“Messed you up? If it weren’t for me, you’d still be working on your ABCs.”
“You made me a f-f-freak.”
“No system’s perfect, but we’re getting there.”
Malenko did not seem the least bit intimidated by Zakarian or their weapons. He looked over Rachel’s shoulder.
Zakarian shouted to the other man behind the computer terminal. “Over here and hands high.”
Rachel looked at the child beside Dylan. “But you’re killing them.”
“Not technically,” Malenko said. “Just a little … simplified.” Then he smiled, showing that row of white teeth and sugary pink gums. “The universe loves a balance.”
“You monster.”
“Monster? But you hired me, Mrs. Whitman. What does that make you? Or all the other good earnest parents who want their supertots. Should I be crucified because I’ve raised the dead?”
“We didn’t know.”
“And now you do.”
Why was he confessing all this with a police officer here and the guns on him? They had to get Dylan out of here. “Take that thing off his head now!”
Malenko looked at her without expression for a moment. “Ahh,” he sighed. “About time.”
A voice behind them: “Freeze!”
Behind them stood a woman holding a pistol, which she moved between Rachel and Zakarian. Martin raised his hands, Brendan was frozen in place. The woman she had seen earlier at the camp. With little Daniel and Tanya, the girl in the room.
“You too, asshole!” A man’s voice. Coming up from behind the woman was the guard they had encountered outside. He too had a pistol. The woman had freed him. He and the other man were closing in on Rachel and Zakarian.
“Is there a safety on this?” she said under her breath.
Zakarian looked. “It’s off.”
“Drop them,” the guard shouted.
“Get them out of here,” Malenko bellowed. “Immediately. Outside, and get rid of them.”
In a flash, Zakarian spun around and dropped to his knees and fired. The huge explosion reverberated in the closed structure. Rachel fell to the ground. When she looked, the woman was on the floor half in and half out of the swinging doors, the front of her blasted in red.
The guard shouted something to the other man, and fired his pistol. People scattered everywhere as the shots rang out.
But all Rachel could think was that a stray bullet would hit Dylan and the other boy. She held her breath and took aim with both hands as she had seen in movies …
Just squeeze
… and she did. The explosion instantly jolted her backward. But the guard was hit, because he fell backward against some equipment. His left sleeve had been torn away and was turning red.
The next instant erupted into frenzied and deafening commotion. The guard began firing with his good hand. The operating-team kids were hollering and scattering for cover. From behind computer terminals, the other man had scrambled over for the dead woman’s pistol. On his knees with the shotgun, Zakarian shot at the man, who collapsed to his knees, bleeding in the hand and side. The air filled with sulfurous smoke, and Rachel was nearly deaf from the gunfire. Her only thought was Dylan and the other child on the operating tables.
But the guard was up with his gun taking aim. Rachel took one look and squeezed off another shot.
The explosion rocked the room again, and when she opened her eyes, the guard was on the floor clutching his leg. And Zakarian was upon him.
With Martin scrambling on the floor, Rachel dashed to the operating tables. Neither of the children had been hit by the gunfire.
Dylan was still breathing through the respirator, his vital functions pulsing on the monitor overhead. His skull had been marked with black ink, long evil-looking metal probes poised for insertion into his head, calibrated brain scans on the screen above. All she could think was: God, what have we done to you?
She flashed the gun at a female in a mask cowering behind the surgical table. She still wore her mask and cap. There was a bandage on one of her thumbs. “Take that off his head.”
The girl stood up. A tall girl.
From behind her, Brendan suddenly snapped off her mask. “Nicole!”
That girl. Rachel knew that girl. At Bloomfield. The girl in the psych lab.
“You asshole! You just wouldn’t let go, would you?” Nicole said to Brendan. “Now you ruined everything.”
She lunged toward him, but Rachel whacked her in the chest with her left arm. She raised the pistol to Nicole’s face. “Take that off him or I’ll fucking kill you.”
Nicole regarded the fury in Rachel’s face and the gun trained at a spot between her eyes, and she began to unfasten the screws.
On the floor the other kids were huddled together. Rachel flashed the pistol at them. “Help her. NOW!”
They shot up and began to remove the head frame apparatus from Dylan while Martin started to disconnect the IVs.
“NO!” Brendan shouted.
Before Rachel could turn, Nicole had grabbed a scalpel and lunged for her. By reflex, Rachel threw herself between Nicole and Dylan to block her aim. But in the scurry, she dropped the pistol to stop Nicole’s hand, which came down, catching Rachel across the forearm.
To keep Nicole from Dylan, Rachel pushed the gurney out of her reach with her back, blood spurting from the gash. But Dylan had not been touched.
As Rachel got her balance again, Nicole raised the blade again and brought it down on Martin’s neck.
Rachel let out a scream as he fell to his knees.
The next moment passed in a flurried haze. Brendan grabbed Nicole from behind and flung her across the room to where Officer Zakarian was cuffing the other two men. Then he dashed toward the rear, snatching the shotgun off the floor behind the officer, and ran out the door.
Malenko was nowhere in sight. But that did not register on Rachel. Only the fact that Dylan was safe and that Martin lay in a pool of blood.
Brendan ran down the corridor, checking all the rooms as he did. Only the children he had seen before. No Malenko.
His head was a wild cacophony of voices—a continuous tape of scraps that kept pulsing with the rhythm of his feet pounding the floor.
He raced upstairs and ran through the house. He was halfway up to the second floor when he heard the sound of an engine outside.
He dashed back down and out the front door.
The dock.
He bounded down the path half-expecting to see Malenko cutting across the lake in the boat. Instead, the floatplane pulled away from its mooring, its props driving it into the black open water, the red and yellow safety lights blinking on the wings, a small cabin light illuminating Malenko’s white hair. The plane made a U-turn in the water to the left to take off toward the southeast and over the ocean.
“No!” Brendan shouted.
The engines revved as the plane picked up speed in the distance.
Brendan dropped to his knees and braced himself against a mooring pole with the shotgun. As the plane lifted off the water maybe a hundred feet ahead of him, he squeezed off a shot just ahead of the plane’s exterior lights, pumped another shell into the chamber and fired a second.
He barely registered the recoil.
For a moment, he had no idea if the shots would even reach at this distance, or merely pepper the fuselage.
But at about thirty feet off the water the nose of the plane suddenly lit up in flames, as one of the engines streamed fuel back over the windshield. The engines roared in protest as they tried to gain altitude. The plane made a tipsy roll to the right and headed back toward the dock. As it came closer, Brendan could see the interior of the cabin awash in flames, and the figure of Malenko frantically flailing his arms. From fuel spraying through the shattered windshield, his head was on fire.