Dr. William Mitchell Raines stood in his most comfortable pair of $300 Italian leather loafers, completely dumbfounded.
He looked at Amarta.
He looked at her strange friends standing around the wide, vinyl-floored hall. The ceiling was high enough to fit a semi. Bits of straw gathered in the corner. Everything smelled faintly of manure.
“You want me to do what?”
The little girl in front of him spoke very slowly, as if he were a moron, while moving her hands in circles for emphasis. “Hee-aaart sssuuuurrr-gerrryy.”
She looked like she was ready for it. She wore a surgical gown, folded down to a child’s size, and her sandy hair was held back by a purple scrunchy. Like Doctor Barbie.
Dr. Raines pointed down the hall to the green swinging double doors. They were pinned open and faced metal-barred horse stables across the paved lot. “This is a farm!”
“No,” the girl corrected, scowling up, “it’s a veterinary supply company, and that”—she pointed to the corner at the hall—“is an ISO Class 2 clean room. Totally sterile. Built for surgery on race horses worth, like, millions of dollars. It was the only place big enough. With a crane.”
“A crane?” Mitchell made a face. That must be what the tracks in the ceiling were for. “Who’s the patient? Mr. Ed?”
The girl scowled. “Who’s Mr. Ed?”
Dr. Raines turned to Amarta. “I don’t know if this is some kind of joke or what. It’s just . . .” He looked around at the motley crew. Framed photos of horses were spaced along the wall. He caught a whiff of cedar. “It’s just odd. But I’m certain that you lied to me, that you’re not dying, that there’s no confession of a long lost son or whatever you meant to imply on the phone, and I never want to see or hear from you again.”
“I never said anything about a child.”
Dr. Raines opened his mouth to correct her. Then he stopped and smiled. “Nice try. Goodbye, Amarta.” He turned for the double doors.
He made it two steps before the man in the electric wheelchair plowed him into the wall and grabbed his neck with his right arm—the one that bulged from months of lifting his limp body in and out of bed.
Dr. Raines struggled for breath. His knees had buckled, but he had only partially collapsed. The motorized chair had him pinned to the hall’s cold wall, which was covered in a thick but worn coat of red exterior paint. It smelled like a zoo.
The chair’s occupant was holding Dr. Raines at eye level, and in between futile gasps for breath, the doctor had the sense that something unusual was happening to him. Something utterly terrifying. A force was pressing him in and out of consciousness. Like an invader inside his head, choking his very mind along with his throat. It was the most surreal sensation Dr. Raines had ever felt. His fingers shook and his toes curled inside his expensive loafers.
His captor spoke softly, but the hall had become so quiet and Dr. Raines’s ears so swollen that even a whisper seemed a roar.
“Hello,” he said from under his permanent scowl. It made his half-burned face that much more menacing. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time to play nice.” His nostrils flared as he breathed in and out. “There isn’t time to explain any of this to you or play to your ego. So I’ll just say this. I’m proud of the fact that most people in this country won’t ever know what it takes to keep them safe. That it isn’t about how much money you have. Or how many soldiers. When you get right down to it, it’s just about will. How far are you willing to go?”
The man squeezed harder. “You don’t have to like or approve of what I do. You don’t have to agree with it, or even understand. I don’t care. You just have to ask yourself one question: how far is this man willing to go? What will he do to get what he wants? Would he, for example, break both your hands at the wrists so you’d never perform surgery again?”
“Mitch,” Dr. Zabora interceded. “I know you don’t think much of my chosen profession. But you know me and you know I’m good at it. And you know when I’m telling the truth. Look me in the eye.”
Dr. Raines, face red with strain, head pressed to the cold red wall, turned his eyes to his ex-near-fiancée. He led out a tiny gasp. He was running out of breath.
But his attacker didn’t waver, neither in his gaze nor his grip.
“This man is a soldier,” Amarta explained. “A very special kind of soldier. And there’s nothing he won’t do to accomplish his mission. And I mean nothing. So please understand, however much it might sting your pride to take orders—from anyone—it’s really in your best interest to do exactly as he says.”
Mitchell Raines, straining to breathe, gave a tiny nod.
John let go and the surgeon gasped and stumbled back, breathing hard.
“Alright!” He panted. “Jesus, you crazy . . .” Dr. Raines stood and tried to compose himself. He wouldn’t look at John, but he glowered at Amarta.
She knew what it meant. He was letting her know there would be consequences. Amarta turned to the girl. “Show him.”
Wink walked toward the corner at the end of the hall. “This way, asshole.”
Dr. Raines opened his mouth to tell the little girl to watch hers, but he didn’t. He glanced at the scowling man with one bulging arm and turned to follow the brat. He glanced toward the only exit. A silent man in a blue hoodie was blocking the door.
Amarta stood next to John. “Let him see her. He’s a narcissist. But he’s not inhuman. And he likes to be the hero almost as much as you do.”
John grunted and rolled into the long, narrow pre-op ward. Shelves lined the walls. They were stuffed with medical supplies wrapped in white paper with plain black print. To the right, past the observation window, was the bright, sterile clean room. A small yellow crane hung from the tracks in the ceiling.
Dr. Raines stopped when he saw the patient on the horse-sized green padded gurney. She was enormous. Tubes and wires ran back and forth from machines on wheeled poles. They clustered around her head and connected to each other in a strange, nonsensical configuration.
“What is that? Is that an IV pump? What is it pumping?”
The little girl stood next to him. “I didn’t have much time. I had to rig a heart-lung machine.”
Dr. Raines lifted a blood-filled tube. He pointed with his finger as his eyes followed the flow to and from his new patient. “This doesn’t make any sense.” He turned his attention to the woman. He felt her pulse.
She didn’t have one.
He looked in shock to the machines. The strange contraption was the only thing keeping the giant alive. “This woman is dying,” he said.
“We know.” The girl looked like she might cry at any moment.
Dr. Raines scowled and turned examined the machines again. He hated to admit it, but the configuration was genius. It was, however, a complete stopgap with barely enough circulation. The woman was just too huge.
He looked to the adults. “I can try to stabilize her, but I don’t know what else you expect me to do.” He rolled up his sleeves and stepped toward the long, stainless steel sink that ran along the left wall. “Someone please help me move her into the operating room. And take her outside.” He motioned to the girl.
“Nuh uh.” She shook her head. “I’m your assistant.”
“That’s even more ridiculous—”
“Touch the patient’s chest,” Amarta urged.
Dr. Raines bristled. “Why do I—”
John rolled forward.
“Alright! Jeez.” He stepped back to the horse-gurney and reached for the woman’s rib cage.
His hand froze.
He looked at the little girl.
He felt with both hands. He felt the woman’s pulseless neck. He felt her arms and her hands.
“This woman . . . Her muscles . . . They’re warm, but they feel like . . .” He prodded with his fingertips. “Steel. How is this possible?”
Wink nodded. “And her bones have been anodized with heavy metals. Bone saw isn’t going to cut it. Not even that big cattle-sized one on the wall.”
“Bone saw?”
“Relax. We’re gonna go in through the abdomen, through the crus of the diaphragm.”
“Oh are we? The crus of the diaphragm? You don’t say? And where did you learn surgery, little girl? The back of the My Doctor Barbie box?”
“Pretty close, actually. I read your papers, jerkwad. And your textbook. It doesn’t seem that hard. I’d do it myself, but they won’t let me.” She said it with a tiny pout.
“This—this is COMPLETELY ridiculous.” Mitchell Raines started giggling desperately like he’d just figured out the punchline to the world’s greatest joke. He put his hand to his forehead. “Ha-ha, Amarta. You got me.”
The little girl ignored him. “Today we’re going to be excising the heart and some necrotic tissue along with most of the left lung and replacing it with the thermal oxygenating pump on the table behind you.”
Dr. Raines spun. He stared at the strange device, like a football-sized snail shell in beige plastic with oval entry and exit valves.
“It’s 187 times more efficient than normal human tissue, operates entirely off body heat, and will last for a thousand years.”
Mitchell Raines turned to Amarta. He actually looked scared. His face went pale. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The little girl didn’t let up. “Look, Mitch, we don’t have time for you to be a pussy. If we do nothing, she’s dead. So this is what we got. It’s now or never.” The little girl lifted a clear plastic mask over her face. “So, are you gonna grow a pair? Or is Cap gonna shove yours down your throat?”
Amarta sat in a cushioned wicker chair in stunned silence. She looked at John’s long, lifeless legs resting at an angle in his electric wheelchair. He never really fit. The automated coffee machine behind him hummed. She was used to his fantastic stories, but what he had spent the last twenty minutes explaining didn’t seem medically possible.
But, she was happy to listen. After watching the surgery preparations like a caged lion, John had quickly disappeared when the cutting started. While the boy in the hood paced aimlessly back and forth, Amarta went looking for John.
In the end, he hadn’t disappeared because of flashbacks to his torture, as she had feared. He was coming down hard from an adrenaline rush and was power-slurping coffee with extra helpings of sugar. When she saw that, she felt silly that she had gone to check on him—as if John Regent needed her help or anything.
But he had asked her to stay.
Amarta took a deep breath and let it out. “Is that even possible?”
John shrugged. “All we know is that they have some tech that can reanimate dead tissue.”
“Reanimate?”
“Or regenerate. Or something.” He paused. It sounded so stupid when he said it out loud. “Long shot, I know.”
Amarta nodded weakly. “No, no, I understand. You have to try.”
The young man in the hoodie, whom Amarta had met earlier, walked past the small waiting area.
“Where you going?” John asked.
“To the Mast. I had an idea.” He started backing toward the wide-bodied ambulance parked in the back, by the stables. “For after. I can set it up online.”
“After?” John asked.
Amarta watched him walk away. “He wants something to do. To keep busy. To distract himself.”
John nodded. He knew the feeling.
“That wound. On his arm. It doesn’t seem that old. Is he even on any pain meds?”
“Hope so. Dunno. But that’s not what’s bothering him.”
“What do you mean?”
John shook his head. “Something happened. He doesn’t want to say with the others around.”
“What?”
“Dunno. Hadn’t got that far yet.”
Amarta nodded. One crisis at a time. “It wasn’t a criticism, Captain. I’ve seen how you take care of your people.”
“Yeah.”
He was tired; she could tell. He couldn’t run around like he used to. It frustrated him. He was mad at himself. At his weakness. He couldn’t see the truth.
Amarta filled the growing silence. “Speaking of, Gabriel Gonzales is a proud father. Of a beautiful baby girl.”
“Oh?”
“Thanks to you.”
John thought for a moment, trying to recall the name. “Serenidad.”
Amarta nodded. “I got to meet her. She’s all smiles, just like her mother.”
John remembered Esmeralda Gonzales. Esme, Gabe called her. “Good woman.”
“She thinks the world of you. They both do. You saved that family.” Amarta paused. “I bet you were a helluva commander. Back in the day.”
“Some people thought so. Just no one with any stars on their shoulder.”
“Who cares what a bunch of old generals think?”
“Well, we know you don’t.”
Amarta smiled. “For your information, Colonel Sharpe said I handled myself pretty darn well for a civvy with no combat training. Admittedly, he meant to suggest he was skeptical I was telling the whole story. But still.” She thought about the well-coordinated violent ballet she witnessed from the floor of the parking garage. “Nothing like you, though. It must have been so hard for you to go AWOL.”
John shrugged. “I wasn’t going any higher anyway. There’s no secret to success. You wanna go up the chain, you gotta serve your men and lead your superiors. Not the other way around. But you gotta do both. I was always better at one more than the other.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you intimidated them. I think you were too good—”
“Oh jeez.” John turned away.
“I don’t mean at the job.” Amarta hurried to defend herself. “Well, maybe that too. I meant you’re too good of a person. You cared too much about doing the right thing to ever get very far in all that mess. The military is the biggest bureaucracy in the world.”
“Maybe.” John thought. “But a lotta people find comfort in that, in the structure. The routine. The size of it all. Like a mountain. Not going anywhere.”
Amarta shook her head. “That was never you, even as a teenager. How many times did we cover it in session? You only enlisted to escape your stepmom.”
“Not only,” John objected.
“You know what I mean. And as soon as you were in, you were trying to escape again, to climb out, to find the peak of that mountain, somewhere above the clouds. One unit after the next. Higher and higher.”
“Think so?”
“I do.”
John studied her face. She had a small mole, not much darker than her skin, on her left temple. She had round eyes. She had some gray roots she’d been too busy to color. She had almost no makeup. “So what is me, then?”
“This. Whatever this is. You should have seen your eyes back at the bus. This is what you were born to do, Captain. Running around like this. Behind the lines. In the cracks. Doing some good no one else in the world will bother to do. Something that needs to be done. That’s the John Regent I know.”
“How do you know what we’re doing here is any good?”
Amarta made a face. “What possible evil could you be up to with a child and a kid without a hand?”
John smirked. He met his friend’s eyes. Face-to-face. Amarta didn’t flinch. At his gaze. At the sight of his half-scarred face. Like a monster. Most people’s eyes flickered, just a little. Some even looked away. Amarta stared right into him. All the way down.
“You wanna know, don’t you? What it’s all about.”
Amarta shifted her weight. “No. Not really.”
“Yes, you do.”
She smiled sideways. Then it faded. He was so serious. Gravely serious. “What?”
“What if I told you Derek Wilkins wasn’t crazy?”
Amarta’s stomach seized. She sat up. John certainly knew how to punch someone in the gut. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Oh boy.”
“What if I told you everything he said was the absolute truth?”
Amarta scoffed. “What? That a secret conspiracy was implanting alien mind-ghosts in people? Come on, John . . .” Could she call him John?
“Maybe not aliens. Don’t know about that.”
“But the rest of it?”
He shrugged meekly.
“No . . .” Was it possible? “Please don’t joke.”
“It’s not a joke.” John grimaced from a phantom pain. Then it was his turn to shift in his chair.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll understand if you don’t wanna talk about it.”
Amarta thought for a moment. “If you really have information on Derek Wilkins, I want to know. I need to know.”
John nodded. He opened his mouth, then stopped. He thought about how to explain it. To a scientist.
Better back up. “The little girl. Wink.” He pointed backward with his thumb. “Her mind, you know, it’s completely different. Like the wiring and everything.”
“Yeah, I figured that out pretty quick. Many child prodigies require some kind of regular therapy, you know. To help them adjust to the world. They have all the same social needs we do, but with the added burden of not being able to relate—” Amarta stopped herself.
John smirked. “I’ll be sure and mention it to her.”
She flushed. “Sorry. Psychiatrist mode. Hard to turn it off sometimes.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for trying to help.”
“No, but I don’t always bring it up at the best times. Please. I interrupted.”
“Well, you’re right about not relating. She just doesn't see the world the way the rest of us do. She imagines stuff no well-adjusted adult ever would, even another genius. And she realized something. About the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“It used to be, if something rare and amazing happened in the mountains of Afghanistan or the forests of Costa Rica, no one but the locals would ever know. Just ghost stories, local myths, discovered by foreign travelers. Decades later. Centuries, even.
“But now there’s billions and billions of people, billions of chaotic actors, all connected in a mishmash of thinking algorithms and gene therapy and privately funded research. Stuff that happens in Afghanistan is immediately in Costa Rica. And everywhere else, too.
“All us smart, reasonable people read about crazy stuff in some faraway part of the world, or right here at home”—he nodded to her, meaning Derek Wilkins—“and we say, ‘that's not real, stuff like that doesn't really happen.’ And we’re right. It doesn't. Not in a thousand, not in a million, not in a hundred trillion chances. And we go on with life.
“But Wink still sees the world like a child. Full of wonder. And she can do the math.
“In her head.
“While playing video games.
“At first, she tried to explain it to me, but it was all integrals over theoretical space and shit I didn't understand. But I don't like not understanding. So I kept asking.”
John’s eyes met Amarta’s again. “The world is so full and so connected, with so many people and so much crazy shit running smack into other kinds of crazy shit every single day, that the odds kind of even out. It turns out it’s nearly impossible there not be another layer to it. A meta level. It’s some kind of mathematical necessity or something. Once you achieve this kind of organic complexity.”
“Then why don’t we see it? If it’s a necessity.”
“Because it’s hidden. Suppressed.”
Amarta scowled.
John shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time secrets were kept from the world.”
“By who?”
“There are people, Doc. People who’ve perfected the art of being ghosts. I saw it. Even before all this. On an op in Siberia. This . . . thing fell out of the sky. Huge. Looked like it was clutching some kind of egg the size of a truck. They took it. And sent us packing.
“And again in Malaysia. Remember that kid I told you about? The one who threw a tantrum and electrocuted everyone around him?” John shook his head just once. It was solemn. He looked down. “Well . . . he grew up.”
A long moment of silence passed.
John sighed. “And they got their hooks in him. They got their hooks in him real good.”
Amarta could recognize guilt easy enough. The therapist in her immediately wanted to go down that road, but the woman in her stopped short. “So what do they want? These people.”
“We picked up some stuff in New York. Should be able to figure that out. Any moment now actually. But whatever it is, it ain’t gonna be pretty. And for whatever reason, Derek Wilkins got in their way. That’s for sure. Just like Ian.”
“So . . . you guys are going to do what . . . exactly?”
John eyes were still lowered. “A week ago, I wouldn’t have known how to answer that question.” He smiled. “I woulda said ‘get ourselves killed.’”
“And now?”
“Now . . .” He looked out the door. “Believe it or not, I actually think we got a shot.” John’s voice got quiet. “You should have seen them in New York, Doc. No hesitation. All of ’em were ready to sacrifice themselves. For each other. For people they never met.”
John breathed deep. “Sorry.”
“I’ll stop apologizing if you do.”
John nodded.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “I know you didn’t have to.” She made a face. “Although I’m not sure I wanted to know you’re on a suicide mission. Or whatever you want to call it.”
John smiled. “You deserve the truth. Especially after this.” He motioned toward the clean room. He tried not to think about his friend being cut open. How long had it been? A few hours? John glanced at the clock on the wall. Sheesh. Almost five.
“Eh.” Amarta shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see what Mitch does when this is all over. But you still didn’t have to take the risk of telling me.”
John nodded. Then he took a deep breath and let it out. He liked to think he wasn’t afraid of anything, but it wasn’t always true. “Truth is, I like telling you things, Doc. Always did.”
“I like listening, Captain.”
A quiet moment passed.
The little girl’s sing-songy voice erupted from the door. “John and Amarta, sitting in a tree.”
Ian appeared, wide-eyed, and dragged Wink away.
She raised her voice as she was pulled down the hall. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Dr. Raines spun and walked back to Amarta, finger raised. “Don’t pretend like I don’t know what this is. You’re sick, Amarta. Sick. As in sociopathy. You couldn’t stand that I wouldn’t be your little trick pony, and you’ve been waiting all this time to get back at me. Well, it won’t work. Because no one is going to find out about this.”
He stood stiff. “I’m not going to tell the police. How do you like that, huh?” He yelled the words. “I bet you thought I’d be so incensed that I’d go to them and admit to performing this untested, unethical, uninsured, godforsaken surgery. In a ZOO! And you could use it to slander my reputation and get my medical license revoked. But I’m smarter than you. And all your friends. Even that freak girl.”
He stepped forward. “So let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to walk out of here like nothing happened. Because nothing did. Do you understand? I’ve made sure there’s not a trace left that I was even here. I’ll be home in three hours at which time any of twenty of people will swear I was with them all night. So you go to the authorities if you want, with your wild stories. But that’s all they’ll be.” He leaned in close. “Because who are they going to believe? An internationally respected heart surgeon about to be awarded the Metziger Prize? Or a disgraced government psychiatrist whose patients kill their own families?”
Amarta was stoic.
“But this more than anything.” Mitchell braced for his big finish. “So help me God, I will never, ever see you again. For any reason. I don’t care if you are dying in the street. Do you hear me? We are through.”
Dr. Mitchell Raines, perfect man, nearly spit. His lip quivered. His mouth turned down in disgust. Then he stormed down the hall and out the door.
Amarta turned to John. She was deadpan. “I don’t think he’s gonna be a big security risk.”
John shook his head. “You sure can pick ’em, Doc.”
He spun his chair and rolled into the recovery nook outside the surgical theater. Xana was hooked up to all kinds of machines. They beeped and hummed. Her chest was wrapped tight in bandages. The rest of her was covered in a blanket. Tubes ran from her nose. She was barely breathing.
But she was alive.
“How long till we can move her?”
“What’s the rush?” Amarta asked.
“We can’t stay here.”
“Why? I’m sure whoever let you use it wouldn’t mind.”
John turned his head slowly to Ian, who was already looking at him.
“Oops.” Ian’s eyes were big. Then he waved his hand. “I’m sure they’re fine.”
John rubbed his face. “Maybe you oughta go check.”
“Who?” Amarta asked.
Ian whispered as he walked past. “The nice people duct-taped in the closet.”