Dr. Elbert Krause stared at the readouts on the screen before him. Mark Smythe’s readings held an otherworldly fascination for him. Never in his career had he seen anything like the self-control this young man possessed. No matter what physical stress they applied to his body, Mark remained in complete control, heart rate forty-three beats per minute, blood pressure at the low end of normal, brain activity indicative of the inner peace of a Shaolin monk.
It couldn’t just be Jack Gregory’s training. Gregory had only had these kids for a few months, not the years that would be required to achieve this kind of special control. Waterboarding had no more effect on Smythe than a Thanksgiving Day on the couch watching football. Sleep deprivation might as well not have been applied for all the effect it had on him. What was more, as Dr. Krause stared into Mark’s eyes in the video monitor, he got the distinct impression that the young stud was holding back, keeping the bulk of his capabilities in reserve.
He switched to the old Los Alamos data files. The answer lay there. It had started in Los Alamos. Nothing else made any sense.
The Smythe and McFarland families had been so close they effectively formed one extended family. All three kids had grown up together in White Rock, best friends long before starting grade school, next-door neighbors, by all accounts inseparable. But something had happened to them in the last two years. Mark Smythe had blossomed into a superstar athlete, while Jennifer Smythe and Heather McFarland had improved on already impressive academic careers.
A number of other oddities jumped out at him. Heather had been kidnapped twice, saved by Jack Gregory once, and had subsequently begun displaying schizophrenic symptoms. The three had produced an amazing entry in a national science competition. Dr. Krause had read their paper and been stunned by just how good it was, despite how they’d failed to credit one of their sources.
Apparently Jack Gregory had sensed just how special these young people were and had somehow enticed them to run away to join him. The question that kept hammering on the back of Dr. Krause’s skull was, how had they gotten so special? It must have had something to do with the Rho Project, but why wouldn’t Dr. Stephenson have known about them if that were true? Of course, a number of Rho Project–related things had spun out of Stephenson’s control. Maybe this was one of them.
Rising from his chair, Dr. Krause rubbed his lower back with his right hand, turned, and walked toward the coffeepot. Filling his ceramic mug with the steaming black liquid, he held the cup up to his nose and inhaled. Ahh. Freshly ground Wolfgang Puck coffee beans, an expensive indulgence, but one he didn’t mind shelling out for. Taking a slow sip, he smiled. Now this was true love.
Dr. Krause stiffened. Of course. It had been right there in front of him all along. Not in Mark Smythe’s files, but in Heather McFarland’s psychiatric records. Dr. Sigmund had noted that, as close as were Heather and Jennifer, Heather’s feelings for Mark were stronger.
And it had been Mark and Heather who had gone after Jennifer when she disappeared. They were a couple.
Dr. Krause picked up the telephone and punched in a five-digit extension. Hearing the response on the other end, he began issuing instructions. It would take some fancy video work in the green room, but Sam Halvert could handle that.
Setting the phone back in its cradle, Dr. Krause turned his attention back to the video monitor. If Mark Smythe was in love with Heather McFarland, they’d know it as soon as the video was ready.
Mark had been handcuffed to a chain belt around his waist and led from his cell down a series of nearly identical hallways to a room that could have been an upper-middle-class media room. The projection screen built into the far wall was twelve feet wide and eight feet tall, and currently showed a test pattern from the ceiling-mounted overhead projector. The seats were standard theater seats arranged in multilevel tiers, four rows of four seats with a tiered walkway down the left side. Jennifer would have approved of this arrangement. A perfect hexadecimal ten.
As one of the guards shoved Mark roughly into the front center seat, he noted one significant difference in this media room. Each seat was equipped with a pair of short silver chains. As soon as he sat down, the guard snapped one of the chains to each of his handcuffs, securing him to his seat. The arrangement didn’t give him much confidence in the entertainment value of whatever movie they were about to show him.
Besides his two guards, the only other person in his room was Dr. Krause, the blond Nazi bastard in charge of his interrogation. Krause made a point of sitting down in the chair immediately to Mark’s right, while the burly guard who had chained him settled in on his left. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark could see the other guard stationed at the exit, fifteen feet up the walkway to his left.
Apparently the price of admission didn’t include popcorn. Oh well. In these handcuffs, it would’ve been a challenge getting it out of the box and to his mouth anyway. The vision of his fingers clawing out puffy white, butter-dripping kernels and flicking them up to his mouth almost brought a smile to Mark’s lips. It’d probably been a good idea not to provide it. He was pretty sure he could flick a kernel hard enough to transform one of Dr. Krause’s blue eyes into a dripping wad of slime.
Dr. Krause leaned toward him, a tight little grin warping his beak. “You ever seen a prison gang rape, Mark?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just asking if you’ve ever seen what the animals do when they slip the leash.”
“I’ve seen some animals try it.”
“And?”
“They didn’t have as much fun as they thought.”
Krause’s smile widened, transforming his face into a good approximation of the Joker’s. “Now that’s what I like about you, Mark, your optimistic attitude. But in this case, I’m really the only one in a position to deliver on a threat, which makes yours nothing but hot air.”
Krause signaled to the guard on Mark’s left and the man leaned over to fasten a wireless heart-rate monitor to Mark’s wrist and two more sticky Wi-Fi electrodes to his temples. Finished with that, he slipped back into his seat and leaned back, a move Dr. Krause echoed.
The test pattern was replaced with a video feed from Heather’s padded cell. Mark caught his breath as he saw her in a hospital gown, hands and legs strapped to her bed, her milky white eyes seeming to stare right through him. Feeling his heart rate begin to spike, Mark pulled forward the memory of one of his meditations. It worked, but he could feel something building inside him, something hammering to get past his mental blockade.
“I believe you know Ms. McFarland.”
Mark said nothing.
“As you can see, she’s been somewhat traumatized. I’m afraid that in her fragile state, another severe shock could push her over the edge into a permanent catatonic state.”
Mark almost laughed in his face. Heather had them completely fooled into thinking she was psychotic, showing them exactly what they expected.
Dr. Krause picked up an Android phone, pressed an app button, then spoke three words. “Bring them in.”
The electronic lock on Heather’s door clicked open and three big, tattooed white guys shuffled into the room, coupled together on a chain, escorted by four guards, two of which covered their movements with a pair of MK-5s.
Dr. Krause held the phone in front of Mark. “You’re probably wondering why I get to have a phone inside a secure facility. It’s a toy that stays on the inside, a push-to-talk Voice over IP app, riding on our secure Wi-Fi network.”
“Couldn’t care less.”
“Unless you agree to start fully cooperating, in ten seconds I’m going to push this button and tell the guards to take off the chains and lock three of the meanest serial rapists in our federal prison system inside that cell with Heather McFarland. Lucky you. You’ve got a front-row seat.”
Mark looked at the screen and knew that Heather could handle those three Aryan Brotherhood assholes with no more effort than it took him to shave. But that would wreck everything. That would alert the NSA to the fact that the girls were a major threat. He couldn’t allow that. Not now.
Deep within Mark’s mind, a spiderweb of cracks spread across the tranquil meditative scene, rapidly widening into fissures through which the blackness poured.
“Ten...”
Mark felt the vibrations pulse through the muscles in his arms, up into his shoulders, and across his back.
“Nine...”
He inhaled deeply through his nostrils.
“Eight...seven...”
Let it out slowly through his mouth.
“Six...five...”
The chains binding his wrists came apart with such force that multiple chain links splattered outward, shattering the wall projection screen like the impact of forty-five-caliber slugs. As his right hand grabbed Dr. Krause’s throat, his left leg rocketed out, caving in the chest of the guard to his left, sending the body flipping head over heels into the far wall.
The guard by the exit moved instinctively, bringing up the Tazer even as Mark hurtled up the steps toward him. The guard was fast. Really fast. And with anyone else his quickness would have been enough.
Mark felt the electrical jolt take him in the center of the chest, the involuntary muscular shock freezing him in place for the merest fraction of a second. Then his enhanced neuromuscular system shunted the effects aside and he swept inevitably onward, his left fist caving in the side of the guard’s head as he reached the top of the steps, Dr. Krause still clutched in his right hand’s powerful grip.
Seeing that the electrically controlled door was sliding closed, Mark hurled Krause’s dying body into the gap, paused to grab his phone, then plunged through the door. Without a moment’s hesitation, he raced down the hallways along which they had brought him to the theater room. He remembered a janitor’s closet off to the right two corridors down. Reaching it, Mark threw his whole strength into the door, ripping it from its hinges.
Stepping inside, Mark concentrated on the phone, his fingers flying across the keypad. With a sigh of relief, he verified that Jennifer’s worm had infected the phone’s Android operating system. That meant someone had powered up at least one of their laptops, releasing the worm into every computing system in this facility as well as all those within the specified search radius. Typing in a series of quick commands, Mark crushed the phone in his palm and hurled it against the far wall, sending fragments showering out across the corridor.
Then, leaning his head back against the wall, he relaxed, resuming his previously disturbed meditation. He was ready. Let them come.