Rita was lifted onto something soft, flat on her back …
… and then she was on something that was moving, gazing upward as brightly lit ceiling tiles slid smoothly by …
… still moving then, but the tiles had been replaced by darkness, and a cold wind, and drops of water splattering her face, and she smelled rain, heard it falling as …
… she woke up.
God, but I’m getting tired of waking up today.
She realized she was propped up against a concrete wall, her legs lying on a concrete floor. The room was dry, but the sound of pouring water was everywhere. Every muscle in her body, every part of her, ached.
Her nose itched. She tried to scratch it …
… but she couldn’t move her hands, which felt like they were tied behind her back with some sort of plastic straps. Tight, but not too tight, and not all that uncomfortable.
There was a man with straight, medium-length dark hair sitting cross-legged on the floor a short distance away. He looked to be a man of mixed ethnicity (Asian? Hispanic, maybe?) and intense dark eyes.
He was staring at her.
Situational awareness, lovely Rita.
SEBASTIAN
Her first question was the most predictable one.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Sebastian. I work for Mr. Finney.”
“Sebastian.” She licked her lips. “Sebastian.” Her mouth seemed to be taking his name for a test drive. “Is that your first name, or your last?”
“Just call me Sebastian.”
“Okay. Sebastian. What have you done to me?”
“Which parts do you want to know about?”
She considered that. “My ear. And Finney talking to me through it.”
He gave her this: She was one tough lady. Calm, cool, collected. He knew combat-hardened soldiers who’d be blubbering like babies by now, crying for their mothers. But what she wanted was answers. Sebastian had already decided, before she woke, that she deserved them. No harm in telling her. It wouldn’t make any difference.
“Implants. Placed through your ear. Millions of microscopic machines, the size of small proteins, composed primarily of biodegradable compounds. Injected into your tympanic membrane.”
“My eardrum.”
“Correct. The particles implanted into your vestibulocochlear nerve. They’re like a radio receiver: In response to energy waves beamed to your ear, the particles vibrate. Or give off electrical pulses. Or cause the release of neurotransmitters. Or all of those. I’m not sure. The physiology and biochemistry are way above my pay grade. Anyway. The nerve transmits the signals to your brain, which interprets them as speech. Finney was, literally, talking directly into your brain.”
“Why did he stop?”
“The particles in your ear stopped responding to his transmissions.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They do that, sometimes.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No.”
“How do I know?”
“You don’t. But there’s no reason for me to lie.”
She went quiet for a while.
“Did those—things, have anything to do with … in the operating room today, when I … when the scalpel—”
“Yes.”
“How did he make me do—”
“Does it really matter, Doc? The point is that he did. He used the particles. Used them against you.” Sebastian tapped his forehead with his finger. “Used them against your mind. Got into your head. Tricked you into stabbing that woman.”
She nodded, then examined her surroundings, as if it were the first time it had occurred to her to do so. “Where am I?”
“The construction area next to Turner. In one of the new operating rooms.” He paused before adding, “Don’t bother to scream. The only reason I didn’t gag you is that no one can possibly hear us.” The din from the rain, and from the heavy runoff as it rushed loudly through gutters and down the sides of the building, made his point.
“Or see us,” he said. They were in a semicompleted operating room, one of the ones he’d visited with the tour group, the inside of which was impossible to see from the outside. To be safe, Sebastian had also inactivated the lights in selected areas of the building, betting that no one would come until the storm blew over.
Wu looked down at the ground and nodded.
So calm.
She’d looked calm in the second-floor stairwell, too, when he’d shot her with the conduction gun.
He’d gotten lucky.
Again.
Fortune favors fools, Sebastian.
That’s what Alfonso would have said.
He’d stumbled upon her getting out of her car, near the exit of the garage, and shadowed her to Mrs. Sanchez’s room, watching as the Sanchez girl had unloaded on her before he’d followed her back down the stairs.
Afterward, it had been easy enough to get her here. He’d placed her on a gurney, drawn a sheet up to her chin to make her look like a patient, and wheeled her away. The storm had chased away almost everyone. Except for the patients, the minimally staffed night crew, and the odd family member, the hospital was empty.
He pointed to her chest. “Those dog tags around your neck. Whose are they?”
She looked at him quizzically. “My father’s.”