“What happened during the second scan, Dancer?” Raiff asked him.
“The machine went crazy, I mean flat-out nuts. Sparks were flying in all directions, things popping and crackling. How does that jibe with your theory, Dr. Donati?”
“Well, not being a medical doctor, I couldn’t say for sure. I’d start from the fact that no such occurrence marked your first scan and that tells me something may have changed before the second one.”
“The leakage?” Alex barely managed to ask, as if afraid of the answer.
“More likely related to the effect exposure to such a powerful magnetic field had on the chip itself. It could be that the chip, being an organic entity, was simply defending itself against what it perceived to be a threat. That’s something of a stretch, but then so is everything else we’re facing here,” Donati finished, turning his gaze on Raiff as if to make his point. “And this leakage the first CT scan detected does not bode well for any number of reasons.”
“Like?” Sam asked, when Alex couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“I’m an astrobiologist and a physicist, not, as I just said, an MD—or a witch doctor. But the first thing I’d say is that the chip you’re carrying in your head may be killing you. And the second thing I’d say is that the degradation of the chip, as represented by the leakage, could mean it can no longer fulfill the purpose for which it was implanted inside you.”
Alex looked toward Raiff. “You didn’t know anything about this chip?”
“Not until tonight, no.”
“And what’s your thinking now that you do?”
“That the intent was always to drain the information off it.”
“How, exactly?”
“Either through some kind of interface or…”
“Or what?” Alex prodded.
“Surgical excision,” Sam said, when Raiff hesitated.
“You mean open my head to get it out?” Alex exclaimed, his voice growing angry. “No way that’s happening, no way!”
“It may be your only chance to live if the leakage worsens, even in the slightest,” Donati interjected. “You’re carrying a foreign body around in your head that, organic or not, is spewing something that might ultimately be toxic. Radioactive, perhaps, or worse.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not an MD, Doctor,” Alex told him. “Because you’ve got a lousy bedside manner.”
“How about ‘radiation or something just as bad’?”
Alex shook his head and turned back to Raiff. “You’re supposed to be my Guardian. So what’s the playbook say for this?”
“To save your world, I’d have to find a way to transfer the information the chip is carrying. To save you, I’d have to find a way to get it out of your head.”
“But you can’t do both,” said Sam.
“I don’t know,” Raiff admitted. “With the technology available here, in this world, I just don’t know.”
“The devil’s alternative,” muttered Donati.
“In other words,” Alex said, face starting to tighten into a scowl before going utterly flat, “I’m totally screwed.”
“No,” Sam insisted stridently, when the others didn’t respond, “you’re not.”
“Huh?”
“Remember when you told me you never let the first tackler bring you down?”
“Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“This is the first tackler.”
“No, the first tackler took down my parents, my mom and dad.”
Sam’s eyes searched his, as if they were alone, nothing and no one else mattering. “You said they might still be alive.”
“That’s what the ash man told me. I think he wanted to make a deal, maybe bring me to them if I stopped being a pain in his ass.”
Sam looked toward Raiff and Donati now. “Is it possible? Could they still be alive?”
“Alex just described a second encounter with an astral projection from millions of light-years away,” Donati noted. “I’d say that suggests we shouldn’t discount or dismiss anything whatsoever out of hand.”
“How’s your head feel now, Alex?” Raiff asked, sounding more like a parent.
“Not so bad.” Alex frowned. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“One other thing,” Donati said suddenly, “if there’s some kind of invasion planned, if this enslavement is about to commence, they’ll have to open another wormhole, won’t they?”
Raiff nodded. “One way or another, yes.”
“Because, thanks to Dixon here, I think I know where they’re going to open it. I could be wrong, but—”
And that’s when the first explosions rocked the tour boat.
99
A SINKING SHIP
THE FIRST BLAST ROCKED the boat, left it teetering in the water. The second blast sent it listing heavily toward starboard, en route to toppling over.
Raiff had moved from his seat instinctively to protect Dancer, but the boy had already moved to grab Samantha just before she hit the floor, cushioning the blow enough to avoid any injury.