“No, it’s all right,” said Kujawa, making an effort to stay calm. “You did what I asked you to. Let’s move over here.”
Kujawa led Will to a large white machine, an open cylinder of molded plastic set on its side. Kujawa operated a control panel, and a flat waist-high platform slid out of the cylinder.
“Lie down here, Will, faceup and your head toward the machine.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s an MRI machine,” said Kujawa. “We’re going to take some pictures of your brain. This time you don’t have to move. In fact, it won’t work if you do.”
“Good. I don’t want to break this one, too.”
“Please don’t. It’s a lot more expensive.”
As Will lay down, Dr. Geist rushed in holding a Center tablet, with Robbins trailing behind him. He showed Kujawa and Robbins results from the treadmill test, gushing with excitement.
“This VO-two rate is astonishing,” said Geist. “Higher by three basis points than any I’ve ever seen—hello, Will, forgive me, but this is incredibly impressive. Hematocrit level is low triple figures; that’s unprecedented. Watts expended steady at over six hundred but pulse never got above one-fifty—are your leg muscles sore?”
“No, sir.”
“I’d venture to say he’s not even producing lactic acid,” said Geist to Kujawa. “His cellular rate of exchange is a kind of self-cleaning engine.”
“Any evidence of PEDs?” asked Robbins.
“No, his blood’s pristine,” said Geist. “Glucose levels are steady without spikes. He’s generating EPO in response to stress in an extraordinarily efficient homeostatic loop.” Geist again remembered Will was lying there. “I’m sorry, Will, this must all sound like gobbledygook to you.”
“What does it mean?” asked Will.
“It means you have remarkable aerobic and metabolic capabilities,” said Kujawa.
“To say the least,” said Geist, shaking his head at the numbers. “This is marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.”
“Do we have a plausible explanation?” asked Robbins, concerned.
“It’s awfully early to speculate,” said Geist, deferring to Kujawa.
“Maybe the MRI can shed light on that,” said Kujawa. “Let’s take a look.”
Geist smiled, patted Will’s shoulder, and walked back to the observation room. Feeling even more unsettled, Will tilted his head back and looked warily into the dark center of the machine as Kujawa entered commands in the control panel.
“How does this work?” asked Will.
“An MRI machine immerses you in a harmless magnetic field, which we flood with radio waves pitched at different frequencies. They’re loud, by necessity, so wear these.” Kujawa handed Will heavily padded headphones, equipped with an adjustable bayonet mic. “Close your eyes, lie completely still for ten minutes, and we’ll have a picture of your entire nervous system.”
Kujawa headed for the observation room. Dr. Robbins stepped forward and took Will’s hand; her palm felt smooth, cool, and reassuring.
“Have you ever been in one of these before?” she asked.
Will shook his head.
“Just breathe and relax,” she said. “That mic is voice activated. If it feels like too much, let me know and I’ll pull the plug.”
“Let’s get it over with,” said Will.
Dr. Robbins squeezed his hand and moved away. Will put on the headphones and settled back. A moment later, the platform slid slowly into the narrow aperture. The headphones muted the motorized whirr. Will kept his eyes closed and tried to stay calm by focusing on his breathing. He felt another jolt when the sled came to a halt, leaving him in muffled silence inside the machine, encased down to his knees in what felt like a plastic coffin.
Kujawa came on the headphones. “Are you all right, Will?”
“I’m okay,” he said.
“I’m going to start the sequence,” said Kujawa. “Lie as still as you can.”
After a short silence, a rhythmic, insistent electronic bass note pounded through the chamber around him, sound waves clanging through Will’s skull. While the bursts continued, another sound blended in, a familiar voice hitchhiking inside the gravelly frequency. Then it emerged—clear as sunlight—deep in his brain.
“ ‘Stay calm. Breathe deeply,’ ” the voice said. “What a load of hog slop. Easy for them to say. They’re not the ones packed in there like bloody sardines in a ten-cent tin.”
Dave.
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“Are you’re actually here?” asked Will. “Or am I talking to an ‘astral projection’?”
“What was that, Will?” asked Dr. Kujawa in his headphones.
“Nothing,” said Will in the mic, and then whispered, “What do you want?”
“I left you with a snoot full to cogitate last time,” said Dave. “Now that you’ve had a chance to cleanse the mental palate, you’re ready for the rest of it.”
Back in the control room, Kujawa, Geist, and Robbins were watching images of Will’s brain on a monitor. Dr. Geist pointed to multiple flares of orange and bright red. “He’s neurally hyperactive all through the frontal lobe … and here in the corpus callosum, both sides are firing in unison. The hemispheres are almost in perfect sync.”
“And look at this,” said Kujawa, tapping the screen. “His posterior hippocampus is enlarged to nearly twice normal size, and not at the expense of the anterior.”
“What would that mean?” asked Robbins.
“His spatial comprehension must be almost beyond belief,” said Geist.
Lillian Robbins cocked an ear to the speakers and listened. “Is he talking?”
“When we’re finished here,” said Geist, “I need to run a full genetic profile.”
The MRI machine switched to the next frequency burst, this one long and high-pitched. Will tried to keep his voice as low as possible.
“Go on,” said Will.
“Our executive council’s been called into emergency session,” said Dave. “All hands on deck, round-the-clock discussions—”
“I’m tired of hearing about this, okay?” Will hissed. “Those thugs set some kind of freaky roach motel that burned down my house and tried to kill my friend. My parents, or what’s left of them, are on their way here right now, in a stolen jet with the feds on their tail. The Black Caps are hooked in with a secret society at the school that’s bringing creatures over from the Never-Was, and they killed or kidnapped the kid who was living in my room—”
“Wow,” said Dave. “You have been busy.”
The frequency changed again, clobbering the chamber with sound. With his eyes closed, Will realized he could now see Dave walking around the MRI machine. He even noticed writing in the helicopter patch on the back of his jacket: ATD39Z.
Am I seeing him right through this machine?
But when Will opened his eyes, the only thing in front of him was the white plastic ceiling an inch from his face. Will’s heart hammered. He closed his eyes again and tried to ride it out. Dave moved into sight, leaning on the MRI machine.
“That’s it, mate, keep breathing,” said Dave. “Here’s the word: You’ve been given our highest security clearance, Level Twelve. Cards on the table. You need to know the background on the Other Team.”
Will struggled to stay focused. “Okay.”
“The Other Team is what we refer to as the Older Root Race,” said Dave. “Have a squiz at this.”
Dave walked through the MRI machine until he was standing right in front of Will. He took out the glass cube with the floating dice. The dice slowed to a halt. A beam of light shot from the die on the left and refracted through the other like a prism. The split beams shot directly into Will’s eyes. His mind filled with tumbled, disturbing flashes of the narrative Dave proceeded to tell him.