But then the room filled with the last sound any of them expected. It was the most plaintive, mournful, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking sobbing they had ever heard. They looked down, incredulously, to within the wrought-iron cross-hatching where the naked, angelic girl was curled into a fetal position, crying like a lost child.
* * * *
“Shit.”
Morty Daniels said it like it was a three-syllable word from where he lay in the intensive care unit of the clinic. They were all in there—in, or on, separate beds. The Chinese doctor Lancaster had on call—an amazing woman who insisted they call her Helen—had marveled at the equipment on hand, tended to Rahal, and was waiting in the cafeteria.
Now Rahal was testing each of them thoroughly, whether the child had broken their skin or not. And, given what they had just experienced, they all sat still for it. But several of them would swear that they could hear Key’s brain whirring. Lancaster apparently had a better muffler.
The anesthetized child was in the quarantine unit—“wrapped up and strapped down,” as Daniels put it. Lancaster had the Q.U. built to exacting specifications—ones he had personally double-checked, given the reputation of certain Chinese construction engineers.
“Don’t worry,” he had assured Key. “The bad ones are executed.”
“The bad ones who are caught are executed,” Key had reminded him. Even he knew about the train bridges and elevated highways that had collapsed from rampant under-bidding, inferior materials, and bribery in the recent construction boom.
But the Cerberus Q.U. was designed to contain everything from germs to any other prehistoric predators they might encounter. Key couldn’t help feeling that this child might be a bit of both. “Shit indeed,” he echoed Daniels. “What’s the protocol?” he asked Lancaster.
Rahal answered. “I’ll be checking your vitals every hour. Dr. Helen will be checking mine.”
“How long?” Daniels asked, unable to keep a slight whine out of his voice.
“As long as I can,” she told him. “As long as you’ll let me.”
“As long as necessary,” Lancaster informed him with no uncertainty. Daniels nodded with equal certainty, and not even a hint of pouting.
“What should we be looking for?” Nichols asked, unable to keep a slight fear and doubt out of her voice.
“To paraphrase you,” Key responded, “you’ll know it when you see it. Or, in this case, feel it. Anything out of the ordinary, but especially visions, hallucinations, even unusual dreams. Nothing is too small to mention. Do not, whatever you do, try to slough it off, downplay it, or tough it out.”
“Who, me?” Daniels challenged with a grin.
“Especially you,” Key replied.
Lancaster sat up, realized what he was about to blurt, then slowly leaned back. “Elaborate,” he suggested carefully.
“As soon as I got near the child,” Key informed him, “it was as if the cement wall I had made to cover my emotions started to crack.” He looked over at Rahal, who was taking Gonzales’s vitals. “I’m thinking you felt it too, didn’t you?”
Rahal stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“The way I was acting.”
“Oh,” she said, seemingly distracted by trying to read Gonzales’s blood pressure. “Yes.” She sought the right words before continuing. “You were uncharacteristically intense, even repetitive. You usually choose your words more carefully and only make your point once.”
Key nodded. “I was agitated, unfocused, even confused. For absolutely no reason that I could see, the child’s proximity had”—now he searched for the right word—“it had unnerved me.”
“Could it have been the situation?” Lancaster asked. “Just that, nothing more?” It was clear that he didn’t want his team leader to be vulnerable.
“Joe has spent a lifetime separating what goes on inside his head from what’s going on outside his head,” Daniels contended flatly. “This guy could win a chess game in a carpet bombing.”
Key nodded in appreciation of the compliment. “I’ve told you,” he said to Lancaster, then glanced at the rest. “I’ve told you all, the mental is not separate from the physical. If the body can be attacked, so can the mind.”
Daniels smiled grimly at Nichols. “Like I told you, it’s all a muscle, baby, the whole human shootin’ match.”
“So that’s what we’re dealing with here?” Gonzales asked.
“That’s what we may be dealing with here,” Key countered. “But it’s more important than ever to keep reading your own mind, and keep it wide open until we’re more certain.” He sat up on the diagnostic bed. “You got the accessories I asked for now?” he asked Gonzales.
Gonzales sucked in his breath. “Just in time,” he answered. “I was preparing to bring them over when the alarm sounded.” He nodded at Safar, who brought a case over to the center bed, laid it on the padding, and opened it.
Inside were fourteen fingerless gloves, seven dickies, and seven bike shorts. The gloves reached up to mid-forearm, the dickey down to below the sternum, the bike short to the knee, and all were made of a lighter gray, nearly copper material. They were obviously designed to cover the human body’s major arteries.
“Under armor?” Daniels suggested.
“Righter than you may know,” Key commented, stepping over to the other side of the bed.
“Glad you added the ‘may,’” Daniels muttered while twisting over for a closer look.
“Batal hazar,” Rahal said under her breath as she joined the others.
Key purposely didn’t look at her with narrowed eyes, but his self-control had no effect on Safar, who did. He knew she had said the Arabic phrase that could be translated as “stop joking, you have got to be kidding me.”
“It’s the truth. Not a single photo of the man in Sujanpur was in focus,” he said quietly, and directly, to her. “Not one.” She did not react to, or look at, him, but her expression shifted as if she were thinking they had all lost their reason.
Lancaster picked up on the undercurrent. “You will all wear these from now on, twenty-four-seven. No exceptions, no excuses.”
“They’re made from a special material,” Gonzales assured them. “Slim, pliant, and comfortable as silk but hard as steel.”
“Made by the same company who created Cali-brake,” Lancaster informed them, referring to the revolutionary bulletproof material their uniforms were made of—which was one of the many patents Lancaster had rescued from repression by corporations more interested in status quo than progress.
“Even in the shower?” Daniels inquired disingenuously.
“Even in the shower,” Gonzales said proudly. “Wash and wear. They dry even faster than skin. And, believe it or not, they make Cali-brake’s wicking capabilities even more effective.”
Daniels grinned. “Better living through science,” he commented while reaching for the biggest size—the ones obviously made for him.
“I only wish that were true,” Rahal said worriedly, stepping back.
Key looked over to her, but said nothing. Lancaster knew that was his responsibility. “Elaborate,” he said knowingly.
“That girl in there is the victim,” Rahal announced with certainty. “She may be infected with whatever the man who stole her was infected with. There are cases on record of sleeping sicknesses that were mistaken