“George,” she said, “focus.” She buttoned the pants and reached for her shirt. “You know, I just figured out what bugged me about all those exes.”
“What was that?”
“Well, it’s just…” Danielle stopped buttoning and flapped the edges of her shirt. “They were all wearing fatigues, right?”
“That is standard for military personnel under these conditions,” said Stealth.
“Yeah, that’s my point. Did you find it kind of creepy that every single one of them is wearing an Army uniform?”
“They probably dressed them like that,” said St. George. “Y’know, to make them look…well, uniform.”
Danielle adjusted her collar. “Are you sure?”
“Sure of what?”
“That they got dressed like that after they were bitten?”
* * *
Barry woke up with a splitting headache. Which, he supposed, was better than waking up with his face in a plate of scrambled eggs. And they’d been crap powdered eggs, now that he thought about it. He’d just been so excited about the bacon he hadn’t noticed.
Definitely better than not waking up at all.
Wherever he was, the curved ceiling was concrete with steel plates. Some fluorescent lights glared down at him from recessed sockets. One had a flickering tube.
He sat up and shook the last bit of blurriness from his eyes. He was on a simple wooden cot with a passable mattress and fresh white sheets. Military corners, he noticed. He was still wearing the pants and t-shirt they’d given him outside. There was no sign of the coat. Or the wheelchair.
“Bastards,” he muttered.
He let his mind settle, focused, and reached the trigger with no problem. He held off using it for now. Good enough to know he could reach it if he needed it.
The room was a huge dome, over a hundred feet across and a little over half that high. It was all concrete. In front of him was a long window, curved to match the wall. The room on the other side was dark. Way off to his left was a massive door that looked like a bank vault. The wrong side of a bank vault.
It was familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
He grabbed his legs and swung them off the cot. Getting off the flimsy bed was a challenge, but he managed to do it without tipping it or himself onto the floor. He paused for a quick breather and looked around again.
Part of the concrete, a large circle around the cot, was fresh and clean. The other stuff was older. He saw a few clusters of rust-colored spots where bolts had been cut off and ground flat against the floor. There’d been something here in the center that had been taken out, and new concrete poured to make a flat floor.
Just as he realized where he was, the lights flickered on in the other room.
“Oh, sure,” he called out. “Wait until I’m down on the floor. Real classy.”
Three men and a woman walked into the room from a door he couldn’t see. The first man and the woman were in Army uniforms. He couldn’t make out any ranks or names from where he sat. He didn’t recognize either of them.
The third man was Sorensen, followed by Smith.
Sorensen issued a few orders Barry couldn’t hear, then leaned forward to a microphone. “Good evening, Mister Burke,” he said. His tinny voice echoed out of speakers hidden around the window. “I hope you slept well.”
There was a long pause and Barry realized the doctor was waiting for an answer. “Great,” he said. “Like a baby.”
“Wonderful. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Doctor Emil Sorensen. We met at breakfast. I believe you already know Agent Smith from Homeland Security. I want to assure you you’re somewhere safe.”
“Well, thank God for that,” said Barry. “Last thing I remember some nutcase had drugged my food.”
“I apologize for that. The duty sergeant thought a taser would be better, but I was afraid a surge of electricity in your nervous system would trigger the change.”
“Yeah, and we wouldn’t want that.”
“Precisely,” said the older man with a nod.
“I was being ironic.”
“Actually, you were being facetious,” said Sorensen. “But I was ignoring it, regardless. May I ask you a few questions?”
“This is an old reactor, isn’t it?” said Barry. “You’ve got me locked up in the core chamber.”
The doctor nodded. “One of the many projects the Armed Forces was working on. It was a breeder reactor, built beneath the proving ground to keep it isolated in case something went wrong. There’s no danger of radiation. The core never even reached the testing stage.”
“Radiation isn’t a big worry for me,” said Barry. “It was an accidental overdose of gamma radiation that altered my body chemistry and caused this startling metamorphosis to occur.”
“Really?” Sorensen picked up a clipboard. “Not the rubber band thing you mentioned earlier?”
Barry sighed.
Smith put his hand over the microphone and leaned forward to speak in the doctor’s ear. There was a brief pantomime between them. The government man stepped back and Sorensen glowered through the window. “Must you always speak with so many pop culture references?”
“I must, yes, but no one’s making pop culture any more so I’m starting to feel dated. I haven’t seen a new movie in two years. And you know what else I just realized?”
The doctor stared at him.
“I’m never going to find out what the hell was going on with LOST . I mean, was it just sheer coincidence their plane crashed on the island or was it this Jacob guy pulling the strings all along? And how did most of them end up back in the 1970s with the Dharma people?”
“Mister Burke,” said Smith, stepping forward again. With the tinny effect of the intercom, his young voice sounded like a cartoon. “I know this is frustrating for you. Probably a bit scary, too. I’m sorry we had to do it this way, but if you work with us I think you’ll find we all want the same things here.”
Barry pursed his lips and nodded. “Can I be honest with you, John?”
“Of course, Mister Burke. Can I call you Barry?”
“Please do. The thing is, John, Danielle thought sex with you was mediocre at best. She told me so herself right after you showed up.”
Smith’s smile became a tight line. He put his hand over the microphone again. The few words Barry could lip-read made him smile.
“Well,” said Sorensen once Smith had stepped away. “Perhaps it would be better if we just went to the questions.”
“You mean the interrogation?”
“Are you the same Barry Burke who worked at the Pulsed Power Program in New Mexico from July 2002 to January of 2008?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“How did you get your abilities? Was it a deliberate process or an accident?”
“I’m afraid that’s need-to-know information.”
“Well,” said Sorensen, “I need to know so I can—”
“Pass. Next question.”
“Stop acting so childish, Mr. Burke.”
“Or what? You’ll drug my dinner, too? Pardon me if I don’t feel like playing your little game.” Barry looked at Smith. The younger man was rubbing his temples.
“Madelyn loves games,” said the doctor.
“What?”
He was looking past Barry at the back wall of the reactor core. “My daughter, Madelyn. She’s very competitive. Loves games. My wife, Eva, thinks it’s amazing we get along so well, even though we’re so different.”
Barry looked at the older man. Sorensen’s face had gone slack, a body on autopilot. “Where are they now? Your wife and daughter. Are they here at Krypton?”
“I brought them out here to save them. I’m always trying to protect her, even when her mother tells me not to. I keep doing things to keep her safe.”
Smith put his hand over the microphone again. The two of them talked and Sorensen’s face became solid again. He leaned into the microphone and glared at Barry. “I would appreciate it,” said the doctor, “if you left my personal life out of this.”