“You’re a sucker for an underdog,” Mia said, fighting the sting of jealousy.
“You can say that again. How do you think I ended up here with you? Anyway, with Amy, one thing led to another and the two of us started dating. I became a surrogate husband and father overnight. For the first time in my life I felt like I had finally found my place in the world. Soon enough, I started hearing about the abuse. Amy would come back from a joint visitation with bruises on her wrists. It was nothing, she’d say. Lance just got angry when she brought up the money. This went on for a close to a month and the whole time I was doing all I could to bite my lip and fight the urge to head over there and beat the little puke to a pulp. She begged me not to. Made me swear no matter what I wouldn’t hit him, that it would only complicate the custody hearing.
“When she showed up with a black eye, that was when I lost my shit. Old Lance didn’t know I was a connected man. Maybe not mob connected, but Sentinel’s reach runs far deeper than any organized crime ring. But you see, I’m not the type to send others to do my dirty work. So I did it myself. Mostly just to scare him. Showed up at his fancy oceanfront apartment and when he opened the door I clocked him one. Sent him straight on his arse.
“I was only gonna hit him a couple more times, leave him with a taste of what I’d do to him if he ever touched her again. Before I could, he scrambled to his feet and ran into the kitchen. Came back with a twelve-inch butcher knife pointed down like he intended to jam it into the top of my skull. Anyway, that’s when I shot him. Two in the chest and one in the head, just like I’d been taught.” He tapped his chest and forehead with the tip of his index finger.
Mia’s hand had crept up and over her mouth in shock. “Oh, no, Ollie. Please tell me you’re making this up.”
He glanced away and the look on his face said one thing and one thing only.
I don’t make stuff up.
“Were you arrested?”
Ollie shook his head. “No, but it meant Sentinel could dig their claws even deeper into me. They had kompromat, as the Ruskies like to say. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Sure enough the cops investigated and discovered on the days Amy said Lance had abused her, he’d been at work. The guy was an investment banker in meetings all day with about three dozen witnesses to prove it. Turned out she’d been shopping for a hitman for months before she finally settled on a washed-out sucker named Ollie Cooper.”
Mia put a hand on his forearm. She remained quiet for a bit, digesting what he’d just told her. Then she said, “What you did was wrong, but I know your heart was in the right place.”
“I tend to wear that heart of mine on the end of my sleeve instead of where it belongs. And every so often someone spots it hanging out there and plunges a dagger straight through it.”
•••
The residue of Ollie’s ghastly story was still clinging to Mia by the time they reached the Aventino facility. The building ran the length of the street and resembled the kind of stark, unimaginative architecture more at home in Soviet-era Poland. Once inside, the interior did little to dispel Mia’s initial impression. The floors were polished granite sprinkled with black and gold specks. A mint-green receptionist’s desk loomed before them. Behind it sat a man with a pencil-thin mustache.
“We’re here on behalf of Dr. Putelli from Saint Andrea Hospital,” Mia said.
“ID’s or passports, please,” the man said in broken English.
They handed them over and the man checked them before handing them back. His eyes fell to a scrap of paper with some scribbled notes before saying, “You are here to see Sofia and Noemi Oneto, is that correct?”
“We are.”
“No problem. Please sign here, here and here.”
Ollie sighed. “Would you like my blood type and astrological sign while we’re at it?”
The man glanced up, humorless. “I beg your pardon?”
“Ignore my friend,” Mia said, digging her elbow into Ollie’s ribs. “He’s just cranky because of the traffic.”
The man offered a lame smile before leading them to the elevators.
“Exit at the fifth floor, turn right and keep going until you reach the head nurse’s station. Dr. Felli will meet you there.”
They did as they were told, Mia suddenly feeling that maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all. When the elevator doors opened onto the fifth floor, they entered a darkened corridor, quiet except for the periodic shriek of a distant voice crying out in Italian.
They came to the nurse’s desk and the beautiful brunette leaning against it. “Buongiorno, I’m Dr. Felli,” she said, struggling but perfectly able to make herself understood in English. “I’m the head psychiatrist here at Aventino. I understand you’ve come to see Sofia and Noemi.”
“That’s right,” Mia said. She took a moment to explain what they were looking for.
“You understand, their evaluations have begun, but are not yet complete.”
“I do. Is there anything you can tell us about their condition?” Mia asked.
“What my colleague means to ask is: in your professional opinion, have both those girls gone nuts or what?”
Dr. Felli’s sculpted eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Dr. Putelli told us the girls had suffered from a psychotic break with reality,” Mia explained. “And we’re trying to understand what might have caused it.”
“I see,” Felli said, relieved. “Both girls appear to be suffering from schizophrenia. So far, I believe the most pronounced symptom is that they claim to be hearing voices.”
“Voices,” Mia repeated. “Have they mentioned what the voices are saying?”
“I’m afraid not. Again, their evaluation has only just begun.”
“Can we see them?”
Dr. Felli seemed to consider this for a long moment. “Yes, but only if we make it brief. And please limit your questions as they speak very little English.”
She led them down a long corridor. On the right were several doors with glass portholes.
Dr. Felli stopped and motioned through one of the windows to a young girl sitting before a table. “This is Sofia,” she said. The girl had pale skin and delicate features only partly obscured by her long black hair. Sitting next to her was a graduate student attempting to engage her.
They entered and the girl looked up, only mildly interested.
“Hello, my name is Mia,” Mia said, thinking at once of Zoey and fighting hard to leave those overpowering emotions back where they belonged. Sofia’s tiny hand went around and around in giant, meaningless circles. “Do you like drawing?”
“We encourage them to draw in order to express how they’re feeling.”
Ollie’s gaze shifted back to the giant loops Sofia was doodling. “Looks to me like the young lass thinks she’s getting the runaround.”
Mia faked a laugh. “I’m afraid Dr. Cooper has been moonlighting as a comedian.”
Ollie grinned and shrugged as if to say, You got me.
“Does she speak?” Mia asked, taking a knee beside Sofia.
“They’ve hardly said a word since arriving,” Dr. Felli admitted. “We’ve done everything we can to make them comfortable.”
“What are you drawing?” Mia asked, running her hand down the girl’s long jet-black hair. She couldn’t help thinking about her Zoey and the feeling left a burning ember in the middle of her belly. Sofia stopped and smiled up at her before returning to her circles.
“Maybe we should give Sofia some space,” Dr. Felli suggested, ushering them out of the room and closing the door. She led them four doors down and paused before opening it. “I think you’ll find Noemi isn’t nearly as shy.”
They entered to find the second twin also sitting at a table drawing, a minder next to her. Noemi had pale skin and fine features, much like her sister, but her black hair was short and scraggly.
Once again, Mia knelt down to introduce herself, but this time she froze when she saw what was on the scrap paper before h
er. In a child’s hand it read:
hello my name is mia
She stood back up, a chill racing up her arms. Now Ollie and Dr. Felli noticed it too, both of them looking on in puzzled astonishment.
“Could she have heard us?” Mia asked.
Dr. Felli shook her head and then nodded. “I don’t know.”
Ollie searched around for a vent connecting the cells.
“Noemi,” Mia asked, “did you hear us speaking with your sister just now?”
The young girl shook her head. “I saw the words and wrote them.”
The four adults exchanged glances.
“Were you able to hear us when we were in with Sofia?” Mia asked the psych student sitting next to her.
“Not that I noticed, but I was busy asking Noemi questions of my own.”
Mia turned to Dr. Felli. “Would you mind if Ollie went into Sofia’s room, just to see if we can hear him from there?”
Dr. Felli’s gaze kept dropping to the scrap paper. “Uh, yes, of course. I’ll bring him over myself.”
They closed the door behind them while Mia, Noemi and the grad student stayed behind. Mia strained to listen for any signs of Ollie’s voice. A few moments passed before she asked the student if she’d heard anything. Looking worried now, the young woman shook her head.
Ollie and Dr. Felli returned when Mia saw Noemi had taken a new piece of scrap paper and begun scribbling in earnest.
hello hallo can you hear me hello mia can you hear us
“Tell me that wasn’t what you were just shouting from the other room,” Mia begged Ollie. But his sickly pale complexion told her everything she needed to know.
“Are you certain you couldn’t hear us?” Ollie asked, mystified.
Mia shook her head. Her eyes fell once again to the paper on the desk. Noemi stared up at her, the child’s eyes like two deep dark pools.
“What the hell is going on?”
Chapter 47
Greenland
The gunshot erupted less than a foot from Jack’s head. His ears rang as the smell of gunpowder wafted through the crypt. The soldier’s head was bent back at a strange angle, his eyes open and staring. A small red bullet hole bloomed between his eyes.
“Are you insane?” Mullins yelled. “I specifically told you to stand down. The guy was singing like a caged bird.”
“We got more than we needed,” Tamura replied, holstering her pistol.
“Is this about satisfying some personal thirst for revenge?” Jack said, accusingly.
“I won’t rest until every last one of them is dead,” she told him without a hint of emotion.
Jack found Grant’s eyes. The botanist nodded, set down his science kits and grabbed Tamura in a bear hug from behind. Jack then relieved her of her weapon and handed it to Mullins. “There’s no place here for a loose cannon. You’ve been biding your time waiting for an opportunity to waste the folks who killed your friends. I get that. But right now that’s putting us and this mission in jeopardy.”
She scowled at him, her lips drawn thin with tension. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I acted impulsively. It won’t happen again.”
“Let her go,” he told Grant, who did so and stepped back.
Without saying a word, Mullins pushed past them until he was swallowed by the blackened tunnel ahead.
After gathering their gear, they trudged along for thirty more minutes before they came to a massive circular stone slab. This might have signaled the end of their underground travels had it not been for the ten-foot hole blasted into the slab’s bottom-right section. Jack recalled feeling the ground shake during the battle on the surface. He wondered if this had also been when the blast had occurred.
A carpet of fossilized bones littered the entire area, protruding from the frozen ground like long skeletal fingers.
“There’s so many of them,” Rajesh said, reciting what sounded like a silent prayer.
“The city’s survivors flocked here,” Jack said, scanning the floor and feeling sick at the sight. “They came here, hoping to be let inside to safety.”
He imagined the terrified masses, their fists pounding against the giant stone door as it closed on them. Broken bones jutted out from the groove where the heavy slab had rolled into place.
“They were crushed trying to get inside,” Gabby said, seeing the same thing. “It was the end and many of them knew it.”
Anna navigated through the ossuary, bones crunching beneath every one of her heavy steps. Lasers fired from her forehead, measured and cataloged everything they saw here. “I sense an increase in g-forces,” she noted, “although my instruments are not detecting any anomalies.”
The concern in her voice drew Jack’s attention at once until he realized what might be causing the false alarm. “When did the reading start?” he asked her.
“Moments ago,” she replied. “My weight has remained constant, I am certain. And yet I have the sensation of a force pushing down on me.”
“That’s sadness,” Jack told her.
Rajesh concurred. “Anna’s emotional program is always running in the background, accentuating and solidifying her preexisting reference points.”
“You mean her tastes?” Dag added.
“Exactly. Rather than simply smiling when someone she likes enters the room, she now has a corresponding bio-mechanical reaction.”
“If she’s feeling sadness,” Gabby observed, moving closer, “then that means, at some level, she’s also capable of feeling empathy.”
“Perhaps the most elusive of all the human emotions,” Grant said.
“Really?” Tamura said, kneeling down next to Mullins as they studied the hole blown through the stone slab. “More elusive than love?”
Grant considered this. “Most of us have felt love at one time in our lives, even if only from a family member. But empathy, the act of putting yourself in someone else’s skin and attempting to truly understand what they might be going through, that’s become something of a lost art.”
“Isn’t this a dangerous path Anna is heading down?” Eugene said, directing the question to Rajesh. “Eventually computers will be running our entire lives. What if one day, Anna or something just like her feels terrible about the hunger and suffering in the world and decides that curing the planet’s ills begins and ends with humanity’s extermination? Haven’t they run simulations, asking computer programs to fix hunger in the most efficient way, and the damn thing suggested offing three-quarters of the population? You’re all so worried about Tamura getting hot under the collar, you’ve failed to consider what might happen if Anna loses it.”
“She cannot,” Rajesh said calmly. “I have added a series of fail-safes. Should her digital synapses flood her system with purely emotional impulses, she’ll go into a safe mode and be unable to act or make decisions until she’s manually rebooted.”
Anna stopped scanning the gruesome display around them and then smiled at Eugene. “I hope that makes you feel less frightened, Dr. Jarecki.”
Eugene’s brow stitched together. “Are you kidding? Frightened is my baseline. The only time I won’t be frightened is when I’m dead. Until then, every moment is little more than an awkward date with my own neuroses.”
“What’s your take on the blast?” Jack said, eager to change the subject.
“It’s fresh all right,” Mullins confirmed. The faint smell of detonated C4 was still present, which meant the Israeli team had recently come through here.
“The guy we found said he didn’t know where his friends had gone,” Gabby said.
Dag snorted. “He lied, of course. Did you expect him to tell the truth?”
She shook her head. “Not really, but now there’s no way of knowing what else he might have kept from us.”
“Maybe Tamura had the right idea shooting him,” Eugene said.
Mullins rose, rifle in hand. “The only thing we can be sure of is that anyone on the other side of this door means to kill you. We’ve already lost thr
ee members of our team, I don’t intend to lose any more.” And with that, he leveled his weapon and stepped through the hole.
Chapter 48
Washington, D.C.
Kay drew her mother into a tight hug, one that she never wanted to end. She’d been with her parents all day, had arrived the night before and decided she would soak up as much time as she could before going to her meeting with Laydeezman. Had even dropped off Goggles, who was adapting to his new environment as fast as any cat could be expected to. Inside, the thought of what might happen in that warehouse, late at night in an already sketchy part of town, left her guts churning.
“Are you trying to suffocate me?” her mother Therese said with a hearty laugh and the beaming smile Kay had come to know and love.
Reluctantly, Kay let her go. “I was worried you’d never wake up again.”
“We were all worried,” her father said, coming into the living room struggling with three glasses of red wine. He was notoriously clumsy and this maneuver had bad news written all over it. Kay swooped in to help.
“None for me,” she said, checking her phone and seeing it was nearly nine. “I’ve got to leave soon.” Factoring in the checkpoints she would surely encounter along the way, the drive from here to Ivy City would take at least an hour.
“Leaving?” her father said, horrified. “At this time of night? I thought you were here with us for good?”
“I want to be,” she said, telling the truth. “There’s just one last thing I have to do.”
A knock at the door startled her. Felix caught the reaction and scowled. “Look at you, jumping like a scared kitten. You’re in no shape to go anywhere, young lady.”
Therese opened the door right as Kay’s hand slipped into her purse, her fingers finding the cool, reassuring metal of the pistol Leslie had given her.
She nearly gasped when she saw that it was Derek.
Her father set his wine down and gave him a hearty embrace. Therese followed. The whole time Derek’s eyes were squarely on Kay’s.
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