I turned away to give him privacy. Dr. Grace was conferring quietly with one of the technicians, going over something he was showing her on a log sheet. I looked at the other banks of monitors, which displayed every corner of the facility. There were bedrooms like Chub’s, but with real windows and more personal details-staff quarters, I assumed. There were views of the parking garage, the courtyard, the research facilities. Some were empty, and in others people worked at computers and banks of equipment.
There was the specimen room; I saw that the zombies were lined up in their chairs, where we’d left them. The one that had nearly fallen on us had been removed, but there was a stain on the floor where it had lain. I glanced quickly away from that screen.
There was a hospital bed with a lumpy, still form under a white sheet. Another zombie? But something wasn’t right…
It took me a moment to absorb what I was seeing.
Sensors blinked and tubes protruded from the body’s throat and extremities. As I watched, the body shifted slightly, its arm skittering a few inches on the sheet. Clawed fingers scrabbled at nothing. But what was wrong with them? They were hideously deformed, mere stumps, crusted with…
What was that?
I squinted at the face exposed at the head of the bed and felt my stomach turn. The skin had melted from the bone, a mask of peeling, bandaged shreds attached to a skull. A lipless mouth pulled back from leering teeth. Its eyes stared piteously at the ceiling, its lashes and eyebrows gone. There was no hair on its skull, and its ears were mere knobs of flesh-
And that was when I knew: this tortured body had been horribly burned, and then saved by extraordinary measures, the best medical care money could buy. It would have been far kinder to let it die; its every moment was screaming torture, but its lungs had been too badly damaged to produce a scream.
It was Bryce Safian.
The man we had left for dead. The man who’d been pulled from the inferno of his laboratory, carried out on a stretcher, one charred foot dangling free. From what I could see, most of his body had been burned beyond recognition.
But Prentiss had contacts everywhere, sources I could only imagine. If there was a way, he would buy or steal it. He would pay people to perform miracles on Bryce, and pay others to look the other way.
In the old lab, the one we had destroyed, Bryce had been in charge, and I had feared him. He tried to imprison me, to use me and Prairie to learn how to turn ordinary people into Healers. Had he succeeded, he could have produced the seeds of World War III, giving every army that could afford to pay access to zombies who would carry out their acts of war.
We had destroyed Bryce’s lab, his data-but we hadn’t destroyed his backups. We didn’t think it mattered: with him dead, the passwords and locations were lost forever. But with him alive…
That was why he was here. Even if all he could do was scrawl on a pad of paper-even if all he could do was blink yes or no-with enough patience and enough time, they could make him tell everything. First would be the passwords; then they would force him to explain the data. By keeping him alive, they had round-the-clock access to a consultant whose every moment was clearly agony.
My heart sank. If they had already got the passwords from him, everything was lost. There was no way we would be able to pull off burning down a lab a second time. I had no doubt they’d redoubled the security here. They would be on high alert for any kind of invasion.
But…
Bryce was still alive, and there had to be a reason. As much as I hated Prentiss, I didn’t believe he was deliberately cruel. Bryce held the key to the work being done here.
So we had to get to Bryce.
I glanced at Dr. Grace again, but she was engrossed in the report she was reading, tracing a column of numbers with her fingernail. Next to me Kaz watched his mother pray and held my hand tightly in his.
After a moment Dr. Grace summoned us. “Time’s up, I’m afraid,” she said. “We need to get you two to your rooms so you can get some rest. If you’ll follow me?”
As he turned to go, Kaz traced a fleeting sign of the cross on his forehead, chest and shoulders and mouthed the words I love you to his mother. She continued to pray, her lips moving steadily, her back straight.
As we left the lab, I-who had never set foot in a church-said the most desperate prayer of my life.
Keep us safe, and help us do what must be done.
31
THE BROWN-GLASSES LADY brought her toys and she put a duck behind the hiding thing. Chub knew it was a duck because she left the top off the box when she came in and the duck was at the top of the box and when she put something behind the hiding thing the duck was not on the top of the box. Chub had a duck like that. Prairie gave it to him and it went in his tub when he had a bath and when he didn’t have a bath it went in the blue basket so Hailey could take her bath. Hailey did not have a duck and she didn’t play with his duck either when she took her bath.
Chub wanted the duck that the lady brought, except it wouldn’t be the same as his duck. It looked the same but it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing was the same here and he wanted to go home. Hailey came yesterday and Kaz came yesterday, but it wasn’t time to go home yet. They could only play with him a little while. Hailey was sad when they had to go. She didn’t want to go and Kaz didn’t want to go. The brown-glasses lady made them leave and he wished the lady would leave, but she came back.
The lady pretended she was very smart but she wasn’t very smart. Because the bagel, she said if Chub didn’t eat the bagel she would have to take the bagel away. But Chub put the bagel in his pocket. The pants today had a pocket and he put the bagel in the pocket and the lady didn’t know he put the bagel there. The pants were red. His shirt had a bug on it. A bug picture. Chub was waiting to see if he liked the bug or not. He put his hand on the bug picture a lot. It was shiny.
“So, Chub, can you tell me what is behind the screen?”
Ask ask ask. The lady asked questions and asked. Chub had to let some words out today because he told Hailey he would. He said words, he said no and dog and thank you because everyone likes when you say thank you. The lady liked it when he said thank you but then her mouth was mad again.
“Is it… the dog? Or maybe the shovel? Or the cup?”
Chub looked at her mouth making words. It was not the dog. It was not the shovel. Or the cup. It was the duck. She knew the duck was behind the hiding thing. She wanted him to say duck.
“Duck.”
The brown-glasses lady jumped up fast and Chub thought she might climb over the hiding thing but then she sat down on her chair again. The lady looked happy and Chub made a smile for her, because Hailey said to help the nice lady but Chub was thinking about Prairie because Prairie was in his mind-picture this morning and Prairie looked sad and the eye man was there and he put his hand on Prairie’s face and she looked sad. The eye man used to come visit Gram and he was scary and Hailey pushed a stick in his eye and made it crazy. Hailey pushed that stick in his eye but now he put his hand on Prairie’s face and then he put his face on her face and Chub wanted to tell Prairie to skedaddle, but it was only a mind-picture and he couldn’t tell her anything.
“That’s right, it is a duck, Chub! Aren’t you a smart boy! Aren’t you a good boy!”
Chub was a smart boy and he was a good boy but he wished the lady would close her mouth and he wished Hailey and Kaz would come back and he wished the eye man would leave Prairie alone.