René felt the Need stirring inside him, awakening to the possibility of a meal.
“Ready?” Dr. Franklin asked.
René swept an arm magnanimously. “After you.”
Following the convoy of unconscious bodies down the hall, Dr. Franklin snapped on one latex glove and then the other.
21
In Trouble
A buzzing pulled Evan from sleep.
Was it in his body? The sheets? No — under the mattress, vibrating him through the fabric. The princess and the epileptic pea. Groggily, he lifted his ten-ton head from the pillow, trying to regain his bearings.
The buzzing came again.
The RoamZone? It couldn’t be.
He rolled off the bed, his knees striking the floor, hands digging the phone out from its hiding place between mattress and box spring.
Sure enough, light leaked through the shattered façade. The caller’s number flickered, carved up by dozens of hairline fractures. The TALK icon at the bottom floated in the sole section of unbroken glass. He held his breath, thumbed the icon.
He held the phone to his ear.
It took him a moment to recall the script, to remember the words he was supposed to say when he picked up. He forced them out through the drug-induced grogginess. “Do you need my help?”
“Yes.” The voice of a boy, high-pitched and scared.
Evan knew he was clear of the hidden camera, but he turned his back anyway, leaning against the bed. He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, blinked hard around them.
“Where did you get this number?” Evan asked.
“A girl gave it to me. She said you help people and stuff.” The boy was whispering. He sounded somewhere around ten years old.
“What’s her name?”
“Anna something.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Dark hair. Patchy, like it’s falling out in places.” The whisper grew more hoarse, more urgent. The boy’s words were distorted ever so slightly. A speech impediment? “Look, can you help me or not?”
“I can.”
“I don’t know how much time I have till they catch me. I stole the cordless. I’m under the couch. I’m not supposed to make calls.”
“What’s your name?”
A hesitation. “I can’t … I can’t tell you. I’ll get in trouble.”
The kid’s quick breaths were audible even over the crackle of static.
“If they catch me with the phone, it’ll be bad.”
Evan listened to the kid’s articulation. Not a lisp. He closed his eyes, his brain still gummy from the sleeping gas. It took a moment, but he put it together. “Someone beat you up.”
“So what?” the kid said, his words blurry across a swollen lip. “I get beat up all the time. Please come. Please help me.”
“Where are you?”
“You should see how they keep us here. Like cattle, all lined up.”
“Where are you?” Evan asked again.
“Are you coming to get me?”
Evan looked around, the dead-bolted door, the caged balcony, the gas-breathing vent. He took stock. First: Escape. Second: Rescue Alison Siegler. Third: Help the kid.
“Soon,” Evan said.
“Then I don’t … Then I can’t risk saying yet.”
“Who else is there?”
“Other boys.”
“Where are you from?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Do you have a family? Parents?”
“I don’t … I don’t know. It’s been so long.”
“How long have they kept you?” Evan asked. “How old were you when you were taken?”
“Oh, shit. I can’t — they’re coming. I’ll try ’n’ call back. Will you help me? Will you?”
“Yes. I will get to you.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
The broken phone cut out. Evan stared down at the shattered shards held together loosely in the cracked casing of the RoamZone.
He shoved the phone back into its hiding place and crawled into bed. He imagined Alison Siegler, locked in her container aboard a ship halfway around the globe. Did she have enough food? Enough air? He thought about a little boy also waiting for his help, his words blurred over a swollen mouth: You should see how they keep us here.
Evan’s blinks grew heavier.
Two dogs, ten guards, one sniper, Dex, and counting.
He’d have to kill a lot more of them tomorrow.
22
Divine Right
Propped on a brace of pillows on a regally upholstered gurney, René drew in a deep lungful of air as the needle sank beneath his flesh. This was his favorite moment, when the fix first flowed into his body and set the world quivering with potency. Everything turned vibrant, the colors saturated even down here in the bowels of the chalet. Every sensation felt enhanced — the oxygen in his lungs, the hum of adrenaline hurtling through his veins, the creamy sheets caressing his bare skin.
The rush hit his arteries, a surge that rocketed him to his feet. The catheter in his arm couldn’t slow him. He seized the IV pole and dragged it beside him, one stubborn wheel giving off a squeak.
His finest bequeathment, an AB blood type, served him exquisitely. Having both key antigens and neither constraining antibody made him a universal recipient. Anyone could give to him. Few could receive from him. He was a taker. He hadn’t merely resigned himself to this fact; he embraced it as divine right.
Sure of foot, his back ramrod-straight and unaching, he threaded through the youthful bodies lying prone and unconscious on their gurneys. Through the dim light, he moved erect and proud, an ageless sovereign lording over his minions.
All was right in the Great Chain of Being.
He swore he could already feel the pyrotechnics exploding through him. His aging tissue rejuvenating. Tired muscles mending. New neural connections sprouting in his hippocampus. His heart, his brain, even his cartilage reviving. His memory fortifying. Liver cells generating. He felt swollen with vitality, with youth, with timelessness.
Even his sense of smell grew more keen. This was no trick of the mind. From across the basement lab, he picked up a trace of dewy perfume on the slender neck of David’s girl.
Kendall was an AB type, too, unlucky dove. She would receive from him tonight, and that would cost her. Each of the guests had to be replenished, and there was no use wasting valuable O neg from the freezer when she could take what had to be drawn out of René to make room for the new.
From time immemorial man had searched for the fountain of youth. From Herodotus’s recitations to Ponce de León’s hapless wanderings, it had cast a mythological shadow across the ages. Silver chalices and bubbling springs.
Who would have thought it had been right in front of everyone all along?
Someone just required the audacity to take it.
If you considered it, really considered it, this was a move befitting a Cassaroy. Rather than forging through enemy fire to claim some godforsaken battle-torn hill, René had fought his way through social mores and human limitations to stake his flag in the virgin terrain of an age-old fantasy.
Passing among his unsuspecting acolytes now, he brushed against dangling bags of blood, as bright and cheerful as Christmas decorations.
That was when he heard a groan behind him. He halted. Turned. There was movement in the bed where there was supposed to be none.
And then Joshua sat up.
The kid was not supposed to come to for another few hours. Dr. Franklin rarely got the dosing wrong, but the bigger the fellow, the more unpredictable the anesthesia. All that mass, it seemed, gave the boy the tolerance of a water buffalo.