“And he picks me? Great.”
“Guess that makes you special.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Diaz was enjoying Gamble’s disgust way too much. He grinned as he added, “Since Miss Keyes disappeared, Abe Pickering has been feeding the cat. With Pickering in the hospital, Mr. and Mrs. Flores and the Tuckers have been putting out food for him.”
Jake wound his way through Gamble’s legs and yowled.
Gamble nudged Jake with his toe. “Scat!”
Jake arched his back and stretched up Gamble’s left leg, using his claws for purchase.
“Ow! Get off of me!” Gamble shook his leg and Jake, with his tail high in the air, pranced away. Gamble swore under his breath. “That is one ugly cat.”
Diaz grinned. “You done playing footsie with the kitty now?”
“Shut up. What about this so-called military action?”
“The way Mrs. Calderón tells it, around 9 p.m. on the twenty-ninth of last month, several military-like vehicles, lights off, drove into the cul-de-sac, followed by two trucks with banks of spotlights. A group of soldiers and plainclothes people, guns drawn, stormed Miss Keyes’ house and broke down the side door. A last vehicle rolled in and a uniformed woman—ostensibly the boss—got out. When her people came up empty for Miss Keyes, the boss ordered her team to question the other cul-de-sac residents. They went around to the neighbors and grilled them for about an hour before they packed up and left.”
“Sounds implausible. Fabricated or highly embellished by this Calderón woman.”
Diaz laughed outright this time. “Yeah, when she first told me about it, I thought to myself, ‘Here’s the local fruitcake.’ Then I revisited the other neighbors, the Flores and Tuckers. Mr. and Mrs. Flores were out of town at the time the incident supposedly took place, but the Tuckers were not.”
“And?”
“And they watched the whole thing from their front porch. Confirmed every detail.”
“Interesting.” Gamble turned in a circle, scanning the area again. “Uniforms?”
“Yeah, but Mrs. Calderón doesn’t know Army from Air Force. She didn’t recall any patches or insignias on the soldiers, though. Just that everything was black—black uniforms, flak jackets, helmets, guns.”
“No identifying patches? I don’t like it. That fact in itself is troubling.”
“Yeah. The rest of the personnel wore standard street clothes. Like I said, curiouser and curiouser.”
“You thinking Homeland?”
“Maybe, but no markings on the uniforms? And I wonder why no one heard anything about it. No notice to other LEOs, no reports in the news. Total silence.”
Diaz shifted his feet. “And one more thing. Late that night, the same tactical team stormed Gemma Keyes’ house a second time. The noise woke Mrs. Calderón, and she watched from her window.”
“Did they find Miss Keyes?”
“Not that Mrs. Calderón saw. The team came, tore through the house, pulled a few things from it, and handed them over to the boss lady.”
“You pull Miss Keyes’ sheet?”
“Yes. Nada. Not a thing. She held a Q clearance as a subcontractor to Sandia until she was let go last spring, and she doesn’t have so much as a traffic ticket.”
“Well, what would Homeland want with this Gemma Keyes?”
“You got me, but her connection with Abe Pickering and Reverend Cruz—and tangentially with Mateo Martinez and Arnaldo Soto—is interesting, don’t you think? Oh, and during the interviews earlier the evening of the raid, Mrs. Calderón spoke personally with the boss lady—the woman in charge of the raid. Told her Miss Keyes had been behaving oddly for about two months—that she was living in the house, but no one had laid eyes on her for a while.”
Gamble was distracted, still hung up on the “military” aspect of the raid. “I dunno. We’re supposed to be notified if Homeland takes action in our jurisdictions. The whole thing is too weird sounding. Doesn’t smell right.”
“Yup, but whatcha gonna do? The feds—no offense intended—the feds do what they want more times than not.”
Gamble barked a sardonic laugh. “No offense taken. Even among us there are ‘feds’ and then there are ‘Feds.’ Layers of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and political machinations. Sometimes you just mind your own business and look the other way. Go along to get along.”
He gave a last scan to the neighborhood and offered Diaz his hand. “Thanks for the heads up, Diaz. I think I’ll try to talk to this Reverend Cruz if he’s up for it. Where’s he at?”
“UNM Hospital, last I heard.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
***
“Nano.” My heart thundered and I couldn’t draw in a complete breath. I closed my eyes against the rising panic.
Zander! Abe! Oh, Abe!
My voice shook. “Nano. Find Zander and Abe. They are in an Albuquerque hospital. Find them!”
The nanomites went to work. The sound of their busyness seemed amplified, and it was more distinct and diversified than it had been in other instances, less a single source of white noise. I closed my eyes and focused on differentiating between the sounds I heard.
Pretty soon I identified three—no, four?—separate channels of sounds. Five? As I concentrated on what I heard, I sank down, into a trance-like state. The mites were mining data via the neighbor’s Internet connection, and I . . . I thought I could hear the data streaming by, like a rushing, babbling current, moving through the nanoswarm.
The mites were chasing the data, filtering it, sorting it, and I became engrossed in their work.
What?
Directly behind my closed eyelids, bits of pictures and images skittered. They flew from left to right with blinding speed. My eyes tried to follow; they flickered back and forth as though I were in deep REM. My head twitched in a minute but rapid, side-to-side movement.
If that weren’t weird enough, the meaning of the images as they flashed in front of my closed eyes became clear. Crystal clear. Bytes of information. Scraps of data. Dates. Facts. Records. Vivid impressions.
I could see it, the information the nanomites were pulling from the Internet! It almost felt . . . it seemed as if I could reach out and touch—
I both saw and comprehended disparate objects in the data flow as the stream became a river that gushed past me.
Around me.
Over me.
Through me.
I couldn’t contain it all, and I couldn’t detach from the flow. It was sweeping me away! I couldn’t keep up, couldn’t open my eyes to end it—it was out of my control.
I was out of control.
I began to hyperventilate.
Gemma Keyes. We will moderate the amount of adrenaline your body is producing and release neurotransmitters to calm you.
“Stop . . . it!” I begged. “Please stop! Too much!”
But it did not stop. The deluge of information kept coming and coming and coming. I struggled and fought against the torrent, to no avail—but then my heart began to slow, my anxiety to ease up.
As the data rushed and coursed over me, I gave up trying to keep it out: My efforts were futile anyway. Instead, I turned inward and focused my thoughts on Zander and Abe. This mental trick had an amazing effect. Out of the river of information, I snagged something pertaining to Abe, then a fragment about Zander. I grasped them and held on. Or were they sticking to me by themselves? I snatched more relevant morsels from the stream.
When my “arms” were full, I put what I’d gathered in a stack to the side, but I found that I was thirsty for more. I stared, transfixed, into the data flow—I leaned toward it and reached my hands into it.
It was not enough! My thirst grew, and I stepped into the rushing stream. I waded into its deluge, stood within its rapids, and let it wash over me.
Information I desired came to me like iron filings to a magnet—and still I wanted more.
I found myself sorting the data, fending off irrelevant bits and bytes of in
formation with the flick of a finger, stacking what I wanted to the side. The faster the data came, the better at sorting it I got.
As I amassed information, the space around me grew. I looked far to the right and farther to the left and had the sensation of gazing into the depths of a warehouse—an immense, cavernous warehouse.
I must be hallucinating.
It was amazing. It was astounding.
Then . . . the river of data slowed. The piles I had sorted and stacked to the side remained, but the flow of bits and bytes slowed to a trickle. Dissipated. Died.
In place of the river of data I heard chittering. A lot of chittering. Back and forth.
A voice spoke.
We are waiting for your input, Gemma Keyes.
I was terrified and drawn at the same time. “What? What do you mean?”
We are waiting.
“What? Who? Who is waiting?”
We are.
My innate instinct to survive kicked in, demanded that I pull away, get out of this “warehouse,” and return to reality—but that insatiable hunger to know clawed at me. Rather than pull away, I placed my hands over my eyes to seal them shut, to ensure that I would remain in the place where I understood so much—and craved so much more.
Vistas I’d never dreamed of opened before me. And only one possibility existed to explain the voices in my head.
“Nano?”
Yes. We are waiting.
Waiting? We?
“Nano. We? How many are ‘we’?”
How many?
“How many nanomites.”
The silence lengthened, and I grew impatient.
“How many are you, Nano?”
We are six.
From my place in the warehouse, I pondered their words. “Only six? I thought . . . trillions. Dr. Bickel said trillions! How can you be only six?”
We were five. Now we are six.
Five?
“Five tribes? You were five tribes?”
Tribes. Yes. We are six.
“Alpha Tribe. Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Omega Tribes?”
Yes. We were five. Now we are six.
I pressed my palms harder against my eyes. Six? Now we are six?
Wrestling with confusion, I asked, “Six? Dr. Bickel said five tribes. What is the sixth tribe, Nano?”
Gemma.
I huffed at the runaround and repeated, “Yes? I’m here. What is the sixth tribe, Nano?”
Gemma.
I gulped, sat up, sat back, kept my palms squeezed tight over my eyes. Did they mean what I thought they meant?
“The sixth tribe . . . is Gemma? As in Gemma Tribe?”
Yes. Gemma Tribe.
We are waiting for your input, Gemma Keyes.
All was silent.
The silence of a confab.
The nanomites were waiting for me to participate in a confab.
I turned my attention to the stacks and stacks of data I’d gathered. Opened my arms and let their information come to me.
Saw, heard, and felt it all. Absorbed it. Understood.
“Nano. Abe and Zander are at UNM Hospital. Zander is on an adult surgical floor. Abe is in—” I choked when I tried to say “medical intensive care.”
Yes. We have located them also. In the interest of better communication and consensus, what is your recommendation?
“My recommendation?”
Yes, Gemma Keyes. We are waiting for you to communicate your recommendation so we might consider all options and arrive at consensus.
Recommendation?
Consider?
Consensus?
What was my recommendation? When someone has hurt my friends?
Hot, fierce anger coiled in my chest. I couldn’t speak what was raging in my heart: Consider this, Nano! Let’s arrive at consensus on this, shall we? I want to kill the men who hurt Abe and Zander. I want to destroy them. Decimate them. I want to obliterate Mateo Martinez.
I tore my hands from my eyes. I was out of the “warehouse,” back on the sofa in Dr. Bickel’s safe house—but I could still hear the nanomites in my ear.
In the interest of better communication and consensus, what is your recommendation?
I jumped to my feet, my outraged breath coming in quick gulps.
“Consensus be hanged. We are going. Right now.”
~~**~~
Chapter 9
The Albuquerque transit system took long, agonizing hours to get me to University Hospital—or it sure felt that way. My desperation to reach Zander and Abe, juxtaposed against the tedious bus schedule, served to harden my craving—no, my need—for my own vehicle.
Hurry up, Javier!
His name reminded me to make a cash deposit before the end of the day. I’d already made several deposits since the nanomites opened my account—but none approaching $10,000. From what I’d read on the IRS website, the feds had tightened money laundering laws: Any cash deposit of more than $10,000 had to be reported on Form 8300. I guess I was already breaking some laws by not reporting my theft of the gang’s drug money as income, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.
I hopped off the bus, made my way to the entrance to the hospital, and stared at the four sets of double doors. University of New Mexico Hospital and Medical Center is a huge, sprawling maze embedded in the north end of the UNM campus—and I didn’t know how to navigate said maze.
I entered the lobby and studied a listing of the hospital’s many departments. Zander was in the older, main part of the hospital, apparently, just a few flights up. No problem. Abe, however, was in the MICU, the Medical Intensive Care Unit, “Pavilion,” second floor. I wanted to see Abe first, but I didn’t know what or where “Pavilion” was. The helpful woman at the helpful Help desk was not going to be very helpful for me.
Sigh.
I turned in a full circle, sighed again, and breathed, “Nano. Where is this Pavilion wing?”
Would they answer? I’d cut them off earlier. Ignored their confab request. Run roughshod over them.
Turn left.
Was it my imagination, or were those two words stiff? Terse?
“Right.”
Not right, Gemma Keyes. Turn left.
“Um, yes. Turn left, not right.”
I headed down a breezeway of sorts, wandered past the Children’s Hospital and stopped when I came upon a coffee shop/cafeteria. I looked around for signage but didn’t see anything for “Pavilion.”
“Where in the world am I?”
Continue ahead.
“Okay. Thank you.”
I kept walking, left those buildings, and entered the lobby of another complex. At last I saw signs for the Pavilion next to a bank of elevators. I stepped inside an elevator car and pressed the button for the second floor.
The elevators emptied into a waiting area on the second floor. Signs pointed off to the left for the Trauma/Surgical & Burn Unit. Signs pointed right for the Medical ICU. Weary and anxious families occupied long rows of chairs.
I swallowed. This floor cared for a lot of hurting people and held a lot of anxious loved ones.
I traversed the waiting area, swung down a short hall, made a quick right, and came up against the doors to the MICU. The unit was closed off to the curious or unauthorized visitor; even the narrow windows in the double doors were papered over so no one could see inside. I noted the keycard reader and the phone mounted on the wall beside the doors. Employees had keycards to gain entrance; visitors used the phone to request access.
Ordinarily, I might have waited for the doors to open when someone came out or went in, but I was distraught and I was charged with a fierce rage—rage toward Mateo and toward myself. The anger made me reckless: At that moment, I did not care about taking precautions.
Yeah, so I took a break, walked away, hoping to get my impulsiveness under control. Maybe I was giving myself a chance to prepare for what I feared I would see within the unit.
That break didn’t last long.
I made on
e circuit through the waiting area, swung back around and, as I approached the MICU doors, I lifted my hand toward the keycard reader. The mites shot from my fingers and the doors swung wide. I breezed through without breaking stride.
A gatekeeper sat at a desk on the left. She looked up as the doors opened and closed; I paused to get the lay of the land but paid her confusion no mind.
An open, airy hall ran straight ahead. Glass-fronted patient rooms lined both sides of the hallway. I shuffled forward, searching for Abe. I avoided the nurses and doctors who went about their duties with quiet efficiency—but at every glance through the glass wall of another room, my heart clenched.
Halfway down the corridor, I came upon a nursing station that rivaled the bridge of the USS Enterprise. A single nurse seated in front of a bank of closed-circuit TV monitors could observe patients and supervise their vitals.
My stomach twisted: Abe was in one of these critical care beds. I wasn’t mentally prepared to see him yet, to take in the damage Mateo and his crew had inflicted on him—to see his wounds when I knew that I was responsible for him being here, for the pain he was suffering.
Possibly responsible for his death.
If I hadn’t asked him to take Emilio in . . .
I drew near the station’s computers, scrunched my eyes shut, and found myself in the warehouse. “Nano. Access Abe’s medical records, please.”
They did not answer, but within seconds, I saw Abe’s file.
It wasn’t good.
I threaded my way toward Abe’s room farther down the unit. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into Abe’s room. Managed to make my eyes fix on the still figure in the bed.
I knew it was Abe, but when I reached his side, I hesitated. His body was surrounded by and attached to way too many machines and tubes: needles and ports on the back of his hand connected to an IV tree hung with multiple bags, heart monitor, breathing tube, ventilation machine. Lots of beeps and blinking lights. Stitches and bandages and oozing gauze; bruises and swelling.
His body seemed to have sunk into the bed. His lovely brown skin was dull and sallow. Ugly, greyish, and wrong. His heart rate, shown on the heart monitor above the bed, was slow. Ponderous. Laborious.
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