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  At first, not counting the pain, Raul had experienced no response to the wiring that had been inserted into his eye socket. It was only after several hours, when the screaming in his head had quieted, that he had observed the anomaly. He almost thought he had imagined it, that it was a by-product of the madness into which he felt himself sinking.

  It was only a shadow of movement at the edge of his vision, an alien something that dissipated as he attempted to focus on it. Then it reappeared, gradually approaching more closely, as if it gained confidence as it probed, skittering around the dark recesses of his mind, refusing to submit to direct observation.

  But it had not been until after the amputation of his legs that the dreams had started. Vivid didn’t even begin to describe them. They made no sense; they were merely a sequence of incredibly vivid shapes in colorless gray scale. Raul could feel the scenes, almost as if they were extensions of his own body. Sometimes the dreams continued after he had awakened, their weird images and feelings blending with his surrounding reality.

  Perhaps madness had already claimed him. But if that was the case, why did Dr. Stephenson seem so pleased with his progress?

  Raul pulled himself to the end of his tether, feeling the tension in his arm muscles as he lifted his torso up off the floor. They were getting stronger. At least the confining stasis field was gone. He paused for several seconds, then turned, his arms propelling him back in the other direction like a misshapen lion pacing slowly back and forth in its cage.

  Stasis field or not, Raul wasn’t going anywhere.

  27

  Freddy Hagerman kicked the chrome trashcan hard enough to send it spinning end over end, spewing its contents across the kitchen and into the living room of his East River apartment. He hadn’t wanted to kick the garbage can. He had wanted to kick the flat-panel TV set. But even with his newfound notoriety and big job with the New York Times, he couldn’t afford to be doing that.

  Shit. Now he’d have to clean up the fucking mess.

  His gaze returned to the television screen as the president continued his press conference. Freddy watched as the man worked his way through his talking points and then began taking questions. Unbelievable. After the press feeding frenzy that had engulfed the White House these three weeks, you would think the entire executive branch would be making plans for life after a failed and foreshortened presidency.

  After all, Freddy’s story had nailed their collective asses to the wall, exposing the ill-conceived and illegal testing being conducted on the alien nanotechnology. Then the botched FBI raid in Los Alamos had produced the single worst day in FBI history. Although they had managed to kill several of the rogue agents, the leader of the group and his female accomplice had disappeared. Although the FBI director had been promptly sacked, the president’s already battered image had worsened, something that didn’t break Freddy’s heart, not one little bit.

  Freddy shook his head. He should have known some shit like this was bound to happen. Everything had been going a little too perfect. Stepping over a trail of coffee grounds, Freddy picked up his cell phone and pressed five on his speed dial.

  His boss’s high voice sounded smug. “Hello, Freddy. I guess you’ve got your TV on.”

  “Yeah, Charlotte, I’m watching it.”

  “Sort of throws the conclusion from your big story into question.”

  “Not at all. I know bullshit when I smell it. This is a cover-up.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. The president’s people have cooked this whole thing up.”

  “Good luck proving it.”

  “I’ll be needing travel authorization.” Freddy ignored the editor’s annoying chuckle. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow for California. I want to take a look into that clinic in Santa Barbara. After that I’ll be heading back to Los Alamos.”

  The silence from the far end of the line lingered, but Freddy waited. He knew this power trip. First one to speak loses.

  Charlotte’s voice broke the tension. “Okay, Freddy. But I stuck my neck out giving you this job ahead of some damn fine reporters. If you don’t come up with something good, don’t bother coming back.”

  The line went dead before he could respond. The bitch.

  Stepping across the refuse trail, Freddy paused just long enough to give the garbage can one more good kick, then walked into the bedroom to pack his suitcase.

  28

  Heather awoke with a start. In the darkness that surrounded her, the room seemed vaguely unfamiliar. For several seconds she struggled to recognize where she was, her fading dreams tugging at the corners of her consciousness. This was her bedroom. The dim outline of her dresser and her small desk were separated by a yawning darkness that had to be her closet.

  There it was again—the distant buzzing in her head, vaguely familiar, although she couldn’t quite place it. The harder she thought about it, the more it retreated from her observation until it disappeared. Now there was only stillness.

  That in itself was odd. Normally there was some sound in the old house, even if she awakened in the middle of the night. Perhaps she was still asleep. Dreams of awakening had plagued her in the past, so perhaps this was one of them. Equations cascaded through her mind, resolving to a probability so close to zero that it was negligible. Something about the way the numbers made sense to her savant brain reassured her amidst the surrounding strangeness.

  As Heather thought about walking down the hallway and checking on her mom and dad, the buzzing returned, growing stronger as she focused her thoughts. Despite her growing unease, Heather followed this train of thought, letting herself visualize her parents’ bedroom, imagining them both sleeping soundly in their king-sized bed.

  The buzzing became a vibration reminiscent of when she had first tried on the alien headset in the starship, filled with a confusing blitz of sounds, imagery, and feelings, so rapid and distorted that a wave of dizziness assailed her. Then it was gone, like a cell phone dropping its signal.

  Heather waited, a slow dread that the buzzing would start up once again making her pull her covers up under her chin. Gradually, as the minutes passed with no reoccurrence, the dread and the accompanying feeling of strangeness dissipated, leaving her feeling relieved and more than a little ridiculous. Talk about overreacting. She had even considered turning on her bedroom lights to check the closet.

  Rolling onto her side, Heather curled back into her blankets, but sleep was a long while coming.

  29

  By the time Heather finished breakfast, finished picking up her room to her mom’s satisfaction, and made her way to the Smythes’, the morning was halfway gone. It really was absurd that she found herself annoyed by the delay. Her mother did so much for her on a daily basis; it was only right that Heather pitch in and help a little. But today, she just couldn’t help feeling put out.

  Mark opened the door with a look of surprise on his square face. “Well, I thought you blew us off.”

  Heather shrugged. “House cleaning.”

  “You?” Mark’s laugh only added to her annoyance.

  “Where’s Jen?”

  “Garage. She got tired of waiting. Said she wanted to make some final system checks before we take it apart and crate it.”

  Heather nodded as she headed for the kitchen and the door, which opened from there into the Smythe garage. This was the weekend when they had to have everything crated for shipment to Denver, the site of the final competition for the national high school science contest. Their cold fusion entry had breezed through the regional competition. Now it was on to the big show.

  Heather had read all the write-ups about the other finalists and their projects. From what she had seen, none of them could hold a candle to what Mark, Jennifer, and she had done. Not only did their project work spectacularly, their report was first-rate. As far as Heather was concerned, victory was in the bag. Just so long as they didn’t screw it up.

  As expected, Jennifer sat at the terminal, her fingers flying acros
s the keyboard, her face lit by the twinkle of multicolored LED light, completely oblivious to Heather’s entry into the garage. It was amazing. Jen no longer glanced at the laptop display, instead focusing her gaze upon her custom-made LED board attached to the lead side of the cold fusion tank, the colors showing the internal contents of the registers. She was thinking in hexadecimal.

  “Earth to Doc.” Mark’s loud voice brought Jennifer’s face around, a look of annoyance tightening the corners of her mouth. Despite her best efforts, Heather laughed out loud.

  “What?”

  Heather shrugged. “Jen, I’m sorry Mark interrupted you so crudely.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I’m sorry I laughed,” Heather continued. “It’s just that Mark provokes you into some pretty funny expressions.”

  Mark leaned in, a sly grin on his face. “And I’m just as sorry as Heather is.”

  Heather’s elbow caught him in the stomach before he had a chance to tighten it, producing an audible exhalation of air, a sound that finally brought a smile to Jennifer’s lips.

  “Since you’re finally here, come over and take a look at these readouts.”

  Heather walked around the equipment to stand behind Jennifer’s swivel chair. Her eyes swept the numbers that filled the spreadsheet on the laptop screen. Now here was something with which she was completely comfortable. The equipment was performing far better than would normally be expected. Between Heather’s slight modifications to the theoretical equations and Jennifer’s magical command of computers, their final touches looked complete.

  Heather straightened. “Looks great.”

  Mark raised his hands in a hallelujah salute. “Good. Let’s bag it and tag it.”

  Jennifer nodded in agreement.

  The rest of the day passed in a flurry of activity. Every piece of the apparatus had to be carefully tagged with a number and listed on diagrams before disassembly. Then, carefully packaged, the parts were placed in a set of crates. By the time a copy of the diagrams and inventory list had been placed in the last of the crates and Mark had nailed the lid closed, Heather was exhausted.

  “My God,” Heather gasped. “Are we really done?”

  “Oh, shit, we left something out.” A look of horror spread across Mark’s face.

  As Jennifer and Heather’s panicked gazes swept the room for what they had missed, a chuckle brought their heads back around.

  Mark’s grin was ear to ear. “Oh, your faces are priceless.”

  This time Mark was ready, moving aside just in time to dodge Heather’s elbow. Unfortunately, his sidestep exposed his upper arm to Jennifer’s flying fist.

  “Ow. Hey, Doc! That hurt.”

  “Serves you right.” Jennifer’s angry gaze showed no sign of softening.

  Heather clenched her teeth. “Mark, sometimes you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are. That was just mean.”

  Before Mark could respond, Jennifer stormed from the garage. Mark glanced down at his arm, raising his short sleeve to examine it. Seeing his look of amazement, Heather leaned in for a look.

  As incredible as it seemed, Jennifer’s punch was raising a deep blue bruise in the hard muscle of Mark’s neurally enhanced shoulder.

  30

  “Peaches. You okay in there, Peaches? Such a pretty bird. My Peachy, Peachy, Peachy.”

  Freddy Hagerman glared at the woman across the airplane’s central aisle as she stared into the multicolored bird-carrying travel bag on her lap. Jesus H. Christ. If the idiotic woman’s cooing wasn’t bad enough, now the damn thing was squawking. He’d been hoping to get some sleep on the flight to LA.

  Three quick presses of the call button brought the head stewardess, an aging blonde who could have passed for a storm trooper, beelining toward him.

  “Sir, one press of the button is quite enough. May I help you?”

  Just then the bird squawked again, this one an ear-splitting screech highlighted by the laughter of several people in nearby rows. Freddy stared at the stewardess, his raised eyebrows leaving no doubt as to what he regarded as the problem.

  The stewardess turned her attention to the woman. The bird woman was an older lady, probably in her mid to late sixties, her attention so focused inside the mesh of the travel cage that she had failed to notice either Freddy’s annoyance or the stewardess’s arrival.

  The stewardess leaned in closer. “Ma’am. Excuse me, but I’m going to have to ask you to put the case under the seat.”

  The look on the woman’s face could not have been more horrified if the stewardess had just told her the bird would now be served as lunch. A heated discussion ensued, only abating when it became clear that the chief stewardess, whom Freddy had begun to think of as Mein Frau, would not be cowed.

  With the bird case safely settled beneath the seat, the squawking miraculously subsided. Then Freddy discovered that, because he was in front of an exit row, his seat would not recline. For the next four hours of sleepless hell, he was forced to endure his head nodding forward hard enough to cramp his neck and a panic from bird woman as Peaches discovered how to unzip its case. This time the old lady refused to be mollified until a frantic search turned up enough tape to secure the zipper.

  LAX, perhaps the most crowded and uncomfortable airport in the continental US, had never been something Freddy looked forward to walking into, until now. By the time the plane rolled to a stop at the gate and Freddy rose to retrieve his carry-on from the overhead storage compartment, he was ready to wade through hell itself if it got him off that plane.

  Bird woman leaned down and retrieved the case from its resting place, cooing out a string of “Peachy, Peachy, Peachies” before setting it on her seat. Something in Freddy’s face must have given her the impression that he wanted to hear a detailed explanation of why she had been so concerned about the damn bird because she immediately turned toward him and began imparting a detailed breakdown of the events. As if he hadn’t been a firsthand witness.

  As her voice droned on, the bird case on the seat behind her tumbled to the floor with a small thud that sent the woman spinning in that direction, a squeal of horror issuing from her lips. “Peaches!”

  As Freddy disengaged himself to follow other passengers off the aircraft, a grin split his face. Perhaps there was a God after all.

  His newly acquired good mood failed to last. Arriving at the rental car terminal, Freddy failed to find his name on the Gold Club reservation board, something that resulted in an hour-long delay while the attendant placed repeated calls to the office, trying to locate his reservation.

  As he pulled onto Airport Boulevard, Freddy glanced at his watch. 4:30 p.m. LA traffic at rush hour. Lovely. He could only hope this trip wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.

  It was just after 11:15 p.m. when Freddy finally pulled into the Motel 6 just off El Camino Real in Santa Barbara. As he stumbled into the office to check in, his gaze fell on a sign printed with the slogan, “Welcome to the American Riviera.”

  “Yeah, right,” Freddy mumbled to himself as he dropped his bag and banged on the bell.

  One thing he had to admit; although the attendant was away from the desk, they had left the light on for him.

  31

  Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast slid down his gullet, chased by half a pot of coffee, hot, strong, and black. Freddy’s eyes swept the front page of the Santa Barbara News-Press, settling on the headline story, a follow-up to yesterday’s presidential press conference. Since the president had focused a large portion of his comments on the Rondham Institute for Medical Research, located right here in Santa Barbara, almost the entire front page had been devoted to the story.

  As much as Freddy hated to admit it, it sure looked like the entire thrust of his big Pulitzer Prize story about the out-of-control government nanite program was dead wrong. Unless he could find something wrong with the information the president had presented, he was fucked. But that was all right. Finding stuff that was wrong with something was what Fredd
y did. In the divorce papers, Dalia, his latest ex-wife, had claimed it was his sole defining trait.

  Even though he now knew it by heart, Freddy studied every detail of the story. In his press conference, the president had admitted that the second alien technology involved an injected form of medical nanotechnology. He had even admitted that a rogue scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a certain Dr. Rodriguez, had abused the national trust, conducting his own illicit nanotechnology experiments outside the secure confines of the laboratory. Although the man had enjoyed a top security clearance, the terminal brain cancer of Dr. Rodriguez’s son had caused him to try to accelerate his own research, violating all accepted scientific protocols. That illegal research had involved experimentation on the maniac who called himself Priest Williams, something that had contributed to the man’s sense of invincibility and thus to his homicidal rampage.

  As the string of presidential admissions had continued, the assembled press lay waiting, expecting anything from a presidential apology to a presidential resignation. But that hadn’t happened. In a single move that would have brought a smile to Machiavelli’s corpse, the man transformed from Commander in Chief to Caregiver in Chief.

  The Rodriguez security lapses and their associated consequences had been quite dire and had merited a detailed investigation. According to the president, the reason he had waited several weeks after Freddy’s big news story had broken to hold this press conference was to give the investigators the time they required to conduct a detailed review of every aspect of the alien nanotechnology research. That review was now complete.

  Initial experiments using the technology on animals at the Los Alamos National Laboratory had produced such impressive results that several months ago the US government had commissioned an independent study of the technology that was conducted at the Rondham Institute for Medical Research in Santa Barbara, California.