I must be getting worse.
Anxiety spiked the pain higher.
She forced herself to calm, drawing upon meditative techniques taught to her by Seichan. The pair sometimes went to Rock Creek Park and practiced tai chi. The series of movements were originally developed for self-defense but now served as a means to help center a mind and body through its graceful postures, a form of meditation in motion.
She mentally pictured herself going through those moves and found herself sinking into a meditative space.
Then Monk was there, in her ear, in her head. “Honey, we don’t have much time.”
She heard the urgency in his voice and understood the implication.
I am getting worse.
This confirmation of her fears should have panicked her, but she remained calm.
“Babe, I need you to picture who attacked you, who took the girls and Seichan. I mean really concentrate, every detail.”
Reminded of the attacker, the fragile peace inside her shattered. Pain washed through her, darkening her world’s edges to the density of a black hole.
She used the fury inside her to focus, knowing one certainty.
She pictured the girls.
Time isn’t just running out for me.
9:40 A.M.
“Her blood pressure is rising,” the nurse in the next room warned.
With his heart hammering in his chest, Monk leaned closer to the microphone. He stared over to Lisa and Dr. Grant. Both were huddled over a monitor wired to the stack of servers. Monk studied the green glowing lights, picturing the deep neural net program analyzing Kat’s MRI scans.
“Anything?” Monk asked.
Lisa turned with a grimace. The screen only showed a staticky flurry of pixels.
The neurologist’s face shone with sweat. “This isn’t going to work.”
Monk’s voice edged with threat. “It’s gotta.”
“You don’t understand. This program . . .” Grant waved to the glowing bank of servers. “It’s still crude. It can’t render anything even close to a photographic representation. At least, not yet. For now, all it can do is pick out the simplest shapes from a subject’s mind.”
Lisa stepped over to Monk. “You’re asking Kat to picture something too complex, too detailed. Instead, ask her for some symbolic representation of what she’s trying to communicate. Something iconic and simple.”
“Like emojis,” one of the techs offered, who looked barely out of his teens.
But Monk understood and returned his lips to the microphone. “Kat, forget trying to picture a face. Just think about some simple symbol that could point us in the right direction.” He glanced over to the tech. “Like an emoji or something.”
The young man gave him a thumbs-up.
Monk sat back as Lisa returned to Grant.
The neurologist stiffened. “Something’s coming through.”
The swirl of pixels had coalesced into a shape in the screen’s center.
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Monk rolled his chair closer for a better look. It didn’t help much. “Just looks like a smear. A skid mark.”
“Try to get her to focus harder,” Grant urged.
Monk pushed back to the console and leaned to the microphone. “Babe, you’re doing great, but we need you to concentrate as hard as you can. You’ve got this.”
He kept his eyes on the screen. Lisa stood to the side, so he could watch.
The pixels squeezed more tightly, details forming.
Grant nodded vigorously. “My god, I’ve not seen such details before. The program must be learning, improving.”
Lisa smiled. “Or maybe it’s the patient.”
Monk agreed. When it comes to fierce concentration, no one held a candle to Kat.
The image grew even more intricate, easy enough to figure out.
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9:45 A.M.
Kat fought to hold the image steady in her mind’s eye. It was difficult with her head throbbing. By now, fiery agony etched every crevice in her skull. It felt like she had been focusing for hours.
At the back of her mind, she also remembered the strike team’s leader, the one who had loomed over her in the kitchen, a dagger in hand. It was a weapon known to her, one unusual enough for her to identify who held it.
C’mon, Monk . . .
Then his voice returned. “Kat, if you’re trying to show us a knife or dagger, we got it, babe. Good job.”
She inwardly collapsed.
Thank god.
She didn’t have any idea how Monk and the doctors had accomplished this miracle—to see what was in her head—but she was grateful it had worked.
Now, Monk, figure it out.
9:47 A.M.
Monk watched the image on the screen dissolve away, swirling back to chaos, as if confirming they had received the correct message.
Lisa turned to Monk. “Does that picture mean anything to you? She said you knew who attacked them.”
He shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“Maybe it’s just the first emoji in a string,” the tech suggested.
Monk shrugged and tried again. “Kat, I don’t know what you’re getting at. Could you clarify? Send another pic. Something that could narrow things down.”
They all stared at the kaleidoscope of pixels.
You can do this, Kat.
Again, an image slowly formed, vague and indistinct. It looked like sand flowing from above and spilling into a pool on the floor.
Designed by the author
“Keep concentrating,” Monk pressed her. “We’re getting something but can’t quite make it out.”
The nurse waved an arm, drawing attention. She pointed to Kat’s leg, which had started to tremble.
“She’s seizing again,” Grant said. “This is over.”
No . . . not when we’re this close.
Monk pulled the stick microphone to his lips. “Kat, you’re outta time. Focus like you never did before. Focus with everything you got, babe.”
Despite Kat’s condition, everyone in the control room concentrated on the screen. The pixels fused into a crisper image, not as finely detailed as before, more like a crayon drawing, but good enough.
Designed by the author
“It’s a witch’s hat,” Monk realized.
The image swirled away, whisking into a blur.
But its demise wasn’t a confirmation this time.
Out in the other room, Kat’s body arched off the bed of the gantry, the seizure powerful enough to surge through her brainstem lesion, circumventing her paralytic condition for the moment.
Her limbs shook violently, ripping out her IV line.
The nurse threw her body over Kat. “We’re losing her!”
Grant rushed from the control room to go to her aid, but Monk stood with his back stiff, tears flowing down his cheeks.
Rest now, babe. You did it.
He pictured the dagger and the witch’s hat.
I know who took our girls.
10
December 25, 9:48 A.M. EST
Location Unknown
“Hush, everything’s fine,” Seichan told the girls.
It wasn’t, but they didn’t need to know that. Sitting on a tiny cot, she gently wiped twin trails of dirt from the youngest’s nose. Five-year-old Harriet had just thrown up her oatmeal into the steel toilet in the dank corner of the basement. Penelope leaned against Seichan’s other side. Older by a year, Penny looked like she might follow her sister’s example at any moment.
Seichan had been there when the two had first woken up from their drug-induced slumbers. She did her best to console them in the strange surroundings, to reassure them. But she wasn’t their mother.
Even now, Harriet stared dully at the room’s empty, unmade bed. It was like she knew, too, for whom it had been intended.
Kat.
The auburn-haired girl had not said a word since waking up. No questions, not even any tears. She simply took it all in, looking as analytical as her mother. She wore green footie pajamas with an embroidered representation of a wide black belt. It had come with a peaked elf hat, but ever the more serious of the two girls, she had refused to don it back home, showing her distaste at such frivolities by throwing it on the floor.
When their breakfast had arrived—hot oatmeal with cinnamon and apple preserves—she had simply eaten it, following her sister’s more exuberant example.
Since waking, Penny had been a bottomless well of questions and statements: Where’s Mom? Where are we? How come there’s no door to the bathroom? It stinks in here. I like anteaters. The last was probably generated by the row of ants marching across the concrete floor and vanishing down the floor drain. Still, Seichan knew this was Penny’s way of letting out stress, of coping with her fear in this strange situation.
“When’re we getting out of here?” the girl asked. “I have to pee.”
“You can use the toilet over there.”
Penny looked aghast and shook her head, shaking her strawberry-blond pigtails in distaste. “Harriet threw up in there.”
“I cleaned it all up.”
Penny still squirmed, not meeting her eye.
Seichan sensed the real reason for her refusal. “If I go first, will you go? There’s nothing to be bashful about.”