2:34 P.M.
“We’ve been trying for over two hours,” Julian warned her.
In Kat’s room, Lisa paced impatiently. She crossed from Dr. Templeton’s station, where the molecular biologist’s monitor showed a gray brain covered with a glowing expanse of red motes, then back over to the neurologist’s screen swirling with amorphous gray static.
The two researchers had tried repeatedly to draw something out of Kat, only to fail each time and return to calibrating and recalibrating their respective instruments.
Lisa had suggested infusing more neural dust through the port into Kat’s cerebrospinal fluid. She even promised Sigma would cover the expense for that extra load of molecularly engineered particles.
What could it hurt?
While they performed this procedure, Lisa had spoken with Painter, both to make sure she had not overstepped her authority and to get an update on his progress decrypting the tablet obtained by Monk’s subterfuge with Valya. His team had successfully hacked the device, enough to trace the last call to somewhere in rural West Virginia, but that was as narrow as they could pinpoint.
A swath of eight hundred square miles.
The area was mountainous, covering a corner of the rugged Monongahela National Forest. Painter had sent search teams in—both to canvass the area and to be close by in case any new information turned up.
It was why Lisa continued to pressure Julian and Dr. Templeton.
“Are we ready to try again?” she asked.
“We’re grasping at straws,” Julian warned. “I know you’re putting a lot of hope on that brief burst on the EEG.”
Lisa wasn’t putting a lot of hope into that blip—it was all her hope.
When they had first attempted this, Julian’s monitor had shown some sign of activity, a shadowy but regular pulse on his deep neural net’s monitor, as if it were registering something. Simultaneously, the EEG—which had been flatlined—had shown a forty-three-second run of activity.
It was as if the energized dust coating Kat’s brain had come close to drawing something out of her friend. Maybe it was just memories trapped in her dead brain briefly being activated, but Lisa hoped it might mean Kat was in there, too, awakened enough to stir those EEG needles.
Still, Lisa had enough medical background to know this was wishful thinking, but sometimes that was enough.
Especially today.
Dr. Templeton nodded to Julian. “The new load of neural dust seems to have fully settled.”
“Thanks, Susan.” Julian swung to his station. “I’m ready to go when you are.”
Lisa moved over to Kat’s bed and leaned closer to the helmet loaded with ultrasonic emitters.
“Powering up,” Susan said.
“Don’t hold back,” Lisa warned. “Maximum power.”
The helmet’s ultrasonic hum rose quickly, growing into a furious buzz. The device shook around Kat’s skull. Lisa tried to watch both the EEG and Julian’s screen. She wondered if with enough power, with enough of those damned dust particles, if they might energize Kat’s brain long enough to produce a miracle.
She pictured a defibrillator shocking a heart back to life.
“System’s fully energized,” Susan said.
On the biologist’s screen, the crimson motes now all glowed green.
Julian nodded to the bed. “Give it a try, Lisa.”
She bent down to the bed. “Kat, it’s now or never! Harriet is in trouble! Help us!”
She glanced over to Julian.
Anything?
He shook his head, but movement drew Lisa’s eye.
On the EEG, those flat lines began to wiggle.
Julian saw it, too, sitting straighter. “Keep going! Think of something to jar her. Something to direct her to the right buried memory.”
Lisa turned back to Kat.
But what could that be?
2:36 P.M.
Kat woke again into smothering darkness.
She vaguely remembered a warm light, of drawing toward it—then she was back here, trapped in a cold dark tar pit.
Let me go.
She did not even fight the heavy darkness. She was already sinking back down, searching for that warm light again. Until a shout boomed into her.
HARRIET! —IN TROUBLE!
Her daughter’s name, the distress behind those words, focused her. She clawed briefly, but she was too tired. She sank again, not because she didn’t care about her daughter, but simply because she didn’t know anything that would help. She wondered if this was hell, revived over and over again, reminded of her failure to protect her daughters, forced to remember that night: the fight, the crushing blow, two limp forms carried past her into the night.
I can’t help.
Still, she tried, willing to play with the devil if it meant any hope for her daughters. She ran that night again through her head. It was hard—impossible—to focus. Details appeared, but she could not grasp them before they faded into obscurity.
REMEMBER! DAGGER! VALYA! MALLET!
She wished the voice would quiet, so she could drift back into the darkness.
I don’t know anything.
The voice persisted, not letting her rest.
SEICHAN! CHRISTMAS! PENNY! VIRGINIA!
Kat wished she could free her arms to cover her ears. This had to be hell. Here was the worst torture imaginable. To want to save your daughter, but not be able to— Then she froze in the black tar.
That horrible night played again through her mind’s eye, crisper now, each moment fluttering, flipping past, like the ruffle of a deck of cards.
But why?
Virginia!
This time it wasn’t a shout, but her own thought. The fluttering of images slowed. She lay again on the cold tiles of the floor, warmed only by her own blood pooled under her. Masked men carried her girls out the kitchen door, into the backyard, to a van parked behind the garage out back.
She fought to focus, to pull and hold that one card of memory before her mind’s eye, long enough to read what was written there.
Not Virginia . . . West Virginia.
She concentrated on the series of letters and numbers. She put every last iota of energy into picturing it. She squeezed everything into that one memory, trying to cast it out of her skull and into the world.
But the darkness smothered.
Focus waned.
Warmth and light beckoned.
No, not yet.
She pushed back against both the darkness and the light. She braced herself there, draining every last bit of herself, straining her very soul.
Hear me, hear me, hear me . . .
2:38 P.M.
“Lisa! Look!”
Growing hoarse from yelling into Kat’s helmet, Lisa turned to Julian’s station. She had been staring at the EEG, watching the jumping lines fade back to a flatness again.
She’s gone.
Lisa sat back and stared at Julian’s screen—then bolted upright.
Glowing vaguely on the screen, already beginning to dissolve, were a series of numbers and letters.
Designed by the author
“What are they?” Susan asked, standing, too.
Lisa knew. She had been yelling West Virginia into Kat’s helmet, over and over again. Each shout of the state’s name seemed to jolt something inside her friend, jarring the EEG with every mention.
Lisa grabbed her phone and speed-dialed Painter.
As she waited, she stared at her friend, at the flatlined EEG above the bed.
“You did it, Kat,” she whispered. “You go rest.”
Rest in peace.
3:01 P.M.
The snow fell thicker now.
The forest below the hilltop had faded into obscurity. Seichan shook and trembled. Each breath exhaled more of her heat. Harriet lay slumped in her arms. Whether asleep or passed out, she could not say. More worrisome, the child no longer shivered.
Seichan bundled the girl close, trying to offer what little warmth she had left.
But it would not be long now.
She heard the approach of the hunters. They climbed the hill. Shouts arose on the far side. Valya had sent part of her team around, closing down the hilltop. The Russian did not intend to lose her prey through further trickery. By now, Valya must know Seichan was trapped, a fox up a tree surrounded by hounds.
The Russian was likely savoring this final takedown.
Seichan lifted her pistol, intending to take away that victory.
She had two rounds left.
She looked down at Harriet.
One for each of us.
If she had a third, she might have risked waiting, taking out one of the hunters, maybe even Valya herself.
She positioned the pistol against the back of Harriet’s head. Tears had frozen on Seichan’s cheeks minutes ago. She had refrained from shooting back then—not out of hope. She simply could not pull the trigger.
She remembered reading a bedtime story to Harriet, the girl curled tight to her side, hugging a stuffed bunny.
Still, she also pictured what Valya would do to the child if she were captured.
Better to die free . . . than a tortured slave to that creature.
She firmed her grip on the pistol, shifting her frozen finger to the trigger.
She leaned forward and kissed the top of her head one final time. As she did so, she saw Harriet’s little pale hand wrapped around the silver dragon, her last Christmas gift.
Seichan’s finger tightened.