The neurologist spoke without looking over. “There are three critical questions from here. Is the patient truly awake in there? Will she be able to hear us? And can she respond with enough vigor for the machine to register?”
Monk swallowed, praying all three answers were yes.
Or I put Kat in jeopardy for no reason.
Grant pointed to one of the techs. “Let’s see if our patient can hear us.”
The tech leaned to a stick microphone. It broadcast to a set of hollow ceramic headphones. They had been designed specifically so the neurologist could communicate with a minimally conscious patient, both muffling the racket of the MRI and amplifying any commands.
“Captain Bryant,” the tech said briskly but clearly, “we need you to imagine playing a fierce game of tennis. Visualize it as strongly as you can.”
The tech glanced to Dr. Grant, who leaned closer to his monitor as a new cross-section of Kat’s brain filled the screen. To Monk, it looked no different than before.
The neurologist frowned. “We’ll give her a minute and keep trying.” He reached and circled one section on the screen. “This is her premotor cortex, where a brain plans and programs voluntary motions. Before you raise an arm or take a step, your brain lights up this section of the frontal lobes. Even thinking about moving activates this region, flooding it with fresh blood.”
Lisa explained: “So if Kat can hear us and thinks about playing tennis, this section should light up.”
“But it’s not,” Monk said.
“Give her a little time.” Grant waved to the tech. “Let’s try again.”
The same trial was repeated—with no better outcome.
“Again,” the neurologist said.
Still, no response.
Grant’s frown deepened; Lisa matched his defeated expression.
The neurologist leaned back from the screen and rubbed his mouth. “Sorry. I don’t think—”
“Let me try.”
Monk shouldered the tech aside and took the man’s seat. He brought his lips to the microphone. He knew Kat had never played tennis in her life, so maybe something else would work better, something closer to her heart.
“Kat, if you can hear me—which you’d better, babe—then I want you to remember all the times you’ve had to chase Penelope after a bath. That screaming banshee of a child, running bare-assed through the house, while you’re trying to scoop her up with a towel.”
He kept talking, while the MRI’s thumping reverberated his rib cage.
C’mon, Kat, you can do this.
9:22 A.M.
Trapped in darkness, Kat both cried and laughed.
She had been lolling in a fog bank, slipping into and out of awareness, when crisp words sliced through her hazy perception. She had tried to follow the instructions of some bodiless voice, some stranger. She did her best to pretend to swing a tennis racket, to dive for an errant ball, but it felt fake even to her.
Then Monk’s voice filled her skull, booming, teasing, urgent, demanding, pained, but clearly full of his boundless love. He gave her the strength to do what he asked of her.
How could I not?
Bathing their two girls had become a nightly water-soaked ritual. Monk would stay by Harriet in the tub, leaving Kat to chase after Penelope. It was aggravating, but she could never scold that pure carefree laughter. She didn’t know how much longer Penny would stay that way, but Kat didn’t want it to ever end, for her girl to grow up, to lose that cheerful and blithe spirit.
So, she pictured that nightly race: damp footprints down the hall, Penny’s wet hair flying behind her, a trail of giggles. She would give chase—half-feigned, half in earnest—a skilled Sigma operative struggling to capture a soaked gazelle.
I remember . . . I’ll always remember.
9:23 A.M.
Monk looked up when the nurse rushed to a wall intercom inside the MRI chamber. His heart clenched, fearing the worst.
“Dr. Grant,” the nurse said. “I don’t know if this is significant, but the patient appears to be crying.”
Kat . . .
“It’s definitely significant,” the neurologist said and pointed to the display.
As the latest image filled the screen, a section of the gray-colored frontal lobes now ran with a fiery tracery of crimson, a bright flower of promise and hope.
“She heard you.” Lisa clutched his arm. “She’s there.”
Monk had to take several sharp breaths, relieved beyond measure, trying not to lose it. “What now?”
Grant grinned. “We ask her questions. For yes, she thinks of your daughter’s bath. For no, she tries to think of nothing.”
“That last’ll be hard for her,” Monk warned.
When did Kat ever stop thinking, plotting, planning?
They set about this mission, urging Kat to settle her mind, clearing the slate for what was to come. Monk then asked questions, while Grant monitored her response.
Monk’s first query was something more important than anything. “Kat, I love you. You know that, right?”
After a pause, Grant reported, “Seems like she does.”
Not knowing how much time he had, Monk went directly to the heart of the matter. “Kat, the girls and Seichan are missing. Did you know that?”
Kat: Yes.
Monk stared into the next room, studying Kat’s body, her motionless form still draped in tubes and lines. He pictured her trapped inside there, imagined her staring back at him.
“Do you know anything that could be helpful in finding them?”
Monk held his breath. There was a longer lag than before.
Then Kat: Yes.
He sighed with relief, struggling to think what to ask next, sensing time was running out. “Do you know who raided the house? Who took them?”
The next scan was dark.
Meaning no.
He sagged, disappointed, but Grant lifted a finger, urging patience.
Then the image refreshed, showing a bright bloom on the screen.
Yes!
Monk leaned to the microphone. “You’re doing great, Kat. Keep it up. Is the culprit or group someone I would know?”
Again, there was a disturbingly long response time. He pictured Kat calling up from a well that was growing ever deeper.
Finally: Yes.
Monk wiped sweat from his brow, worried, growing frustrated by the slowness of this interrogation method. And he was right to be anxious.
One of the techs leaned over to Dr. Grant and had him examine a sagittal view on his monitor. The neurologist swore and stood up.
“What’s wrong?” Monk asked.
“The contusion on her brainstem has grown again.” He pointed to a dark shadow on the tech’s screen. “Significantly this time. We need to get her hemorrhaging under control.”
“What do we do?”
“Get her upstairs. Consult with a surgeon.”
Monk stared into the room. For any chance for the girls, they needed to know what Kat knew. “Can we do anything else? Some bandage to buy us more time.”
Grant looked into the next room, his face grim. “I suppose we can try nitroprusside, an antihypertensive, attempt to get her systolic pressure below 140. But we dare let it go no lower than that.” His frown deepened. “Still, that’ll only buy us minutes at best. If the bleeding continues, we risk a massive seizure or stroke.”
Monk studied Kat’s slack body. “She would want us to take that risk. I know she would.”
The neurologist stared hard at him. “Are you sure you want to take that risk?”
He wasn’t, but he nodded.
With the course settled, Grant passed on the order to the nurse.
As the stabilizing treatment was started, Lisa stepped over to the neurologist and took his arm. “Julian, I know you were reluctant before, but time here is pressed, and as you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Grant looked over at Monk, then back to Lisa. He lowered his voice. “The DNN
is still experimental. You know that. There are still lots of kinks to work out.”
“What are you talking about?” Monk asked.
Lisa turned to him. “It’s why I wanted Kat brought here to begin with. Julian has been testing a method for drawing images out of a patient’s brain.”
“What? Like mind reading?” Monk asked, incredulous.
“More like mind skimming,” the neurologist corrected. “And it was not my design, but a method developed by Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute.”
“I don’t care who takes credit. What are you talking about?”
“The Japanese team trained a deep neural net computer to analyze hundreds of thousands of MRI scans of test subjects, people who were intently studying photos. The DNN program noted which areas of their brains lit up, and over time and repetition, it mapped the visual processing centers, detecting common patterns. It was soon able to decode and make educated guesses as to what the subjects were looking at, producing accurate interpretations over eighty percent of the time.”
Lisa stepped over to a glowing bank of servers in the room’s corner and a dark monitor next to it. “Julian joined the research project, to clinically test it as a means to visualize what a comatose patient might be seeing.”
“Again, let me stress,” Dr. Grant added, “it’s far from foolproof.”
Monk glanced over to Kat, sensing what was locked in her skull. If there was any chance of freeing that knowledge before . . . before . . .
He turned and looked hard at the neurologist. “Do it.”
9:38 A.M.
Kat woke again into darkness, oblivious of how much time had passed. Her memory was full of holes, her awareness motheaten and frayed. A headache throbbed deep inside her skull, worse than any migraine.
She knew what this portended.
I must be getting worse.
Anxiety spiked the pain higher.
She forced herself to calm, drawing upon meditative techniques taught to her by Seichan. The pair sometimes went to Rock Creek Park and practiced tai chi. The series of movements were originally developed for self-defense but now served as a means to help center a mind and body through its graceful postures, a form of meditation in motion.
She mentally pictured herself going through those moves and found herself sinking into a meditative space.
Then Monk was there, in her ear, in her head. “Honey, we don’t have much time.”
She heard the urgency in his voice and understood the implication.
I am getting worse.
This confirmation of her fears should have panicked her, but she remained calm.
“Babe, I need you to picture who attacked you, who took the girls and Seichan. I mean really concentrate, every detail.”
Reminded of the attacker, the fragile peace inside her shattered. Pain washed through her, darkening her world’s edges to the density of a black hole.
She used the fury inside her to focus, knowing one certainty.
She pictured the girls.
Time isn’t just running out for me.
9:40 A.M.
“Her blood pressure is rising,” the nurse in the next room warned.
With his heart hammering in his chest, Monk leaned closer to the microphone. He stared over to Lisa and Dr. Grant. Both were huddled over a monitor wired to the stack of servers. Monk studied the green glowing lights, picturing the deep neural net program analyzing Kat’s MRI scans.
“Anything?” Monk asked.
Lisa turned with a grimace. The screen only showed a staticky flurry of pixels.
The neurologist’s face shone with sweat. “This isn’t going to work.”
Monk’s voice edged with threat. “It’s gotta.”
“You don’t understand. This program . . .” Grant waved to the glowing bank of servers. “It’s still crude. It can’t render anything even close to a photographic representation. At least, not yet. For now, all it can do is pick out the simplest shapes from a subject’s mind.”
Lisa stepped over to Monk. “You’re asking Kat to picture something too complex, too detailed. Instead, ask her for some symbolic representation of what she’s trying to communicate. Something iconic and simple.”
“Like emojis,” one of the techs offered, who looked barely out of his teens.
But Monk understood and returned his lips to the microphone. “Kat, forget trying to picture a face. Just think about some simple symbol that could point us in the right direction.” He glanced over to the tech. “Like an emoji or something.”
The young man gave him a thumbs-up.
Monk sat back as Lisa returned to Grant.
The neurologist stiffened. “Something’s coming through.”
The swirl of pixels had coalesced into a shape in the screen’s center.
Courtesy of Shutterstock
Monk rolled his chair closer for a better look. It didn’t help much. “Just looks like a smear. A skid mark.”
“Try to get her to focus harder,” Grant urged.
Monk pushed back to the console and leaned to the microphone. “Babe, you’re doing great, but we need you to concentrate as hard as you can. You’ve got this.”
He kept his eyes on the screen. Lisa stood to the side, so he could watch.
The pixels squeezed more tightly, details forming.
Grant nodded vigorously. “My god, I’ve not seen such details before. The program must be learning, improving.”
Lisa smiled. “Or maybe it’s the patient.”
Monk agreed. When it comes to fierce concentration, no one held a candle to Kat.
The image grew even more intricate, easy enough to figure out.
Courtesy of Shutterstock
9:45 A.M.
Kat fought to hold the image steady in her mind’s eye. It was difficult with her head throbbing. By now, fiery agony etched every crevice in her skull. It felt like she had been focusing for hours.
At the back of her mind, she also remembered the strike team’s leader, the one who had loomed over her in the kitchen, a dagger in hand. It was a weapon known to her, one unusual enough for her to identify who held it.
C’mon, Monk . . .
Then his voice returned. “Kat, if you’re trying to show us a knife or dagger, we got it, babe. Good job.”
She inwardly collapsed.
Thank god.
She didn’t have any idea how Monk and the doctors had accomplished this miracle—to see what was in her head—but she was grateful it had worked.
Now, Monk, figure it out.
9:47 A.M.
Monk watched the image on the screen dissolve away, swirling back to chaos, as if confirming they had received the correct message.
Lisa turned to Monk. “Does that picture mean anything to you? She said you knew who attacked them.”
He shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“Maybe it’s just the first emoji in a string,” the tech suggested.
Monk shrugged and tried again. “Kat, I don’t know what you’re getting at. Could you clarify? Send another pic. Something that could narrow things down.”
They all stared at the kaleidoscope of pixels.
You can do this, Kat.
Again, an image slowly formed, vague and indistinct. It looked like sand flowing from above and spilling into a pool on the floor.
Designed by the author
“Keep concentrating,” Monk pressed her. “We’re getting something but can’t quite make it out.”
The nurse waved an arm, drawing attention. She pointed to Kat’s leg, which had started to tremble.
“She’s seizing again,” Grant said. “This is over.”
No . . . not when we’re this close.
Monk pulled the stick microphone to his lips. “Kat, you’re outta time. Focus like you never did before. Focus with everything you got, babe.”
Despite Kat’s condition, everyone in the control room concentrated on the screen. The pixels fused into a crisper
image, not as finely detailed as before, more like a crayon drawing, but good enough.
Designed by the author
“It’s a witch’s hat,” Monk realized.
The image swirled away, whisking into a blur.
But its demise wasn’t a confirmation this time.
Out in the other room, Kat’s body arched off the bed of the gantry, the seizure powerful enough to surge through her brainstem lesion, circumventing her paralytic condition for the moment.
Her limbs shook violently, ripping out her IV line.
The nurse threw her body over Kat. “We’re losing her!”
Grant rushed from the control room to go to her aid, but Monk stood with his back stiff, tears flowing down his cheeks.
Rest now, babe. You did it.
He pictured the dagger and the witch’s hat.
I know who took our girls.
10
December 25, 9:48 A.M. EST
Location Unknown
“Hush, everything’s fine,” Seichan told the girls.
It wasn’t, but they didn’t need to know that. Sitting on a tiny cot, she gently wiped twin trails of dirt from the youngest’s nose. Five-year-old Harriet had just thrown up her oatmeal into the steel toilet in the dank corner of the basement. Penelope leaned against Seichan’s other side. Older by a year, Penny looked like she might follow her sister’s example at any moment.
Seichan had been there when the two had first woken up from their drug-induced slumbers. She did her best to console them in the strange surroundings, to reassure them. But she wasn’t their mother.
Even now, Harriet stared dully at the room’s empty, unmade bed. It was like she knew, too, for whom it had been intended.
Kat.
The auburn-haired girl had not said a word since waking up. No questions, not even any tears. She simply took it all in, looking as analytical as her mother. She wore green footie pajamas with an embroidered representation of a wide black belt. It had come with a peaked elf hat, but ever the more serious of the two girls, she had refused to don it back home, showing her distaste at such frivolities by throwing it on the floor.
When their breakfast had arrived—hot oatmeal with cinnamon and apple preserves—she had simply eaten it, following her sister’s more exuberant example.
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