Our tour guide praised the monks for their “sacrifice of holiness,” but I wondered how anyone who purposely cut himself off from the opportunity of ever serving someone else could be considered holy. Charlene, calling on her university classes in religion, had asked our guide how the actions of these monks squared with Basil’s words in his Rule, the guidebook for monks since the fourth century: “Whose feet therefore will you wash if you live alone?” Our guide had simply told us somewhat cryptically that there were different kinds of service and different levels of sacrifice.
It’d struck me then, and in the doctor’s office now, it strikes me again that in medieval times the holiest men chose to live in solitary confinement, but today we consider that to be one of the worst punishments imaginable and reserve it for only the most heinous of our criminals. We sentence our greatest sinners to the life the Church’s saints used to freely choose.
Dr. Tanbyrn spreads a sheaf of papers across his already cluttered desk and looks up at us. “Let’s just be honest with each other, now. You’re not here for the program, are you?”
I feel a stone sink into my gut. “Excuse me?”
His gaze shifts from me to Charlene, then back to me. “Kindly tell me what you’re really here at the center for.”
Glenn finished chaining the far exit door shut.
Strode toward the door to the stairwell to take care of that as well.
I stare at Tanbyrn, taken aback, unsure how to respond.
Option one: try to keep up the charade that Charlene and I are lovers and simply entered this project to be a part of the study in the emerging field of consciousness research and the entanglement of love.
Option two: be honest with him, lay my cards on the table, and see where that might lead.
Obviously he knows you’re here under false pretenses. He knows or he wouldn’t have said anything.
I wonder if it’s possible that the test results he ran have something to do with his conclusion about why we’re here. Could they have given something away? As extraordinary as that seems, it’s possible.
Tell him the truth.
Get some answers.
“Truthfully, Dr. Tanbyrn, you’re right. When we applied for the program, we did have a different agenda in mind than simply participating in your research.”
Charlene gives me a look of surprise.
“And that was?”
“Debunking it.”
A pause. “I see.”
“But how did you know? How did you—”
“Philip told me about the blood he cleaned up from the floor. When I accidentally grabbed Jennie’s arm — is that even your real name? Jennie Reynolds?”
“Charlene Antioch,” she tells him.
“And I’m Jevin Banks,” I add.
“I see.” He takes a long breath. Intertwines his fingers. “Yes, well, after I grabbed your arm, Charlene — and I am quite sorry about that — I noted the amount of bleeding, and since no one had checked in with our staff nurse last night or this morning, it got me to thinking. I looked up the address you provided on your application forms and found that it doesn’t exist. It did not require a great deal of deduction to conclude that you were likely the one in the Faraday cage last night, the one bleeding on the floor.”
This is it. This is where he asks us to leave, tells us that we shouldn’t be here. I’m about to speak, to try to finesse whatever information I can from him, but he leans forward. “However, two questions remain: why were you bleeding on the way out of the building and not on the way in, and who left the blood going in the other direction?”
“We weren’t the only ones here,” Charlene tells him. “A man attacked us with a knife; Jevin was able to wound him before he left.”
The doctor looks more than a little concerned. “Attacked you with a knife?”
She nods.
I cut in, “We think he was trying to find something on the computer in the room with the Faraday cage. Is there anything in your files or on that particular computer that’s sensitive? Something an intruder might be interested in?” I think back to last night, add one more question. “Perhaps someone from a pharmaceutical company?”
“RixoTray?”
“Or a competitor. Yes.”
Tanbyrn is quiet.
Charlene gestures toward her injured arm. “The man might have hurt me much worse if my arm hadn’t been in the way when he swiped that blade at my abdomen. Thankfully, Jevin knew what he was doing and stopped him. The man threatened to kill us both if we didn’t tell him who’d sent us.”
“And who did send you?”
“EFN,” I tell him. “Entertainment Film Network.”
“Entertainment Film Network.”
“I have a television show.”
“Oh. I see.”
Guessing that the information Fionna found out for us earlier is the key here, I go on quickly: “The computer files the man in the room last night was looking for, I think they have something to do with the military, a suicide bombing attempt earlier this week in Kabul.”
He stares at me. “Who did you say you are again?”
I decide to go with the truth and launch into telling him everything he needs to know.
Interruption
Glenn chained the stairwell door shut, snapped the lock closed.
Walked to the elevator.
Disabling one is remarkably easy.
You simply insert something into the base while the doors are open in order to keep them from closing. As long as they don’t close, the elevator won’t leave that floor.
Glenn reached into his pack and pulled out a hammer, pressed the up button, and waited for the doors to open.
When they did, he jammed the handle of the hammer into the opening between the floor and the shaft, then pounded it down with his heel, making sure it was so tightly forced in that it wouldn’t come out without something like a crowbar to pry it loose.
He took care of the remaining stairwell but left the exterior exit door closest to the doctor’s office alone for the time being so that after he’d started the fire he would have a way out of the building.
The other rooms on this level were small meeting rooms. No other offices. No other people.
The floor was sealed off.
Glenn returned to the reception area, removed the magazines from the end table, then carefully and quietly tilted it beneath the doorknob to the doctor’s office. He wedged it securely in place so that there would be no opening that door from the inside.
When you’re lighting a fire in a building that you’re trying to bring down, you need to direct the flames to where they’ll spread the quickest. Typically, that means starting the fire on the building’s lowest level in a corner where there’s plenty of combustible material, where the walls and ceiling reflect both the heat and the movement of the combustible gases even while channeling the flames upward.
Which was precisely what he was about to do.
There were six chairs in the lobby outside the doctor’s office. The plastic coating along with the latex foam and the gasoline would form a fast-growing fire with plenty of smoke. By using two piles of chairs, Glenn was confident the reception area would be fully involved within minutes.
He began to stack the chairs, making sure that one pile was directly beneath the vent that fed air into the doctor’s office.
The more I tell Dr. Tanbyrn about my history of researching psychic claims, the less pleased he looks that Charlene and I are here. I finish by admitting that our test results matched the ones he’d been finding, the ones he’d published in the literature. “I’m no longer trying to debunk anything you’re doing. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on here.”