“Did they have blood?” Key immediately asked.
“Yes,” Rahal assured him. “A little less than they should have, but yes.”
“That’s why the fucker had four,” Daniels snarled. “Let one recover while feeding on another.”
Key controlled his own anger in order to, as he had suggested to the fucker, keep his eye on the prize. “Does that correspond with the first child we found?”
Rahal paused, conflicting emotions infusing her expression. She seemed to be internally arguing with herself, and even reprimanding herself for pausing in the first place.
“No,” she finally answered. “The first child is different. She is not depleted in any way. In fact, her biological functions seem enhanced in somewhat the same way as Terri’s. Her EEG is off the charts.”
“EEG?” Nichols asked. Although the redhead had been extensively tested after her rescue from terrorists who were trying to turn her into a human Idmonarachne Brasieri weapon, she never asked about what tests those were until now.
“Electroencephalogram,” Rahal informed her. “Measures the electrical activity of your brain.”
“But does the first child have blood?” Key pressed.
For the first time since meeting her, they all saw the scientist look ashamed.
“Her vital signs are very weak,” she said, seemingly just as weakly. “I’m afraid any intrusive test will kill her.”
Daniels didn’t even take a moment before snorting. “Hey, death didn’t kill her. I doubt any test you could give her will!”
His words, rather than make her retreat even further, heightened her defenses. “You’re assuming a great deal!” she retorted. “We have no scientific proof she actually returned from the dead!”
Lancaster looked ready to start barking orders, but Key’s quiet, sharp words beat him to it.
“Stand down, Morty,” he said before turning an understanding, even considerate face toward Rahal. “But he’s got a point, Eshe. This is already ugly and promises to get uglier. We need to know their biology, how they tick.”
“I know, Joe,” she answered with apology, but also resolution. “I’ll take care of it. Now.”
He stopped her before she could leave. “What about the fifth child? The one in the coma.”
Rahal stopped near the exit, looking helpless. “She’s alive, but just barely. She needs time to recover before we can even begin to truly treat her. I’m sorry, truly sorry, but we just have to wait.”
She turned, then stopped when she discovered that her way was blocked. Dr. Helen stood in the doorway, looking humble but pleasantly resolute.
“I am so sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But the child—the one you call the fifth child? The one in the coma?”
“Yes?” Lancaster said, coming forward. “What of her?”
The old Chinese woman looked placidly up into the retired general’s face. “I believe I can reach her.”
Chapter 10
“Needles?” Daniels whispered incredulously.
“Acupuncture,” Gonzales explained quietly, reassuringly.
When Dr. Helen said she could “reach” the comatose girl, it soon became apparent that what she meant was that she could wake her. The woman, still wearing a lab coat over a simple, hemp-cotton, Chinese-style shirt and pants, laid out her worn leather kit, which was full of individually wrapped, short, medium-length, and long needles—each starting with a tiny top designed for tapping, a thinly wrapped shaft top designed for finger-rolling, and a pin end that was so sharp and fine it nearly disappeared from sight.
The team stood in the adjoining observation room of the intensive care unit, which was equipped with multiple-angle video feeds as well as a surveillance window. It reminded Nichols of the time her father, a prison guard, had taken her to an execution. It was also the field team trio’s first good look at the second child they had rescued—which Daniels, being Daniels, quickly noted was not nearly as angelic-looking as the first.
“This is just a kid,” he sarcastically observed. “Just a normal kid.” He looked back at her, his face threatening to express a sadness he always sought to repress. “Poor thing.” Daniels dodged that emotional bullet by shifting his attention to Lancaster, who stood between him and Key. “I suppose she knows what she’s doing, right?” he commented-critiqued of Dr. Helen. “She comes highly recommended, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Lancaster, with a grim smile. “By me.” He took the moment to look directly back at Daniels. “I don’t think it’s possible to do what I did, either before or after my military service, without damage. Damage that became seemingly impossible for Western medicine to effectively treat.”
“Correct,” Rahal mused with concern. “English-speaking doctors all too often seek to treat symptoms with corporate-backed drugs, rather than help the body to heal the source of the illness.”
“Nothing wrong with a good drug,” Daniels said in an attempt to lighten the mood and break the building tension. It worked to a degree. A very small degree.
“That may be,” Rahal conceded. “But there is something wrong with a bad drug.”
“Dr. Helen agrees with both of you,” Lancaster interrupted. “She told me an informed balance of the best from every culture’s medicine is the wisest course of treatment.” He looked back over at the older woman as she tenderly laid the child on her back.
“I suppose her course of treatment worked for you,” Daniels commented.
“In spades,” Lancaster replied. “Still does.”
All conversation stopped as Dr. Helen picked a medium-length needle and brought it up over the child’s body.
“I seek to stimulate, then activate, the posterior right cerebellum,” came the older Chinese woman’s voice from the observation room speaker.
They all heard Rahal’s breathing deepen. “The brain’s center for sleep, consciousness, and happiness,” she murmured. “Oh, smart. Very smart.” She looked up at Key. “By engaging both the happiness and consciousness centers of the brain, she’ll make the girl want to wake up.”
They all watched as Dr. Helen brought the needle down to the girl’s calf.
“So—if this is about the brain, shouldn’t she be sticking it in her head?” Daniels wondered.
“Effective acupuncture points are located throughout the body,” Rahal told him quietly while keeping her gaze on the Chinese woman and the Punjabi child. “They are as complex as the human nervous system itself.”
Silence descended on the observation room again as the needle touched the girl’s skin, and Dr. Helen inserted it by rubbing the pin’s shaft between her thumb and forefinger. Daniels, especially, was disappointed when no lights flashed, no gong sounded, and the girl didn’t instantly awake.
“Now I seek to actuate the left and middle frontal gyrus,” Dr. Helen said, seemingly to herself.
“This could take some time,” Lancaster informed them. “No treatment works with a single needle alone.”
In fact, Dr. Helen was already inserting a second needle into an acupuncture point in the girl’s fibula.
Gonzales distracted himself from Dr. Helen’s preparations by repeatedly going over Key’s report in his mind. “I just don’t get it,” he muttered. “There was enough sedative in each dart to put an entire ’hood to sleep. But you say this fucker took a fistful of them in the face like they were candy.”
“Several fistfuls,” Key corrected quietly. “All over.” Key then looked meaningfully at the mechanic. “But sedatives can’t work if there’s no blood for them to travel in.”
Gonzales looked at him doubtfully, but couldn’t argue the point. He looked down, deep in his own thoughts, as Rahal appeared beside Key, her hand on his shoulder.
“Might as well use the time productively,” she told him. “I’ll test the first girl’s blood.” She bit her lower lip. “Or lack of it
. Finally.”
Key placed his hand over hers, giving her an encouraging nod. “Save your punishment for the monsters who did this,” he suggested.
She gave him a weak, but honest, smile, and was two steps toward the exit when Dr. Helen stopped her again.
“Eyes open,” she said, apparently having not heard what Lancaster mentioned about possible delays. The team’s heads snapped back to the window as if all on the same string. Sure enough, the fifth child, the one who had been in a coma, lay there serenely, her dark eyes open. Key remembered what Rahal had said about the brain’s happiness center and was grateful for Dr. Helen’s experience, knowledge, and skill.
“You ready?” Lancaster snapped at Safar.
The Arab-American, who had been at the surveillance camera control board the entire time, gave him a thumbs-up. “Translator programmed from the second we came in here,” he reported.
The latest software was equipped to interpret all twenty-two major Indian languages, as well as more than five hundred dialects. Because of where they thought the girl was stolen from, Safar had concentrated the sub-programming on Punjabi and its fifteen primary dialects but was ready to adapt the software to interpret any variation.
“Ask her who kidnapped her,” Lancaster instructed him.
Safar’s fingers danced on the keyboard; then they all heard a calm, soothing, female voice say something in Hindi, Urdu, and then Punjabi. They watched the girl blink slowly, and then, unbidden, Safar’s fingers moved, and the words were repeated, only this time in Doabi, Majhi, Malwi, and Pwadhi.
The girl had a small, twitchy reaction of recognition, so Safar repeated the question again in Pwadhi, the fourth most common dialect of the Punjabi language. He then looked up at Lancaster for any suggestions or instructions, but the retired general held up a pausing finger, recognizing the girl’s facial movements. As far as he was concerned, the girl was thinking.
Dr. Helen carefully and painlessly added a short needle on either side of the girl’s fibula to stimulate her right inferior parietal lobe, as well as her dorsal anterior cingulate, which would hopefully further awaken her memory, body-facial recognition, and even her reward-based decision-making process.
It seemed to work, because the girl’s lower lip drooped, her eyes grew dreamy, and childlikewords began to emerge. The same soothing female voice that had spoken to the girl started speaking to the people in the recovery room.
“Beautiful woman…” she whispered. “Said…come. So beautiful. Be with her. Forever.”
Key realized he wasn’t breathing, even though his mouth was open. He corrected the situation and, like the others, leaned toward the window just in time to see the girl’s eyes start to sparkle, and her lips stretch into a heartbreaking smile. Sounds continued to emerge from her, but the soothing voice didn’t match them.
“Fa. Teh. Puh—”
Lancaster looked sharply at Safar, as the techie shook his head helplessly while his fingers stabbed. Thankfully for them both, Dr. Helen solved the mystery.
“She is singing,” the Chinese woman said with barely contained pleasure.
Safar’s eyebrows went up, and he adjusted the programming accordingly. Suddenly the soothing female voice was uttering recognizable words.
“What he…took from…my eyes.”
Once again Lancaster looked accusingly at Safar. Once again, Safar could only hold his hands up helplessly.
“Ask her what happened to the woman,” the retired general instructed.
Safar did as he was told, and the team watched as the new words, although just as soothing as the others, seemed to hit the girl’s face like refreshing rain turning to painful sleet. Her little face twisted up and her eyes grew dark.
“No woman. Monster man. Monster man! No. No!” The poor child’s little body began to tremble, then spasm.
“Stop,” Key said. Lancaster didn’t countermand the order, but Key wouldn’t have cared if he had. His eyes fixed on the doctor. “Can you help her rest?”
But Dr. Helen was already removing some needles, and adding others all over the girl’s body. As they watched, the girl’s obvious pain and fear subsided, and she soon achieved a restful sleep.
Key turned to the others with a deep exhalation to see each team member dealing with the situation.
“What now, Major?” Lancaster asked evenly, figuring that if Key was going to shut the questioning down, he had damn good reason.
“What else?” Key said calmly. “We nail this fucker.”
“How?” Daniels asked, though it was more like a complaint.
“Like this,” Key snapped at his friend before looking over at Safar. “Scour the lyric databases, Faisal. Give us everything with ‘what he took from my eyes’ in them. Start with Hindi movie musicals.”
Daniels’s jaw dropped, but Gonzales grinned, hitting the big man in the arm. “Indian movies,” he told him. “Some of the best in the world. All three hours long, all filled with at least six songs. Even though they are almost exclusively shown in India, it’s the third-largest movie audience in the world after America and China.” Gonzales reacted to Daniels’s flabbergasted face with a sniff. “Everybody knows that, man.”
But Key wasn’t done. “Fa. Teh. Puh,” he repeated to them, enunciating carefully. “Mean anything to you?”
Daniels reacted as if his superior officer had to be kidding. “Just baby talk, man!” he grumbled.
“Exactly,” Key retorted as if the big man was a prize student. “She is practically a baby, man. So what is that in baby talk?”
Lancaster took a moment to look at Safar with an expression wondering if the translation software was sophisticated enough to translate Punjabi baby talk into useable English. But all Safar did was smile and nod.
“Fa,” they heard, and turned to the young woman with the fiery hair. “Fire,” Nichols guessed, looking at each person to gauge their reaction. “That’s all I could think of. Fire.”
Daniels threw his hands up and turned around as if everyone in the room had gone nuts.
“Teh,” Rahal mused. “Tent?” It was difficult for her not to remember the tent where her mentor, Professor Basheer Davi, had hidden from the forces who wanted to turn the Idmonarchne Brasieri into weapons—the tent where he ultimately committed suicide before her very eyes. “Puh,” she continued. “Pole? Tent pole?”
Key considered it, then shook his head. “You’re thinking like you. Think like her.” He pointed at the girl through the glass, gratified that she seemed to be resting peacefully, not sunk back into a torture-driven coma. The last thing he saw before turning back to the others was Dr. Helen’s pleased face. “I don’t think this girl was imprisoned in a tent when the monster man took her from the beautiful woman. So where would she be kept? In a region that’s the spiritual center of the Sikh?”
Lancaster got it first. “Not tent pole,” he said firmly. “Temple.”
Key nodded in agreement. “Faisal,” he called. “See if ‘fire temple’ rings any database bells.”
“We were already in the bastard’s fire temple, Joe,” Daniels complained. “It’s matchsticks, remember?”
“I don’t need to know where the fucker was, Morty,” Key came back at him. “I want to know where he is. Last time we saw him, he was literally on the run. I want to know where he’s running to. And I’ll use any clue to find out—even one from a poor tortured girl.”
“Already got some hits you ought to look at, Joe,” Safar announced.
“Ah,” Key responded with relief. “Better living through science.” He started moving toward the control board while getting Lancaster’s attention. “How are the headgear enhancements coming?”
“Lancaster Labs is testing several prototypes even as we speak,” the retired general informed him. “Want it battle-ready even more than you do.”
“Doubt that,” Key comm
ented as he passed a still dumbfounded Daniels.
“Enhancements? What enhancements?” he demanded. “What are we going to do, wear tinfoil hats?”
“Well, as a matter of fact—” Key drawled as he came around the control board desk.
“No, no,” Daniels mock-complained, throwing up his hands again. “Don’t tell me. I’ll find out when I find out.”
Key nodded as he reached Safar, knowing all too well that this banter was everyone’s release from the sad and frightening place they were in and planning to attack. But now it was time to get back to serious business.
“Eshe,” he called to the still somewhat shell-shocked scientist. He waited until she snapped out of her reverie, then spoke kindly. “We need your findings, and this time, I promise, Dr. Helen won’t interrupt.”
“Of course, of course,” Rahal answered, giving him a wan “don’t worry, I got this” smile. “Right away, Joe.”
She left the rest of the team and moved toward the intensive care unit as they moved out of the queen’s quarters and into their control room, lab, workshop, and armory. She made it all the way to the radiation containment lockdown observation room before she stopped.
She stared at the tiny, wrapped, strapped, yet still angelic-looking little girl swathed inside polymer bubbles, feeling as paralyzed as she always did in the kid’s vicinity. By all rights, the mind muddying this child seemed capable of was not possible in these circumstances. The most sophisticated security devices available, even to Lancaster, should have been effective.
But in five thousand years of human science humans had never come across life-force eaters before. Or had they?
Rahal shook her head, as if the thoughts would come out her ears. He had to be wrong, she found herself thinking. I have to prove him wrong.
She went to her desk, unlocked the top right drawer, and rummaged around in the back until she pulled out the small, bubble-wrapped package she had taped there. Inside was a prepaid ghost phone that her students had presented to her upon her retirement from the Oman Medical College.
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