by Angela Hunt
Hamish looked from her to me, then he slipped his hands into his pockets. “I went to the office this morning. The air smelled different, and the room was unusually warm, so I checked and found a shattered window. I immediately turned to see if anything was missing. That’s when I saw the thing. It had been hiding in a corner, and when I spotted it, it flew straight at me. I ducked, then it flew out the window, and I lost track of it.”
All of us looked at each other. His description of the orb’s behavior seemed accurate, but I knew the professor would be skeptical.
“Which brings us back to why,” Brenda said, twiddling her unsmoked cigarette between her fingers. “Why would an orb be spying on you?”
“And that’s why I’m here.” Hamish folded his arms. “I’d never seen anything like that until I met the five of you. I wouldn’t know what it was if Andi hadn’t told me.”
There it was—the finger of blame, pointed squarely at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, giving him an apologetic look. “I hate that I’ve gotten you involved in all this. If you want to stop seeing me, I’ll understand. I am feeling better.”
The professor had narrowed his eyes at the beginning of Hamish’s story, but now he nodded. “All right, then. I think we can assume that whoever might be interested in us is also interested in the doctor. They’re probably conducting damage control. We know about their experimentation with the fungus, and we know that it could easily be weaponized.”
“But why?” Hamish lifted both brows. “It doesna make sense. Why would they want a weapon? Why would they kill thousands of innocent people? What’s the end game?”
I had no answer, and I didn’t think the professor did, either. Brenda gave the professor a what next? look, and Tank scratched his head.
“We don’t know what the end game is,” I said, speaking up because I felt responsible. “But we do know that the things we’ve seen do not bode well for anyone.”
Hamish tipped back his head and looked at me, then he nodded. “I guess I’ll just have to move on and forget about it . . . if I can.”
“Sorry,” I said again. “I never dreamed they’d come after you.”
“Let this be a lesson to you, lass,” he answered, his mouth curving in a half smile. “Be careful who you tell your secrets to.”
“I’ll walk you to the door,” I said. “Sorry about not being awake when you came in. I was up late last night.”
He walked with me through the doorway, then lingered outside on the tiny front porch. Aware that I was outside in my robe with no makeup, I cinched my robe tighter and folded my arms, waiting to hear whatever he wanted to say.
“Thanks for stayin’ for lunch yesterday,” he said. “My mother enjoyed meeting you.”
I looked down and smiled. “I enjoyed meeting her. It was nice to get away”—I gestured to the house behind me—“from all this. But if you want to read my journals, maybe to learn a little more about what we’ve been doing, I’d be happy to let you see them.”
He shook his head. “I never read my patients’ private thoughts. I said that wee notebook was for your eyes alone, and I meant it. But . . .” He paused and wagged a finger at me. “I might have to seriously consider turning you over to another doctor. It’s unethical, you understand, for a doctor to see a patient to whom he’s personally attracted.”
I stared as the words slowly sank in. Did he mean what I thought he meant? Was he really attracted to me? I liked him, but then again, who wouldn’t? He was handsome, charming, intelligent, and who could resist that accent?
“I’d better be goin’.” Hamish stepped off the porch and waved, then opened the door of his convertible.
“Nice car,” I called, coming down the stairs.
“A rental.” He grinned. “But I’m enjoyin’ it for as long as I’m in Florida. Might as well go back home with a tan.”
I laughed and stepped closer. The interior was what I expected to see in a new sports car—leather seats, power everything, burled wood in the dash—then I spied something so unexpected I froze. On the dashboard, sitting like a tiny little person, was a green Gumby.
I widened my eyes and pointed. “What . . . is . . . that?”
He followed my finger, then grinned. “You mean Gumby?”
“Why do you have a Gumby in your car?”
He chuckled. “’Tis my brother’s stand-in. He gave it to me when I left home. Said he wanted to come to America, but since he couldn’t, Gumby would have to stand in for him.” He tilted his head. “Does that mean something? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I drew a deep breath and felt my shoulders relax. Surely the Gumby was harmless—so why had Brenda sketched him?
“It’s cute,” I said, stepping away from the car. “But I’d better let you go. I’m sure you have work to do.”
“Nothing more interesting than talking to you,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “But seriously—call if you need to see me. You have my number.”
I nodded and backed away, then watched him pull out of the drive and head north. And as the convertible merged into traffic at the intersection, another random thought struck: how had he known where to find us? I put my grandparents’ address on the medical intake forms.
I must have given him the condo’s address while under hypnosis.
Inside the house, I discovered that Hamish Drummond’s arrival had drastically affected my friend’s moods. Tank wore a decidedly worried expression. Brenda kept grinning at me, probably delighted by the thought of observing a transatlantic fling, and the professor radiated disapproval, undoubtedly because he thought I had crossed the line between personal and professional relationships. The only one who seemed unaffected was Daniel, who sat on the floor drawing pictures while he listened for sounds of distress from his battleships.
“He’s a good doctor,” I finally said, breaking the tense silence that had reigned ever since I came through the doorway, “and a nice guy. But that’s the extent of our relationship.”
“Good thing,” Tank said. “I was wondering if he made up that orb story just to—you know.”
The professor removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand why an orb would enter his office—no logic in that. He hasn’t been in contact with the fungus. And he knows nothing about our work aside from what he’s learned from Andi. Which brings up something else—” He shifted his gaze to me. “Maybe it’s not a good idea for him to hypnotize you again. You could tell him far too much.”
Tank’s brow furrowed. “I’m not following you.”
“Andi will explain the latest developments later. But it’s not logical to have a spybot, if you want to call it that, follow someone with secondhand information if the primary source is available. If The Gate wanted to spy on us, it’d be more logical for them to have an orb follow Andi.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of the orb in the birdcage. What if the thing had been abandoned on purpose? It had been with us for days, so it had seen and heard all kinds of things . . .
“What . . . if . . .” Brenda spoke slowly, as if easing into her thoughts—“the dark powers of The Gate have somehow been drawn to the doctor through Andi? I mean, he was just one of seven billion people on the planet until Andi became his patient. But he’s a bright guy, he’s from Europe, and who knows how many people he has the potential to reach. If they wanted pets to carry the fungus to humans, why wouldn’t they want a guy from Scotland to carry it overseas?”
The professor brought his finger to his lip. “That’s a surprisingly logical thought, Barnick. If The Gate started their work with the fungus here, they might want Dr. Drummond to carry a more polished specimen to Europe. If he could be exposed through Andi—”
“But that’s not possible because the fungus is gone. I don’t have it any more.” I gave the professor a warning look. “Can we drop this discussion and get back to work?” When no one objected, I turned to Brenda. “By the way, I’ve spotted Gumby. D
r. Drummond drives with one on the dashboard of his car.”
Brenda’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish gasping for air. “You’re kidding.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Tank asked. “I don’t think we should be involving a guy who—”
“Wait. The figure in Barnick’s sketch—” The professor reached for his briefcase, then shuffled papers. “Here it is. This Gumby is twisted and mangled. Did Drummond’s look like this?”
“No. His Gumby looked like Mr. Universe compared to that one.”
“Then what you saw isn’t what Barnick saw. I must admit that it’s an improbable coincidence, but the images don’t match. So let’s move on.”
I sighed and pushed hair out of my eyes. “Moving on, then. If you could all join me in the dining room—”
“Guys?” The alarmed note in Brenda’s voice lifted the hairs on my arms. I turned to see her holding one of Daniel’s drawings. “I think you should all see this.”
Tank and the professor joined me near the sofa. In the typical style of a ten-year-old, Daniel had drawn the image of Hamish Drummond, identifiable by his black hair, dark pants, and white shirt. He stood behind a flat two-dimensional table, but behind the doctor, on the wall, Daniel had drawn three frowning shadow creatures.
The sight of them gave me the willies.
“Daniel,” Brenda asked, smiling gently. “Who are these people?”
Daniel glanced at the picture, then shrugged.
“Did you see them?”
He nodded.
“Are they, um”—Brenda struggled for the right word—“bad?”
Daniel shook his head. “No duch.”
“Are they good? Like the invisible guy who hangs out with you sometimes?”
Daniel shook his head again. “No anioł.”
“So you don’t know who they are?”
This time he lifted his head and met Brenda’s gaze straight on. “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I don’t.”
Brenda smiled. “That’s okay, kid.”
She consoled Daniel as the professor, Tank, and I tiptoed into the dining room for a quiet conference. “We know he sees supernatural beings,” I said, establishing known territory. “We know he’s seen evil manifestations—”
“And angels,” Tank interrupted. “At least, that’s what I think they are.”
“But he’s never been uncertain about what he sees . . . until now.”
The professor scratched at his stubbled chin. “Maybe they aren’t manifestations. Maybe he’s exercising artistic license.”
Tank guffawed. “He’s never done that before.”
“He’s ten,” the professor pointed out. “Every day he does something he’s never done before.”
“Maybe they’re a kind of spirit he’s never met,” I suggested. “Aren’t supernatural beings sorted into classes? After all, the angels have cherubim and seraphim and archangels . . .”
As one, we turned and studied the boy, who was drawing another picture. “If some kind of dark force is following Hamish because of me,” I whispered, “I—we—have to help him find a way to be free.”
I made my big announcement after I’d placed the orb cage in the utility room where it couldn’t listen to our conversation. I don’t know if it heard things—could it possibly have some sort of auditory mechanism?—but I didn’t want to take a chance.
The professor didn’t react to my news; he simply took another sip of his coffee and set his mug back on the table. Brenda and Tank stared at me with puzzled looks—they knew I’d stumbled onto something big, but they couldn’t quite grasp the significance. But they would soon enough.
Daniel only looked up at me, smiled, and went back to drawing his pictures.
“So,” I said, crossing my arms and settling back in my chair, “this is huge news, and it might actually help us locate The Gate.”
“How’s that?” Brenda’s frown deepened. “You’ve lost me.”
“I was lost at ‘I’ve had a breakthrough,’” Tank said, grinning. “Why don’t you start over?”
“The orb,” I said slowly, “is made of living material. You’ve seen it expand and contract—it’s actually been growing and shrinking. It has healed its injuries. You’ve seen it fly purposefully. For all I know it may be transmitting information to its creators.”
“Is that why it’s in the utility room?” Brenda said. “You think it’s a spy?”
I shrugged. “I suspect that it was told—or commanded or programmed—to watch over Dr. Mathis, which it did until Tank smashed it in the lab. Now that it’s had time to heal, it may not have a command to follow. It may be waiting. It may be looking for an opportunity to escape and go back to its programmer or whatever. Its creator.”
“You think someone created this?” The professor narrowed his eyes, but at least he had begun to consider my hypothesis. “Last night you were talking about aliens.”
“We can’t rule that out,” I said, “because as you pointed out last night, no one has ever found anything like this in nature. Maybe it’s a machine-human hybrid.”
“Whoa.” Tank held up both hands in a defensive posture. “Now you’re talkin’ Terminators One, Two, and Three.”
I blew out a breath. “Science fiction gets a lot of stuff right. But the orb”—I pointed toward the utility room—“is a living thing. So we have to treat it as such.”
“How is this supposed to help us find The Gate?” These latest developments must have shaken Brenda, because she had popped her unlit cigarette into her mouth. “Don’t tell me you want to let it go and see where it lands.”
“No—but that’s not a bad idea, if we could find a tracking device.” I lifted a brow. “I was thinking about money. If you were a secret organization and you came up with an amazing and totally unique substance like living metal, what would you do with it?”
“Sell it,” Tank said. “You’d want to make a lot of money.”
“Control it.” Brenda tapped her nails on the tabletop. “You wouldn’t want your secrets to get out. You’d guard them. Watch out for industrial espionage and that kind of thing.”
“I’d patent it,” the professor added. “If it’s an actual life form, or even a hybrid, you’d patent the process and the result.”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” I grinned at all of them. “And wow, is it ever good to be back. I feel like my brain is finally working at full power.”
“So God bless the shrink,” Brenda said. “Get back to the topic at hand.”
“Okay.” I pressed my hands to the table. “Professor, why don’t you check the US Patent Office and see if anyone has applied for a patent on living metal or some similar term. Brenda, start searching for stock tips, new companies, anything you can find about living metal. And Tank, if someone claims to have invented living metal, see if you can find any mentions of how the substance could be used. If we follow these threads, they’ll lead us to The Gate . . . or at least to one of their shell companies.”
Brenda squinted at me. “Say again?”
“Think of The Gate as the big, bulbous head of an octopus,” I said, “with long tentacles to represent the different shell companies, organizations, schools, whatever. The offshoots may carry on legitimate business, but the head controls them all. If we can find even a few names associated with one of these branch groups, we’ll have the names of people who are either part of The Gate or loosely associated with them.”
Brenda blew out a breath. “Sounds a lot easier than lookin’ through all those boxes of clippings.”
“One question—” Tank held up his hand. “Does this mean we have to watch what we say around the orb? And if that thing’s really alive, maybe we should make it more comfortable. I hate to think of it all cooped up in that rusty cage.”
“Let Andi keep it with her,” Brenda said, standing. “She’s its mother.”
They laughed and left the table, leaving me to wonder if they could possibly be right
.
By the end of the day we had made solid progress. The professor reported that no one had applied for a “living metal” patent in the United States, but Tank found a researcher who had created metal cells capable of reproduction. “Dude’s from the University of Glasgow,” Tank said, consulting a computer printout, “and he calls them iCHELLS.” He lowered the paper. “Basically, he took a lot of metal atoms and mixed them in a solution. I don’t understand all the details, but positive ions bonded with negative ions and such. He says he can design the cells to do certain things.” He slid the paper toward me. “More details in the article, if you want to read it.”
“Thanks, Tank.” I set the article aside and bit my lip. The University of Glasgow . . . Scotland. Dr. Drummond was from Scotland, too—coincidence?
“I found a company.” Brenda turned her laptop around and showed me the website, a basic design of not much more than a logo and lots of text. “Summit Biotechnologies. They’re small, but they’re ramping up. I found some stockbroker sites that were raving about a potential IPO in the next year or two.”
Tank squinched his face into a question. “What’s—”
“Initial public offering,” the professor said. “They want to sell stock on the New York Stock Exchange.”
“That’s cool.” I looked around the circle, hoping my excitement was contagious. “Tomorrow, let’s investigate Summit Biotechnologies. Maybe we should take a trip to their office and nose around to see what we can find.”
“I hope they’re in a big city,” Brenda said, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “Maybe New York or Paris. If we have to do some globe-trotting, let’s trot in nice places, okay?”
The rest of us split up and headed to our rooms. I felt tired and happy, and I knew I’d sleep like a rock. Now that Hamish had taken care of my nightmares, I was looking forward to a good sleep.
I pulled out my journal and tapped the cover, wondering if I really needed to keep writing in it. I was feeling so much better . . . but what was the harm? It felt good to write about everything that had happened, and for once I had good news to report.