Dr. Louis Dubois sat in his office staring at the computer screen, his red-veined eyes testament to the fact he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Despite the angry grip captivity had on the quarantined scientists, engineers, and technicians under his direction, their professionalism and love of their work had again produced spectacular results. First-phase analysis of Dr. Stephenson’s design had found no fault with his equations, which meant, considering the hatred the LHC team directed at the Rho Project physicist, Stephenson’s theory was correct.
True science revolved around peer review to validate a confederate’s work. The more controversial the paper, the harder other scientists and mathematicians tried to find its weaknesses. The fact that this massive collection of the world’s greatest minds couldn’t punch a hole in Dr. Stephenson’s work didn’t prove he was right, but it was good enough for Louis. And that frustrated the hell out of him.
As he stared at the engineering report, a cold sweat dripped down the back of his neck, dampening his once-dapper ponytail and staining his shirt collar. The project to build what Louis had dubbed the Rho Gate would require an effort that dwarfed the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Not in physical size. The device itself would be contained within an expansion of the ATLAS chamber. But its complexity, the power required to generate the wormhole, and the seven-month timeline for its construction—that combination truly boggled the mind. It would take a project the like of which the Earth had never known.
Louis brought up the computer-aided design diagram of the Rho Gate. The exploded CAD diagram filled screen after screen. For the LHC engineering team to have produced this level of detail for the Rho Gate in such a short time represented a monumental effort, one that should have even impressed Donald Stephenson. Of course it hadn’t, but that hardly mattered. It meant the world had a chance, slim as it might have been, at survival. It was up to Louis to put together a draft proposal to the politicians of the world’s greatest powers that would get them all on board without delay.
Popping the top on another energy drink, Dr. Dubois tilted back his head and drained it. Staring down at the tiny bottle, he grinned. Another six of these and he should be just about finished.
Gil McFarland watched as the two FBI men walked up his driveway, a mixture of hope and dread preceding them through the open front door. Gil directed the agents, clad in identical navy blue suits, white shirts, and black ties, into the living room, where Anna and the Smythes waited expectantly. The agents remained standing as Gil took a seat beside Anna, taking her trembling hand in his.
“Mr. and Mrs. Smythe and McFarland,” the agent on the left began. “I’m Special Agent Crowly, here with Special Agent McKee.”
“Have you found our kids?” The words spewed from Anna McFarland’s mouth, an accusation befitting the setting.
Agent Crowly pursed his lips, inhaled deeply, and continued. “I’m sorry to say we have. At around midnight last night, they died during a SEAL Team raid on a terrorist compound operated by Jack ‘the Ripper’ Gregory.”
The words hammered Gil in the chest, a battering ram that expelled his breath in a ragged gasp.
“No!” Linda Smythe’s agonized cry was the only other sound to break the stunned silence.
“As the Navy SEALs entered his Bolivian compound, the Ripper executed your children with a single shot to the head before detonating a booby trap that killed fourteen members of the SEAL team attempting their rescue. We’re here to express the United States government’s deepest sorrow for your loss.”
Time froze.
Gil McFarland finally broke the silence. “Wait just a minute. We call you bastards in to help our kids and now you lay this crock of shit on us? You killed them!”
Moving toward the door, Agent Crowly spoke. “I know this is hard.”
“Hard? You sorry sons of bitches!” Fred Smythe’s voice cracked with emotion.
The glass lamp left Gil’s hand before he noticed that he’d risen, and appeared to sail across the room in slow motion. As the two FBI agents ducked out, it exploded into the edge of the closing door, sending a hail of multicolored fragments chasing them into the White Rock night.
Gil took two steps forward, then stopped, his knees threatening to give way beneath him. The sound of Anna’s low wail and Linda’s sobs turned him around. There on the leather couch the two women clung together, their heads pressed into each other’s shoulders. Beside them, Fred stood staring at the door, hands clenched so firmly at his sides that the veins bulged in his arms. And as Gil watched rage and frustration chain his best friend in place, he felt his whole world crumble around him.
The dream was an old one; at least it had that old, worn-out-shoe feel to it, easy to slide into, but not particularly comfortable once you were inside. It unspooled in Heather’s drug-induced sleep, her perfect memory somehow warped and amplified until each heartbeat sounded like the pounding of a bass drum.
In the small gym was a mirrored wall. Along that wall ran a dancer’s balance rail. Across the room was a weight rack, Mark handcuffed to it.
Four brutes held her pinned to the floor, legs spread, Don Espe?osa kneeling between them, fumbling with his belt, button, and zipper, ripping open her blouse, grabbing her breasts. He was taunting Mark. A husky laugh escaped the drug lord’s lips as he turned his attention back to his pecker.
KATHOOM.
She could feel Mark’s heart hammer his chest clear across the room.
KATHOOM.
How could these men fail to hear it? Heather had seen this in her vision, the inevitable consequence of spitting in Espe?osa’s face. She’d had other options, but none quite as exciting or satisfying as this one. So she’d spit a wad between the drug lord’s eyes and let the dominoes topple one onto the next.
Then Mark was among them, crushing, ripping, tearing, their screams drowned in the bloody downpour. But Mark hadn’t killed them. Heather had. And God help her, she’d enjoyed it.
The dream shifted. Glass exploded into the comm center as Heather pressed the laptop’s gunmetal gray ENTER key, sending a rack of 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the American SEAL team. Blood and fire. Again she’d chosen the path.
Jack’s plan had called for them to divert the SEAL team, then move through the same secret tunnel he and Janet had taken, setting off the explosives that would turn the Frazier compound into an inferno, leaving little for the SEAL team to investigate. But Heather had overridden that plan, opting instead for the path of death and destruction. She’d known the risk. She’d known she’d be killing Americans.
She felt herself lifted, flung into the air, wrapped in sticky goo that ensnared her body so completely she never hit the ground. Stunned, Heather hung in the rapidly solidifying web until this drug-induced fog replaced the sharp pain of the tranq dart in her thigh.
“Doctor. She’s coming around.”
The voice wormed its way through the mist. Heather opened her eyes, blinking at the brilliant white surrounding her. She was strapped to a bed in some sort of hospital room. Check that. Her surroundings included some hospital room characteristics. An IV bag hung from a steel stand, dripping its contents into the clear plastic tube connected to the needle in her arm. A portable monitor displayed her vital signs. But there the similarities stopped. This room was soft white with padded walls and white rubber flooring.
Heather glanced at the nurse, a plain blonde woman, slightly overweight, with a white nurse’s uniform, even an old-fashioned white nurse’s hat. The doctor stepped around the nurse and into Heather’s field of view. That face, framed by dark hair, pulled back in a severe knot.
Heather’s breath caught in her throat. What the hell was Dr. Gertrude Sigmund doing here? Wherever here was.
The psychiatrist smiled down at her, that familiar, concerned smile that always preceded a prescription change to a more powerful antipsychotic drug.
“Hello, Heather. Good to see you’ve returned to us. How’re you feeling?”
Heather fought to clear her head, but the fog refused to lift. Her glance shifted to the plastic IV bag. The white tape that normally held an identifying label was blank.
“What’s that?” Heather’s words came out slightly slurred.
Once again Dr. Sigmund smiled. “Don’t worry about that right now. The important thing is that you are lucid.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re a very fortunate young lady. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor, you’re a patient in the finest facility of its type in North America. The Henderson Foundation Psychiatric Research Hospital.”
“Henderson House?” A wave of dread swirled her mental fog.
Dr. Sigmund laughed, a soft chuckle, meant to be reassuring, that failed to produce the desired effect. “That name has suffered a bit of bad press over the past few months, hasn’t it? Let me put your mind at ease. The psychiatric wing is completely separate from the experimental facility that housed Dr. Frell’s research, although it shares the same grounds. It’s sad that a man like Frell could damage this fine institution’s reputation.”
Heather closed her eyes, trying to bring the facts into focus. “Why am I here? Where are Mark and Jennifer?”
Dr. Sigmund pulled up a chair and sat down beside Heather’s bed. She reached out to pat the back of Heather’s right hand, just below the leather cuff that secured it to the stainless steel rail.
“Heather. You’ve experienced a severe psychotic episode, brought on by the fact that you stopped taking your medication. For the last several weeks, you’ve been locked deep in one of your trances. Until you were transferred here, I was beginning to think we’d lost you forever. As for your two friends, they’re still back in Los Alamos, of course, finishing out the school year. I hear Marcus is quite the basketball star.”
Lies. But how could Dr. Sigmund be involved in all of this? It didn’t make sense.
“But Mark was banned from sports. And what about Bolivia?”
“Well, as for Mark’s suspension, the local communities of Los Alamos and White Rock raised such a fuss the school board ended up rescinding the school activities ban for all three of you.”
“Prove it to me. I want to see my parents. I want to see Mark and Jen.”
Dr. Sigmund pursed her thin lips. “I’ll discuss it with your doctors, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up, at least not right away. Any little variation in your treatment could send you right back into deep psychosis and, next time, we might not get you back.”
“My doctors? Aren’t you my doctor?”
That laugh again. “Me? Thank you for thinking of me in that light, but you’re now under the care of some of the world’s finest mental health researchers. They only flew me out here so that you’d see a familiar face welcoming you back to reality. Someone to ease the stress. Now that I’ve accomplished that task, I’ll be returning to my Los Alamos practice.”
“But...”
Dr. Sigmund rose to her feet. “But nothing. You need to rest and focus on getting better. Trust me. Trust your doctors. They really are the very best.”
Dr. Sigmund paused at the door, her gaze lingering on Heather’s prone form. For a moment Heather thought she would speak again. Then the psychiatrist turned and walked out of the room.
As the door closed behind her, Heather heard the heavy electric lock snap into place.