zoe.
Before I knew it, I was telling her stories about my childhood in Brazil, particularly ones that involved my father, and she countered with a funny anecdote about a trip to Argentina she’d taken with her mom in the sixth grade. I felt layers of stress and worry slipping away as the muscles in my shoulders and back unclenched.
Finally, I yawned and glanced at the clock on the cafeteria wall, and was startled to discover we had sat there talking for an hour. The elderly couple and teenage boy with his mom were gone, and we were alone in the room. I decided there was no point in trying to get back to Fort Meade at this hour. Better to get a good night’s sleep and go to work in the morning.
I stood. “I should get home and get some sleep,” I said. “Thank you for cheering me up. It was really very pleasant.”
“Is there anyone else at home?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just me.”
She stood as well, close enough that I could smell a light scent of shampoo from her hair. She was almost exactly my height. “Do you need some company?” She asked it matter-of-factly, but I could feel the force of the question.
I considered, tempted to say yes. But I knew I didn’t have anything to offer her right now. I was barely taking care of my own basic needs, much less finding any energy to invest in a relationship. “I can’t,” I said.
She took a step back, clearly embarrassed. “I understand.”
“It’s been really nice,” I said. “Seriously, thanks for talking.”
She gave a tiny nod. I turned away to leave, but then I turned back again. “Listen, Zoe,” I said. “When all this is over, if you want, I’d love to show you a Peruvian restaurant I know in Rockville.” I scribbled my phone number on a napkin and handed it to her. “Best tacu tacu outside of Peru. Believe me, it’s worth the drive.”
She took the napkin, but she looked confused. “When all what is over?”
I glanced at my feet, then back up at her green eyes. “What I didn’t tell you, is that I work for the NSA too, just like my dad did. Things are going to get really bad pretty soon. Like what’s been happening in Brazil.”
She took another step back, and I could see it was too much. The small magic of our conversation was gone, and I was freaking her out.
“Hopefully I’m wrong,” I said. “Hopefully we’ll turn it back, and most people won’t know how bad it could have been. But I don’t think so. I think we’re in trouble. Not just as a country but as a human race.”
She smiled awkwardly. “I should go.”
I should have let it drop there, but I couldn’t leave her without at least a warning. “Stay away from Neuritol,” I said.
“What? You mean the smart drug, like in the commercials?”
I stared at her. “They’re advertising it now?”
“Not exactly. They don’t use the name, but they’re all about people improving themselves and getting smarter and stuff. And the name’s all over the news, so everybody knows what they’re talking about.”
I had no idea it was moving that fast. “Don’t touch the stuff,” I said. “Don’t go within a mile of it.”
She picked up her purse, a small green leather affair that matched her eyes. I felt the pang of an opportunity lost. “Well, bye,” she said.
I let her go while I collected the trash from my meal and placed the tray back in the small stack near the register. After counting to ten to make sure I didn’t end up waiting at the elevator with her, I made my way back through the hospital and caught a cab back home.
CHAPTER 25
I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. I needed sleep, but I also needed to get into work as early as possible. I knew if I waited I’d get trapped in the Monday morning traffic, and I wouldn’t get in until late. Not wanting to repeat my emotional crash of the day before, I stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store and bought two breakfast sandwiches, a bottle of chocolate milk, and three granola bars. Not exactly the most nutritious of breakfasts, but at least it would give me some calories for the morning.
I arrived at Fort Meade and pushed through security. I wondered how much, given the nature of the current threat, all of the armed guards and dogs and razor wire fences would actually be able to protect the people and the information inside.
I walked down to our basement office and found Andrew deep in conversation with Melody Muniz. “Melody!” I shouted. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her. “You’re safe!”